The cat I adopted October 1 seems to be mostly Maine Coon. It has been a lesson that such a big animal can still be in her kittenhood. She has little idea of her size.

I call her Matilda. She's a smoky silver-gray topside, but white inside her ears & on her tummy & the underside of her tail. No real stripes except around her face. Her eyes are much rounder & close-set than most cats I have seen, and they're kind of a copper-green (hazel?). Her paws are gigantic.

So I'm wondering how big she may get. She already eats a heck of a lot more than my petite & dainty little Ingrid did. The one part of her that's actually smaller than Ingrid is her head, and it was when I noticed that she still has her baby teeth that I began to realize she's still very young.

She scoots around horizontally much more than she jumps; she tends to grab things with both of her front paws (usually without using her claws); she rolls around and stretches her legs everywhere and gets into some hilarious positions; she can meow if she really wants to (kind of a precious crying if she's under stress), but she generally doesn't talk at all & occasionally just chirps instead. She will tolerate getting picked up but she'd really rather not be held. All these seem to be Maine Coon traits.

So I'm kind of wondering what I have gotten into. It was just super lonely at my house after Ingrid died, and I didn't want to make the mistake of getting another cat too soon, or one that I'd expect to be like Ingrid. Well, aside from liking her tummy rubbed, Matilda definitely doesn't have much of anything in common with Ingrid!