Last night, our Maine Coon mix, Cleo, slept on the foot of the bed. Doesn’t sound like anything important to most of you, I am sure, but to us it was a small miracle. It was the first time in the eighteenth months we’ve had her that she felt safe enough to do that.
We found her on a night in early December 2009 when the temperature was going to drop below freezing. We’d just come back from grabbing dinner and were heading into the house when my husband spotted our next door neighbor, Brooke. She was shooing a large cat out of her garage. He asked her when they’d gotten a cat, and she told him that it was a stray and she didn’t want to lock her in the garage overnight. Realizing that the stray was going to be outside on a night that was going to be damned cold, my husband The Packhorse went over and picked her up. He figured she could spend the night in our guest bathroom.
The cat was filthy, and in the interest of her not spreading fleas to our 6 cats (how we went from four cats to six is another story), he bathed her. It took three rounds of shampooing before the water ran clean. She’d been wearing an old flea collar, so somebody must have owned her at some point, and she was far too friendly and people-oriented to be a feral. Feral cats don’t come to you when you call them, nor do they purr when you pick them up. They take weeks to gentle down. No, she was definitely a cat who had belonged to someone.
My husband called, “You have to see this child. She’s beautiful.”
That’s when I got my first good look at her. She was a fluffy long-haired brown tabby, with the classic M on her forehead, hair tufted feet, tufted ears and lynx tips on her ears—the marks of a Maine Coon cat. She was certainly a good-sized girl, definitely a plus-sized cat, another hallmark of the breed. And she was gorgeous, with a sweet kitten face with amber eyes and a slightly upturned nose. She had a loud, happy purr and she loved being petted. Somebody had thrown this beautiful creature out into the world and abandoned her. We decided right then we’d find her a home, or locate a no-kill shelter to take her.
We thought we’d gotten her a home, but that fell through. We continued to look for a shelter for her. After a week in the bathroom, with out other cats showing interest but no hostility in the newcomer, we let her out. At first, she behaved in a fairly aggressive manner, particularly toward Annie, our little brown tabby kitten, who was only 4 months old at the time, and small for her age, as well as D’Artagnan, who was a month younger but already much bigger than Annie. She was roundly admonished not to attack or play rough with them. She learned quickly, and fit right in after a week or two.
Dealing with people was another issue entirely. Picking her up resulted in growls and hisses and a struggle that left the unwary human with scratches and bites. Clearly, being picked up was not something with which she was comfortable; in fact, she seemed frightened rather than angry. She loved being petted, purring loudly and enthusiastically, but she’d quickly reach a point where she’d start using teeth and claws. We concluded her earlier owners hadn’t picked her up much, and had played with her as roughly as if she’d been Labrador puppy, not a kitten. She didn’t understand toys or how to play with them, and it took months of watching the other cats jump at feathered toys on a string or toss mice around before she got the idea. It was as if she’d had very little interaction with her owners after she’d stop being a small kitten. We did inquire in the neighborhood to find out whether she had an owner, but nobody claimed her. When we couldn’t find her a forever home, and there wasn’t a no-kill shelter with a space for her, we finally decided to keep her. We’d named her Cleo, short for Cleocatra, and she now had a forever home with us—eleven pounds of gorgeous Maine Coon mix.
We’ve spent the last eighteen months winning her trust and gentling her down. In the beginning, she’d sit under a chair, or in a corner. Eventually, she reached the point where she’d sit at our feet and purr. When it came to being combed, however, we’d have a fight on our hands. One infamous night, The Packhorse decided he had to comb her and cut the knots out of her fur. She went crazy, scratching and biting and howling like a banshee. He kept a tight hold of her until she’d worn herself out struggling, and finally, after an hour or so, she subsided and calmed down. He emerged with deep scratches on his arms and some bites that drew blood, but he had a calm cat who no longer feared being held. With the knots gone, she would even allow herself to be brushed. She still has a low threshold for being held—Maine Coons, I was told by several Kossacks familiar with the breed, aren’t big on being held. She liked to be close, but she wasn’t cuddly, I concluded.
Little by little, I learned I was wrong. First, she would begin to get up on the couch in the den, and she’d sit next to me to be petted. Then she started to sleep next to me or my husband on the couch. A few times she’d even condescend to get on his lap. She still had a problem with being overly excited and becoming over-stimulated, which resulted in biting and scratching, but that got better over time.
There was one barrier we couldn’t breach, however: she wouldn’t get on the bed. And then slowly, a few weeks ago, that began to change. If I was grabbing a late night snack, she’d jump up tentatively to mooch a bite, then she’d hop off. Then one night, she didn’t jump off, but stayed, her head resting on my foot at first, as if she needed to be in contact with me to feel safe. The next night and for several nights after, she repeated the process, as if she were making sure she was allowed to be on the bed. Our reassurances made her feel safe.
Last night, she joined the other cats in sleeping on the bed with us. She finally felt safe enough to do so. We had our small miracle at last.