Ships Cat.

Well we decided to add to our crew; well I should say I decided and Mark grudgingly went along with it. We adopted a cat.

People who know me know I love having pets and as often times some pets have not worked out, I keep trying, a cat was inevitable, sooner or later; welcome to sooner.

A cat seemed to be the logical choice and cats on boats have a long history, dating back to ancient Egypt, cats used to be on the boats on the Nile, they were thought to be lucky and appease the gods. Naval tradition also includes ships cats, then they were on board to catch rodents and had an added benefit of being moral boosters.

Meet Jeep. Our feline. We adopted her from Waif animal shelter, it is quite a set up they have here on the island, with about six different locations and holding facilities, it was not hard to find our new furry friend. I drove to the newest one, about five minutes down the road and said I was looking for a cat that would be good with kids, good with dogs and good on a boat. The woman said she had just the cat for me and here we are.

Jeep of course was not the name she came with, and being a female cat it is an odd choice but it goes right along with our Popeye theme.

Jeep was picked up as a stray and was pregnant, the shelter held her while she gave birth to her litter and adopted out her kittens and now it was her time to find a home. We figure she is about 1.5 years old and so far she has been a perfect pet. She has taken to boat life like an old salt, squirrelling away in all the small spaces and cubbies, only scratches on her scratch post, is playful when we want her to be and a snuggle bug when we don't.

Mark installing shelves for the cat to sleep on, we are finding there are a lot of pets under our feet in our small floor space so if we can get her off the floor it would be that much better for everyone. Of course nothing is easy, the tv needed to be removed to install the brackets and couldn't be put back on again.

In the process the TV holding brackets broke off and now one side of it is temporarily velcroed to the bulkhead.

Testing it out.

So far we have kept Jeep inside the boat, we don't want her wandering off before she knows where home is, she managed to jump out of a hatch once and before we could get up top to get her she had jumped down again, I think she wasn't prepared to be all surrounded by water.

In other news, school has started, we have done our first week of grade 3, grade 1 and kindergarten. Boat schooling does have it challenges, trying to teach three different grades in such a small space is proving difficult, it may take me a few weeks to get a good routine down.

Notice the nautical themes to our craft time.

And the canvas man has started work on our cockpit enclosure, so far we have a new metal frame on the stern, can't wait to see it with some sunbrella over it.