Cleopatra and Yeti Kaehn

Cleo is our older Maine Coon kitten, from the PacificMaine cattery. She was born on January 7, 2000; she’s a classic brown tabby with white, according to the technical classification. She gets Mara’s last name ’cos I’ll be taking it too when we get married. Yeti is the younger one, born on July 5, 2000; he’s a silver mackerel tabby.

Cleo photos of alternate from when she was only 13 weeks old (and already quite large); from six and a half months, where she’s the size of a full-grown normal housecat; and from 10 months. Yeti photos are all from when he was 4 months old, save for the two shots from Christmas Eve 2000. The cat tree is from the Angelical Cat company.

They live up fairly well to the expectations for the breed: Cleo is a little fluffy autocrat (okay, fourteen pounds at two years), very prim and elegant, and Yeti is a big friendly extra-fluffy goofball. Cleo started out fairly fluffy and grew a beautiful ruff; Yeti started out with a mostly short coat with long-haired black stripes and fluffed out into an amazing creature with a thick downy undercoat. (Yeti needs a lot more brushing when the season changes.) They both have very sweet dispositions, but prefer to hang out near us rather than on our laps. (It’s common for Mara and I to read or watch the TiVo with Yeti sitting between us on the sofa and Cleo lounging atop the cat tree.) In the winter, we let the house get very cold at night so they’ll come sleep on our ankles.