Maine Coon cat Jay and mum share four years

June 16th 2014 – Mum and I celebrate four years together. It has been a blast.

I am all grown up now and a very big boy. At my vets a week ago I weighed 18 lbs. I maintain I am NOT fat, just a big Maine Coon cat. When mom measured me one day, as I stretched my front and back legs out, I was 42 inches from one end to the other (this does not count my tail which, as you know, is also very long). But I was not always this big. When I rescued mom I was 1.6 lbs and only seven weeks old.

 

Before I tell you about our first few days of strife together let’s take a quick video break. In my last blog I told you about how I chose mom and my forever home. Mum did a retrospective video of my first four years. This time she decided to do one of our first six weeks or so together – because I was an awfully cute little guy! This was a good thing because I have to admit I have not always been easy on her!

 

Back to the story of how I was a “Rebel”!

During my first few weeks I felt a little crazy and raced around for hours and hours. Once I ran from room to room for more than 12 hours. It was exhausting but I felt really strange inside as though I was trying to get away from something. Even the vet was surprised at how long I was racing around. They tried to have something called pheromones put into the air but I did not notice any difference. It lasted for two or three weeks. I know mom was very worried about me.

I also came with worms so I had to be treated for that.

And then there was (is) my love of eating things. Any things! It does not matter what it’s made of. If it’s on the floor, it’s fair game.

My mom lives with a lot of pain and she has to take very strong medication for it. The week before I came to live with her she dropped one of the pills on the floor. She said she could not find it but figured she would eventually find it and forgot about it. She was not expecting me to arrive.

The day after I came home, mum found this tiny piece of green plastic on the floor and went ballistic. I was eating everything so I don’t know if I ate it her pill or not but mum phoned the vet who said to bring me in immediately as they had something they could give me if I started to go to sleep from it. So I had only been with mum for a day and we were off to the vet for the first time.

Mum still had not given me a name and realized I needed one before we got there. She said suddenly it came to her. Mum is a HUGE fan of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team and that popped into her head as she was driving and before we arrived at the vet I became known as Jay McNicoll.

It would not be the last time mum had to take me to the vet because of something I ate that was not food!