- Joined
- Aug 20, 2019
- Messages
- 7
- Purraise
- 19
So when I was 14, my family got two kittens from a classmate of mine whose family had probably around half a dozen adult cats, none of whom were fixed...We got a brother and sister, and when we first got them they were the same size, and for the first month or two we had them I was actually the only person in the house who could reliably tell them apart from a distance because they both had a lot of pale gray coloring. However, the female is actually a dilute tortie (they're both tabbies as well), but more significantly, before long she started growing much faster and bigger than her brother. They'll be 8 this winter, and while the male is 11 pounds, she is now around 16 pounds!
A lot of people think she's chubby in pictures or from a distance, but the truth is she's actually just both very long-bodied and also barrel-chested; basically, she looks very chunky but I can easily feel her ribs and she actually looks healthily thin when she's in motion or stretched out, but her body is around 22" long and when she sits she kind of scrunches up like an accordion, which pushes her middle out and looks ridiculous. Her back legs are also so much longer than her front ones that I think it puts some pressure on her spine, because it literally dips in the middle when she's standing and she likes to sit in ways that lower her back end, like this:
Because of the sheer number of un-spayed/neutered cats in the house they were born in, and the ridiculous size difference between her and her brother, I've actually suspected for awhile that they have different dads. She's short haired as you can see, but in person her fur is very dense and fluffy and almost woolly-feeling. No matter how much we brush her, we can always remove a ridiculous amount of loose fur which she also leaves all over the furniture. Her brother's coat, by comparison, is very smooth and sleek and he barely sheds fur even when we brush him. She's also ridiculously vocal and seems so intelligent it sometimes gives me the heebie-jeebies. She's basically a comedian as well, and if I'm visibly upset or crying in front of her she will start doing over-the-top goofy things and then look over at me very pointedly to make sure I'm laughing.
I live in Maine, and kind of suspect she has at least a tiny bit of Maine Coon in her because of her size and fluffiness. In general I wouldn't be quick to think a random cat had any purebred genetics, but there are so many Maine Coons in my area anyway that it's usually a pretty fair guess if a cat is especially huge. She also actually took much longer than her brother to reach her adult size; she was probably around 12 pounds at the end of her first year but continued to gain size slowly for another couple years. She's a very awkward looking cat with a super quirky personality, but that's what I love so much about her!
(Also, bonus pic: she has this funny little marking under her chin that I've never seen on any other cat, we call it her "chin strap" and my brother says it's to "hold on all that cute." It's her favorite place for scratches!)
A lot of people think she's chubby in pictures or from a distance, but the truth is she's actually just both very long-bodied and also barrel-chested; basically, she looks very chunky but I can easily feel her ribs and she actually looks healthily thin when she's in motion or stretched out, but her body is around 22" long and when she sits she kind of scrunches up like an accordion, which pushes her middle out and looks ridiculous. Her back legs are also so much longer than her front ones that I think it puts some pressure on her spine, because it literally dips in the middle when she's standing and she likes to sit in ways that lower her back end, like this:
Because of the sheer number of un-spayed/neutered cats in the house they were born in, and the ridiculous size difference between her and her brother, I've actually suspected for awhile that they have different dads. She's short haired as you can see, but in person her fur is very dense and fluffy and almost woolly-feeling. No matter how much we brush her, we can always remove a ridiculous amount of loose fur which she also leaves all over the furniture. Her brother's coat, by comparison, is very smooth and sleek and he barely sheds fur even when we brush him. She's also ridiculously vocal and seems so intelligent it sometimes gives me the heebie-jeebies. She's basically a comedian as well, and if I'm visibly upset or crying in front of her she will start doing over-the-top goofy things and then look over at me very pointedly to make sure I'm laughing.
I live in Maine, and kind of suspect she has at least a tiny bit of Maine Coon in her because of her size and fluffiness. In general I wouldn't be quick to think a random cat had any purebred genetics, but there are so many Maine Coons in my area anyway that it's usually a pretty fair guess if a cat is especially huge. She also actually took much longer than her brother to reach her adult size; she was probably around 12 pounds at the end of her first year but continued to gain size slowly for another couple years. She's a very awkward looking cat with a super quirky personality, but that's what I love so much about her!
(Also, bonus pic: she has this funny little marking under her chin that I've never seen on any other cat, we call it her "chin strap" and my brother says it's to "hold on all that cute." It's her favorite place for scratches!)
