Visiting Br'er Coon

June 14, 2014 Saturday

Today I went to visit the lady who is going to make my Maine Coon kittens for me at her home, Br'er Coon.

The drive there was lovely. I have never seen a more gorgeous day. I'd left the interstate (on purpose this time; I got lost so often this trip) and was on a two lane state highway with no traffic and gentle winding curves. There were vivid green meadows on either side of the highway and deeper green forest trees beyond them. The sky was a deep cerulean blue with a few large puffy white clouds. And to make things even more idyllic, the meadows were full of sunflowers and daisies and other large yellow flowers which were being visited by a flock of white butterflies.

Such a lovely house--and she takes care of all those plants!

Mrs. McFadden's house is lovely--if you go to the website the main picture with the doors that open to click through into the website is her actual house.

When I came in, the cats who are pets and live in the main house eagerly came to greet me. Grandma (a cat) was stately and overweight and held back mostly because I gathered she has great dignity. The only kitten currently in the house is a bit of a Little Miss Snooty and didn't really want cuddles. Mrs. McFadden said she's not like her normal kittens and frowned at her and said, well, when you try a new sire, you never know what you will get. Little Miss Snooty is going into the breeding program when she grows up which is why she was still there. All the other kittens had gone to their new homes already.

Tilly, aka Little Miss Snooty

This is okay. Having lots of kittens around is overwhelming and I'd rather see what they are like grownup. They don't stay kittens for long, but the adult stage lasts much longer, so I'd prefer to see what I'm getting for the long-term rather than play with kittens.

Fire in braided cat bed

There are cat beds and cushions and trees everywhere, but Mrs. McFadden has that interior decorator's touch which makes everything blend well and look appropriate. We spend some time talking while sitting on some facing loveseats, and Fire, one of the pet girls, was curled up in the cat basket made of braided rug material on the loveseat. I was petting her and she was most appreciative, especially when I knew enough to simply let my hand rest against her tummy after she wanted a snooze. She coiled her paws around my wrist so we ended up staying there longer because I was in a cat trap :)

Across the breezeway (left main house, right guest house)

She has a large house and across a little entryway was the part of the house where the breeding girls stay, and Tank, one of the boys.

Tank's hammock where he is most
definitely not looking outside.

During the day he is in a cage so he can look out and the door to the girls' room is open with just the screen door keeping them in. During the night the door to the girls' room gets shut and Tank gets to wander through the guest bedroom.
In the house proper, one of the pets is a boy named Wally. Wally is a big boy, bigger than Tank. But somehow, despite physics, Tank is heavier than Wally. She let me hold Tank (who shoved his head up under my chin and wanted scritches, as if I could free even one hand to pet him when I was taxed to my limit to hold him confidently with both hands) and he is extremely heavy for a cat the size he is.

One end of the girl's room, with assorted girls.
(Tootsie on high, Cinder on floor, Teddy on right)

When we went into the girls' room, a large open airy room with many cat trees, a couple folding chairs, and a bathroom with a water bowl in the sink so they can play with their water all they want without getting it everywhere else, Mrs. McFadden said I should sit down and they'd be all over me, and she'd be in in a minute while she got a current list of cats and ages.

Cinder under my hand, Tootsie jealously
looking on trying to get a share of pets

So I sat down on the concrete floor (turns out she'd expected me to sit in a chair) and she was right about them being all over me. I was instantly inundated with cats. Cinder, a solid blue girl, won the rights to stand across my lap right next to me, and held this position for some time much to the annoyance of Teddy, Baa-Baa, and Tootsie. Eventually Cinder got bored and left, and then I had one of the others instantly there.

Mrs. McFadden wanted to know why I thought I needed
a "good" lap as her cats will take anything offered
as Tootsie is showing here on my lap,
bare legs, bony knees and all.

Cinder has a thing about hair, so I took my ponytail down (my hair is short now), and let her play with it. I don't think I would let her do this if she was my cat, but since I don't have to worry about being played with unexpectedly through the day, I was willing to let her have her fun. Later I was sitting there and petting one of them, and felt a cat land quite heavily on the ponytail (I'd put it back up) with her front feet and back feet on the ground, and start tugging on my hair. I said, "Hello, Cinder," in a put-upon tone, without looking around.

Mrs. McFadden thought that was amusing, that I didn't even bother to look and knew exactly who it was pulling on my hair.

Oddly enough, I got nibbled on by several of the cats, and this astonished Mrs. McFadden since they'd never done this before. I'm beginning to think it's my body wash, a vanilla scented body butter lotion. They always go after my hands, and since I use my hands to apply the body wash, it's going to be the most concentrated there. I'm beginning to think I need to return to using a citrus scented non-butter-type body wash. (Cats aren't attracted to citrus.)

Mrs. McFadden holding the densely muscled Tank

Then we went to visit the current courting couple in the boys' new home. Both boys will be here once they get the other side up, but it came damaged so only one side is working. This is a shed with air conditioning and heating, and the "sides" are open-work metal to keep the boys from each other's girls, I guess. She opened the side where Ms. Hattie and Mr. Green Genes were hanging out in their cat trees, and although they came out, and let themselves be handled, it was like we were both part of the scenery.

Mr. Green Genes in his cat tree watching Ms. Hattie

Ms. Hattie in the window seat

This was my first experience with the way hormones make the cats so very different. The two of them were entirely focused on each other such that I didn't exist and Mrs. McFadden, their person, barely existed. It was odd to be so ignored after the pileup in the girls room!

Ms Hattie may or may not be pregnant. They'll know in one or two weeks if she is. And if she is, she might be carrying my boys. Mrs. McFadden is reluctant to breed another girl right now, because the last time Ms. Hattie had a litter, she had 11 kittens. That's not a typo. She had 11 kittens and the humans had to help out with the nursing because she didn't have enough to go round, plus simply keeping up with and training that many kittens was exhausting ... since another cat had had kittens near the same time, a more normal 6, and that meant poor Mrs. McFadden was trying to care for 17 kittens. She said it just about killed her and she doesn't want to risk it again.

Tootsie showing off the black mark on her foot
which is where her name comes from

I had brought a stack of cardboard packing squares for her. I use them to make scratching posts (you stack them on top of each other). Since I get them from work, and they only get thrown away if I don't take them, I feel free in giving them to people (because if they don't like them, they can just recycle them and neither of us are out anything). 

After seeing her lovely and elegant home, I didn't know what she'd think of a stack of cardboard, but she loved it and started instantly thinking of ways of creating a background for photo shoots with it! I never would have thought of that. We put the stack in the girls' room, and although they didn't start scratching right away, they did start playing Queen of the Hill on the stack. As we were stacking them. We had to keep moving cats off the current top piece so as to add more pieces!

And then I drove back home, getting lost again, this time bad enough I had to resort to Google and GPS to get me out of the mess I was in instead of using just my paper directions. But as it didn't delay me much, only about 10 minutes, I wasn't too put out by it.