If they'd been ordinary, quiet kittens as he'd supposed they would be, purring away quietly next to the hearth and scampering after the occasional rat with clumsy endearing ineffectiveness, life would have been perfect. There was a reason ships kept cats on-board, after all.

The third time Smoker had to call a shipwide search for kittens in the rigging, however, ejecting the little devils back the way they'd come was starting to look increasingly tempting--the problem was that they were in deep ocean and the rat bastards couldn't swim yet.