After our first dog - Cert died, who got injury in September 2003, I was thinking 14 days about whether I should take a Russian Blue Cat or Siberian or Norwegian Forest Cat or perhaps Main Raccoon Cat, Ragdoll Cat, Bengaline Cat, Nebelung or Korat Cat. Then I realized that look for a Nebelung or Korat Cat in our country doesn't make sense. From the others remained only male cats in the litters, so finally a nice black marble-like Maine Cat from CHS Gentle Lions, Karlovy Vary. Her name is Hatifa, but we call her quite naturally "KOCKO" ( = "CAT"), especially in connection with unwanted activities. Otherwise she can also be called (originally) "Tifa" and so on.
Hatifa is a quit big cat, in comparison to Čert she is unbelievably strong. I can image her hunting bigger rodents even rabbits. Maine Cat supposed to know how to catch fish and how to swim. Is not it funny? A swimming cat! Well every cat can once swim, but it will then probably have ruined all afternoon … So, we will see in our cottage in summer. She will have many opportunities to show us her swimming abilities there.
According to empirical evidence that Maine Coon Cat is a really practical creature from the perspective of care of her fur. I mean practical especially to the apartment. It is not that I would be so busy by combing her fur, I was used to previous shorthaired cat, I am not exaggerating. I mean care, which is Hatifa missing from all source of reasons - molted fur, combed out fur or by mistake pulled out fur when Hatifa unexpectedly moved. This fur is all of a sudden everywhere. Usually people cook "hairy dumplings" at most (=dumplings made from grated raw potatoes, Czech speciality). We baked even hairy Christmas candy at home.
For living and mainly as a observation post Tifa has chosen our refrigerator. She likes it very much thanks to its content. But above all from the height of the freezer - 1,80m - she is well informed about everything important what is going on around. I would like to specify, that the cat is not INSIDE of the freezer but on the top of it. She probably couldn't see from inside so well what is going in the kitchen.
It is a quite fun with Hatifa-like cats and its atavisms; before they drink water from a bowl, they like to beat with their paws to the water surface ("they break out the ice"), before they lay down on a soft place, they usually like to pitter-patter several minutes on one spot (you will not find it in any literature but perhaps they "trample the snow"). Simply the conditions, in which the breed had been evolving, have made them to be no fair-weather cats...
You can hear about Maine Cats that because of their personality there are more like dogs. Hatifa remembers very well who is the boss at home. That is why she respects the motto: "Whose dog food you eat, his song mew!". Compare to Čert who bit through a hand without any warning, Hatifa behaves very decently and nobly to us, bipeds. If she doesn't like something she usually shows it on just by distanced mewing. On the other hand she shows it more obviously to dogs.
Hatifa has one passion - tea bags forgotten in the kitchen, originally in one piece, but soon torn in small parts all over the kitchen. When we cannot connect to the Internet we have to check up if Hatifa has not try to eat one of the connector for a dinner. The periodicity of life rhythm is proved by the fact, that every evening when we go to the bed, Tifa starts to fight with our plants in the living room. No surprise, it stated in the literature that this kind of activity is typical for Maine Cats bred in an apartment. The worse fact is that the cat has settled the beginning of this activity to 11:25 p.m. of Middle European Time. It is alarming that the time spent by fighting with plants is being prolonged and the noise of claws scratching the wooden floor doesn't really help to fall asleep. I am not worried about the conditions of the plants even they do not look all right. It is still better then when Cert was hanging on the curtains in the height of humans' eyes to be able to observe the feeder with birds. Or when he used to swing on our fabric chandelier or when he rolled himself into a carpet. I will rather not remember a favorite amusement of Čert, peeing to my purse…
I was surprised when I visited CHS Gentle Lions, because the living room of Mrs. Lenka Kubová was fully covered with cockades and cups from cats exhibitions. It is of course a very successful CHS with a long tradition. Their Jasmine of Gentle Lions won the title of World Champion among medium-longhaired cats and she was judged as the cat with the nicest color of her fur in the World Cat Exhibition in Copenhagen in 2003.
