Boat Creatures Topic on the Terrible Twosome

When Peachy arrived on the Sue in 2009, she had one year to enjoy living aboard as the only pet until the terrible twosome arrived in 2010. Of course, I'm talking about the brother and sister tuxedo cats - Face and Elvis (whose name was later changed to Ziva by Keith. So, from this point on, I will refer to her as Ziva).
Face and Ziva, along with their sibling (I called Ashes) were found on a stormy night in San Antonio by my daughter and her friend. They stopped along the side of a deserted road when they saw a number of kittens wandering around wet and frightened. Out of all the kittens, which was obviously an abandoned litter, they managed to catch three.
Ashes was adopted right away. She was a beautiful two-tone tan kitten. When the three arrived at my daughter's house, Ashes was the obvious protector of the three of them. Face. likewise, was obviously the runt of the litter, being much smaller than the others.

My daughter could not find a home for Face and Ziva, so I called Keith and presented my case for taking on these two orphans. To my surprise, he agreed and I brought them home with me.
As much as Face and Ziva, who were most likely in the 6-8 week range in age, wanted to be friends and play with Peachy, she wanted nothing to do with them. She even "warned" them away if they got to close. In time, Peachy learned to tolerate the two, and even, on occasion, they would all sleep side by side.
Face and Ziva adapted well to living aboard - so much so that I believe, in their mind, they owned the Sue. They had specific times for sleeping (kitty nap time), when they wanted their treats (kitty kandy), and when they wanted to play (anywhere between 2 am and 5 am).
Okay, so if they wanted to believe they owned the boat - fine. If they wanted their treats at a specific time - fine. If they wanted to sleep - so sleep. BUT when play time consisted of chasing each other (with occasional tackles) up and down the companionway at 2, 3, 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning - all bets are off. It became a battle that Keith and I lost until they were old enough where play time consisted of staring at each other until one swatted the other with a paw and they tusseled on the settee for a short time, eventually retreating to opposite corners and falling asleep.
I will talk more about these two little minions in later posts. They were a great source of entertainment for us over the past few years - and a great deal of heartache, too. 
If you are wondering if they ever landed in the water on occasion - yes, they did. Not as often as you might think, though. Each of them (Face, Ziva and Peachy, too) took tumbles into the water about 3-4 times each. Fortunately, we were there for almost all of them - and when we weren't there (for the cats, anyway, as they wandered even when we were away from the boat), we were close enough to shore for them to get there and make their way back to the Sue. In time, the terrible twosome learned the advantages of not taking chances when jumping from the Sue onto a dock. Peachy never left the boat without one of us with her, but we did learn to keep an eye on her. Peachy's eyesight isn't what it use to be and there were a couple of incidences where she walked right off the end of a dock or right off the bow of the Sue without noticing it was "the end of the road" (so to speak). Even at her age, she's still a good, strong swimmer!
Next blog, I'll talk about boat creatures that hang out around the boat.