I walked into the cage area and glanced at the kittens, when I saw what looked like a white catcher’s mitt attached to a furry little body. Then pussy cat cocked his head to the side looking at me intently with his big eyes. Soon there were two white mitts hanging on to the cage grid and a tail that seemed way too long for such a little body.
“Can I hold this one,” I asked, pointing to what appeared to be basically paws, a tail and two bright eyes attached to a ball of fuzz.
“Sure,” said the shelter worker. “He’s a special boy. He has extra toes front and back and one of the longest tails we’ve seen on a cat. He was found abandoned in the woods and that’s about all we can tell you. He looks like a Maine Coon to me, but I’m no expert.”
Gleefully we filled out the paperwork, paid our money and left the shelter with our new little boy Finbar. He barely mewed on the way home and once in the house instantly bonded with our two Golden Retrievers. He tried desperately to bond with our other cat but was rebuffed.
In a few weeks, though, he’d won over not only our older cat, but everyone -- animal or human he would meet.
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His paws are amazing. We call him Pedestal Paws as his legs seem to be rooted in these rounded mounds of toes. And, he knows how to use these paws!
He opens cabinet doors with his paws; he picks up food and water with his paws and then uses them as a dish and eats directly out of his paws; he catches toys mid-air with one big soundless clap of his huge front mitts. |
A lover of odd foods, he will take his paw and swipe it around my husband’s oatmeal bowl and then lick away all the little morsels that he’s scooped up. He’ll take a paw and dip it into the cashew bowl and grab one out…then transfer it to his mouth and run with the nut firmly gripped between his teeth and hope we won’t catch him and make him give it up.
There’s nothing Finbar likes better than water and his favorite game is to hide between the shower curtain and the cloth curtain and bat at you while you attempt to shower. If anyone’s traumatized by the movie Psycho, they wouldn’t want to shower at our house. The silhouette of a big paw moving the shower curtain can be a bit scary the first time you witness it.
Between using his paws and his mouth, he has carried off toothbrushes, wire whisks, measuring spoons (he loves to “help” cook), eyebrow tweezers, clothespins, pencils, Chapstick, and a variety of paper products from sticky notes to dollar bills.
He leaves “gifts” in my husbands shoes like tea-bag paper covers, dog kibble, and tissues which he can remove as well as I can from an open box.
He also leaves “gifts” in the dogs’ water bowl; basically anything he can pick up and then transfer into the water so he can watch it float or sink. His paws are usually wet from his obsession with fishing in the dogs’ bowl after dropping some treasure into it.
I must admit, some things he does with those paws are a tad annoying.
He often changes the television channel only because his big feet manage to press on the remote buttons. He turns off and on the answering machine for the same reason I assume. But knowing him, it’s possible he could actually want to change the channel or want to shut off the answering machine. I’m convinced he’s smart enough to have figured it out and do it on purpose.
He is like no other cat I’ve ever had. More cat-dog than just plain cat. His oddities and idiosyncrasies make us laugh every day.
Perhaps not polite talk for company, but he has two litter boxes and he separates his daily deposits so that one box has liquid donations and the other box is strictly for solids.
By now it’s quite possible you are saying to yourself; she’s making things up. This can’t be true.
But it is true and I am wildly and passionately in love with this little guy and he has made me a MC poly lover from this day forward.
>> You can meet Finbar by clicking here... <<
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