Thread: Meet Leo

For 4th of July, my fiancee and I went with some of my family to watch fireworks, we got special seats extremely close to where they launched from. The seatting was at an animal shelter, the ticket price went to benefit the shelter. We went to look at the cats and dogs they had.

This one little red kitten was so sneaky, kept following me specifically from within the fenced in area. There was an older male cat that came up to us and stretched and showed an interest in us. We have been talking about getting a cat while we wait for the breeder to have the kittens we want.

After some heavy consideration, we decided to drive back to the shelter, about 1.5 hours away, and adopt that cat. We wanted to give an adult cat a home since the kittens are adopted more often.

The cat that stretched for us and everything was named Leo. He is a 1 year 8 month old, red cat. After spending only a few minutes with him in the room where they are kept, he made it clear that he wanted to go home with us. Crawled into our laps as we were just squatting down, and he started licking the left sleeve of my shirt like crazy. The deal was sealed.

He protested very little on the drive home. Once home, he wasted no time in inspecting every square inch of his new home. He is a sweet, goofy, easy going, well behaved purr machine.

After having him for 2 days, we have had plenty of time to get to know him. We have come to the conclusion that he most definately has some Maine Coon in him. This isn't really an idea that we had considered at the time of adoption. He is 10 pounds 4 ounces (4.66 kg). His body feels well built like those of the pure Maine Coons we've had the opportunity to hold. He has a nice poofy tail, his face isn't quite as defined as some, but it does have some definition that we've seen in many Maine Coons. His fur is soft, not silky, but not rough like all the domestic short hairs I've owned. I looked up breeds with copper eyes, Maine Coons are 1 of about 20 breeds that can have that and he looks nothing like any of the others on the list.

He is and has been shedding his undercoat, so we have been diligently using the slicker brush and Kong Cat Zoom brush on him; we almost have another cat, 2 for the price of 1.

The licking of most any cloth has not stopped, he can lick your shirt twice and there's a wet spot, thought cat tongues were drier, so he must salivate a lot when doing this. His other quirk is that he loves to run between your legs or sprint in front of your feet while you're walking in order to trip you.

He was surrendered to the shelter, they didn't have it written in his file why. He does nothing that would cause that. But we would do everything to fix any issue so that we didn't have to surrender him. When we get our kittens, I don't foresee him having any issue being a big brother to them.

Without further ado, here is Leo: