Thought for Food

I got an email from Jane late last night in the midst of “slight panic attack re: cat sizes.” For as long as she can remember, she’s wanted a wee little black cat named Trouble. But they say your cat finds you, and the ones that found us on that fateful November day in Wilkes-Barre, PA, just as we were about to go out for another round of door-knocking for Obama, would not prove to be wee for long. They — especially Trouble — went from kitten to cat (and large ones at that) startlingly quickly.

When she read my post on their Maine Coon lineage yesterday, she started Googling images of the breed, sending herself into a spiral of hysteria. “i have just discovered that they are very slow to mature” she wrote, “and do not reach full size until the age of 3-4.  and full size is 15-20 lbs!!!!”

She included two photos: one of a black Maine Coon that looks exactly like Trouble, and the other of a cat splayed out like a prize-winning bass, above.

“i dont even have words for that last image,” she wrote.

When I told Andrea about Jane’s panic this morning, she was relentlessly upbeat. “They’re big like dogs! They’re wonderful!” She added that legend has it that Maine Coons are descendants of Marie Antoinette’s prized long-haired cats, which were safely dispatched to America aHEAD of their doomed mistress (oy).

So there you have it … I’ve got French royalty tearing up my sofa cushions.