February, 2011. Scroll down as the stories of the Cats of Acadia continues!
Acadia Kathryn: the cat who's in charge of everything. (She thinks)
Kathryn came to live here when Pablo, Alexander and I decided we needed another cat in the house, and that cat should be female to give us three bachelors a little balance in our lives. I had never had a Maine Coon that looked like a Maine Coon cat, or at least what most people "think" a Maine Coon Cat should look like, so I called my favorite breeder and spoke with her. She had lots of kittens she said, and did I want to come and see them? I told her yes and rolled out the car for a little road trip. Stay Tuned!
REST IN PEACE: MY HEART BROKE THIS PAST SUMMER. AT FIRST WE THOUGHT SHE HAD ALLERGIES. SHE STARTED TO SNORE QUITE A LOT WHEN SLEEPING, SOMETHING THAT WENT ON FOR A WHILE. BUT GRADUALLY SHE STOPPED BEING INTERESTED IN GOING OUTSIDE, AND THEN SHE STARTED TO LOSE INTEREST IN HER "YUMMYCF", (WHICH FOR ALL OF YOU WHO DON'T SPEAK "CAT", MEANS "YUMMY CAT FOOD".) WE TOOK HER TO HER DOCTOR. HE SUSPECTED SHE HAD A SINUS INFECTION AND PRESCRIBED MEDICATION.
AFTER THE ANTIBIOTICS HAD NO EFFECT HE SUGGESTED THAT WE TAKE HER TO THE BIG, NEW ANIMAL HOSPITAL. THERE THE DIAGNOSIS WAS THE DREADED FIV, OR AIDS. THE DOCTOR THOUGHT SHE PROBABLY HAD INHERITED THE VIRUS FROM HER MOTHER.
THE PROGNOSIS WAS GRIM. MAYBE SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS, MAYBE A COUPLE OF YEARS. IN THE END WE LOST THE BATTLE. NEW ANTIBIOTICS WERE COUNTERED BY THE VIRUS, AND FINALLY, I REALIZED THAT THERE WAS NO GOOD END.
ACADIA KATHRYN, MY SWEET FRIEND FOR ELEVEN YEARS NOW RESTS PEACEFULLY NEAR WHERE WE HOPE TO BUILD A NEW HOME SOON..
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PABLO PICTASO OF WYANDOTTE: A GENTLEMAN POET
From the earliest time that I knew him, I knew that Pablo was special. I did not plan for Pablo to live with me. Pablo was hired on to be the gallery cat at my seasonal art gallery in the village of Blue Hill. It seemed perfectly logical at the time: if one was to have a seasonal gallery, there should be a gallery cat and it should be a Maine Coon.
I saw an ad in one of those "buy/sell/swap" magazines. A breeder of Maine Coon Cats in the center of the state had one kitten left from the last litter and she wanted him to find a new home asap....his description was so odd, that i just had to go and see him. There he was, all black, white, with some brown and if the light was just right, some of his fur was green. I figured that if Pablo Picasso had painted a Maine Coon and got his eyes in the right place it would look like Pablo, so the name for the gallery cat was Pablo Picatso. Since the gallery was in a building named "The Wyandotte", Pablo was officially registered as "Pablo Picatso of Wyandotte". Drove the cat fancier organizations crazy!
Pablo had a great career as a gallery cat. We had several special shows with many people coming to the gallery and wandering about. All the doors were open, Pablo curled up comfortably on a dark brown bentwood settee with forest green cushions. Although still a kitten less than a year old he never moved. He just watched the people coming and going enjoying the occasional pat or coo when a patron would see him. He just looked special, and seemed to enjoy the music, the hub-bub and the spirit of the day.
But Pablo did grow up. By the time the first summer was waining Pablo was a pretty big boy. He became too big and active to live in the apartment above the gallery. Hecame home to live with Alexander and me. For a time he commuted to the gallery with me every afternoon. Then one morning when I let my guard down Acadia Alexander opened the back door, and Pablo had a chance to taste outsidekittytime.
He immediately resigned from his job as gallery cat. I didn't mind. I knew given the choice of watching a bunch of paintings of still life or sniffing the breeze off the water and chasing chippies across the lawn and through the woods, I knew what I would do.
Pablo grew to be a pretty normal Maine Coon male, about eighteen pounds at his heaviest. He was a good sized cat, and never once was anything except laid back. He became the best friend of Acadia Alexander. After they were together six years I went back to the same breeder in mid Maine and brought home Acadia Kathryn. Pablo was Kathryn's uncle.
Lore has it that Maine Coon Cats came to North America by ship. Some legend says that they came with Norsemen and are closely related to the Norwegian Forest Cat. Some legend says that they came from France, and are descended from Marie Antoinette's long haired palace cats. Whichever is the case or for some other reason lost in the mists of time, it is pretty common for Maine Coon Cats to like water. Sometimes they will sit in puddles or sinks partially filled with water. Most evenings Pablo would go out in the front yard after dinner, sit in the shade of an oak tree and watch the sun set into Contention Cove across the bay. Sometimes Pablo would go and sit with me on the large rocks that line the bank above the beach and just look out over the water.
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REST IN PEACE: Pablo Picatso has left us. He was sixteen years old and went out to watch the sunset never to return. I cannot tell you how difficult it has been to see all my cat friends leave so close together. I know that Pablo had a full, active and good life. He lived quite a long time, enjoyed good health and good companions. He was one of my best friends for all of his sixteen years. The truth is that after Kathryn passed on, Pablo visibly declined. I could see he mourned terribly: each morning he would demand that I sit with him while he ate breakfast as Kathryn had always done, and I was growing more and more concerned that this might be his last winter with us.
That last evening we had a beautiful sunset and I went down to those big rocks on the edge of the beach to sit with Pablo in the last rays of the sunset. He came from his place under the oak tree and sat with me for a few minutes as the sun sank across the bay.
He didn't follow me back home when the last of the sunset faded.
November, 2010
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Let me introduce you to Opus Rex, the newest member of Acadiareaders.com.
Naturally there is a story. It was really hard losing Kathryn and then Pablo so soon. We had pretty much decided to stay without cat friends in the house for a while. Let some time go by, and maybe the pain of loss would fade. It didn't seem to be working well. Each morning when I arose early, I would log onto websites from breeders of Maine Coon Cats and browse. I even exchanged email with several Maine breeders in search of information. How many kittens were available? What colors? How much?
The answers to the questions were yes, some, expensive in that order. Only one breeder in the greater Portland area was really forthcoming with information about her kittens, and she had two that would gorgeous. I kept it all a secret.
Michele started to get sick. It was a cold, but it seemed as though it was going to be very severe...head, sinus, throat. Just before flu seasons isn't a good time to get a heavy cold. I overheard her describing it as "stress" related because of losing the cats. I decided we needed to talk about it some more. To my surprise I found that she had been searching the Internet for a new Maine Coon Cat.
Being without a cat wasn't going to work for us and we began a search. Here is what we decided:
1. Of the Maine Coon Cats that I have known and loved, all were registered, from legitimate breeders who had established track records as breeders. Three came from one breeder in the southern part of the state. A third from the same breeder was bought by someone else who I knew really well. Of those three, two had severe health issues either from the beginning, or at the end, and all health issues were traced back to the cattery, the mother cat, or less than perfect genetic procedures utilized in the business.
2. Two of my Maine Coon Cats...Kathryn and Pablo...were related and Kathryn died of complications from feline aids, which her veterinarian feels were issues that she had inherited from her mother.
Obviously buying a Maine Coon from a breeder is little better than a crap shoot, and even the best of Maine breeders may not be able to devote the time and financial efforts needed to maintain a healthy genetic line or biological evironment for the breeding and raising of Maine Coon Cats. And all of this uncertainty for adoption fees starting in the $500 range and going up.
Since I had last thought of getting another Maine Coon Cat, much has changed. Our economy is in a sort of free fall, and a lot of discretionary spending is long gone as a feature of our way of living. I began to wonder how many people who were registered Maine Coon Cat breeders were still in the business. I found a lot of website links to be inoperative which didn't seem very encouraging. I found a wonderful pet adoption website that had Maine Coon Cats that were in shelters all across this country, and I began to wonder about adopting a Maine Coon Cat that needed a home and was older than a very young kitten. I found on the pet adoption website new kittens also.
We searched. We called and chatted, and we made two trips to shelters to see cats, some of which were in true crisis, poor things! Of course, we wanted them all, but so far there were no Maine Coon Cats or cats that looked like them, so we continued to search.
One afternoon I happened to log onto the Bangor Humane Society website and there, staring me in the face was a guy they called "Optimus Max". There was no mistaking that face and I knew with absolute certainty that Optimus Max was going to be OUR cat. I raced up to Bangor and adopted him that afternoon.
This is the picture and I knew this guy needed to be here. Officially he was a stray found wandering around the streets of Brewer. The Humane Society took him in, cleaned up his terrible mats and some other minor issues and then displayed him for adoption. If you are looking for a purrrfect companion, I highly recommend that you click here, www.petfinder.com and from there, enter your zip code and exactly what you are looking for. There are hundreds and hundreds of furry companions that need good homes now. Warning! Just looking will break your heart and make you want to run right out and adopt RIGHT NOW!
Opus is a Maine Coon "mix". I am not sure what that means, but he's as Maine Coon as any I've ever seen. Opus doesn't really care.
Opus Rex is cheerful and bright eyed. He has settled in here like he belongs and except for one night during which he was an amazingly nocturnal, prowling animal, he sleeps like a baby. He also knows how to open doors and has managed to explore every cabinet and bookcase in the place. He's kind off a cross between kitten and mature cat, which makes me question his actual age. I think he may be a fall 2007 kitten, or spring 2008 kitten. Whichever the case, look at the paws!
And of course, there is nothing quite like a good tummy scratch!
Opus is a treat. He has worked his way into this house as though he was born here. Probably one of the best words to use to describe him is “agreeable”. He is exceedingly gentle, and although he has seven claws on one front foot and six on the other, he never seems to extend them no matter how hard he plays with his human cohabitants.
He may well be a “Maine Coon-mix”, for the details of his parentage are unknown. But it is clear that he didn’t plan on becoming a stray, and didn’t suffer emotionally as a result. Probably he was rescued just in time, and his care in the shelter was of such high quality that when he got adopted by those of us at Acadia Readers, he just found himself at home.
He has almost ALL of the Maine Coon traits.
• He’s exceptionally vocal. He has a pronouncement to make about most things, and contrary to some of the pronouncements made by the late Acadia Kathryn, none of his comments are editorial…more like gentle commentary.
• He is very social.
• He is exceptionally laid back. When total strangers come into the room, he looks up from his nap, and then goes back to whatever he was dreaming about, unconcerned. Nothing phases him.
• I have not seen him eat with his feet, but he is very active with his big front paws, and can grasp objects well…and as I said before, he can open doors of cabinets and will try to open other closed doors when he wants to be on the other side.
Now with us three plus months, he is growing. He has gained quite a lot of weight, and seems to be growing taller and some longer as well. If I am right about his age, he will continue to grow for another two years or so, albeit more slowly than when he was two years younger.
Acadia Opus Rex is his full Acadia Readers name. No, he’s not going to be registered in any designer cats registry, but he doesn’t care, and neither do we. He’s a happy boy, and when he is content, he will start his purr motor, and sit observing what is happening around him, his tongue sticking out between his teeth.
Contented Opus. And just look at those whiskers!
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February, 2010. And now introducing Acadia Ashley
The cat tale continues. We are so thrilled with finding and adopting Opus, that we kept looking at all the kitties that needed to find new homes. Through the Internet it was easy to visit shelters all over the country, and when there were moments here and there to spend idly, I'd continue to look and look and look....
...and naturally, along came a picture at a shelter in Cumberland, Portland.
Ashley's story. Ashley and her two sisters were born somewhere near Calais which is a long way from Portland on the Canadian border. They were May or June 2010 kittens, and we know that there were at least three in the litter. The three little kittens were found in a box that had been carefully left in the back of a truck at a construction site. They were immediately taken to the local shelter in Calais.
After a few months, the shelter asked H.A.R.T, the shelter in Cumberland to help out and take the three girls for they were running out of room. Thus the three girls had a long ride to Cumberland where they were placed in foster care waiting for, well, Acadia Readers to find them.
We raced to Cumberland right after a big snowstorm on one of the coldest days of the year. We took a pillow case that Opus had been using as a bed with us, because the reaction to the scent of Opus would tell a lot about how adopting a young kittnen might go.
The three kittens were together in a room just for them in their foster home. Incidentally, before I forget it, people who provide foster care for cats waiting for adoption should be nominated for sainthood!
Michele put the pillow case down to see what would happen. Two of the three kittens went about their kitten business, playing with the toys and each other. One kitten, the larger of the three, went and carefully examined the pillowcase and, evidentally satisfied, lay down on it, taking possession.
That was our girl, and we finished the adoption process and headed for home.
The first night we kept her isolated from Opus. Opus knew something was going on because he could smell her under the door of the room that was her's alone that night. And the next morning they were carefully introduced through the glass doors separating the master bedroom from the rest of the house.
It didn't seem as though Opus knew what to make of her. She probably looked a bit like the large gray squirrels that Michele keeps feeding along with the birds outside. Soon it was clear that she wasn't a squirrel. As far as the kitten was concerned, big Opus was another cat, and she was fine with that.
Opus growled, and we held our breath. But the kitten ignored him, which seemed to confuse him even more. When the kitten came close to him, he swong one of his huge front paws at her, and she ignored that. Then it seemed like Opus realized that she was no threat to him, and he decided to take a nap.
We started the "let's think up a neat name" game, and suddenly it became very clear: she was Ashley, since she is so the color of light ash, and hence was christened in this house: Acadia Ashley.
Acadia Ashley and Dad: color coordination!
Now Ashley has been here three weeks. She is hyper energized, and runs all day, sometimes after Opus. And after running and charging about, it is time for a nap....
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