So living with a Maine Coon – for four months and change now – has been a learning experience… let me count a couple of ways…
1) FUR. ohmigod, fur. I was warned that I will never own a piece of “black” clothing again after Ava moved in but dear god I had no idea. That fine silky floaty fur fluff gets everybloodywhere – and we won’t even talk about the times when she parks next to me in bed at night and just floomps that tail onto my face and into my nose and mouth. I’ve been cleaning up, picking off, vaccuming, brushing, unknotting and dematting, deshedding off of clothes and upholstery and carpets and everywhere else, cleaning cat brushes, and generally coming up with enough shed fur to make two normal sized cats out of. I think I should start spinning it into thread or something and selling CoonYarn…
2) related to fur – her britches are FLUFFY and why did nobody warn me about poop boogers in that fur? The first time I had to extract one was a nasty surprise for both me and the cat – the cat objected to having her butt fur pulled and yanked but there was no other way to dislodge the bit of caught up poop that was lodged in there GOOD and I really didn’t want her spreading the scent around the house. I am considering the indignity of shaving her butt area…
3) this is a dog in cat clothing. I swear. She just acts doggish – plays fetch, does that puppy head incline at things she finds perplexing, and follows me around everywhere just like said puppy. I mean, there is no going to the bathroom by myself any more, she’s always in there either ahead of me as I start making a purposeful move in that direction or right behind me as I walk in. In some ways this cat is CLINGY. But I kinda love it.
4) I mean, I know this is a big cat and she needs sustenance but are Maine Coons really starving ALL THE TIME? If I am in the kitchen for any reason there she is by her bowl going “merp? MERP? MERRRRRP?” like she hadn’t been fed in the last week. If I just obeyed the feed-me signals I would spend my life shoveling food down her gullet. And it isn’t just wet food – the kibble has been disappearing at an alarming rate and I know how the Little Emperor consumed it for ten years, and it ISN’T him. This cat is a walking stomach…
5) She is a goof. She doesn’t FIT in places she tries to sit, and she’ll fall off the edge of my recliner; or she’s going to blindly chase a cat toy off a cliff… er, off the bed, anyway. She has a nightly rendezvous with my slippers when I kick them off before climbing into bed – she wraps her paws around them, bats them around like oversized cat toys, and lies there with her entire head stuffed into a slipper for minutes at a time. One time she was sitting on the back of my computer chair and I sneezed and Ava whacked me on top of my head with an imperious “stop that” paw. She makes me smile. A LOT.
6) Maine Coons. Are. Not. Quiet. Cats. This one starts telling me important things at four in the morning sometimes. Do Maine Coon humans ever sleep through the night again…? EVER?
7) Did I mention the FUR???
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