Questions you may be asking about this photo:
- Are those potatoes?
- What’s that black thing behind them?
- How did they get there?
- Did you cut that hole yourself?

Answers: Yes, those are potatoes. Ever since Kanoko arrived, I’ve been mysteriously losing potatoes. Since it was only one or two at a time, I figured that I was just miscounting them and had forgotten how many I’d actually eaten. But then, a few days ago, five went missing all at once, and I noticed a rank stench coming from the corner in my kitchen where I’d kept the potatoes. The familiar smell of… rotting potatoes. Looking behind the kitchen, which had been set up amateurishly by the previous owners (the main reason I got my apartment for such a low price), I noticed two things:
1. There is a space behind the lower cupboards that’s just big enough for a kitten to get through from the open area beneath them.
2. There is also a space beneath the particle-board bottoms, just high enough for kitten paws and… potatoes.
The two spaces were not big enough for me to be able to fish around with a pole for the potatoes.

Since the kitchen is indeed mediocre, and I plan to replace it eventually, I started to attempt ripping out the particle board bottom. True to inexperienced builder form, however, it had been put together so chaotically that there was no way I could pull it out cleanly and easily. And so I started to saw. I stopped after an hour, realizing it was going to take more than a couple cuts, and decided to wait until this weekend.

Today I finally managed to hack my way through the particle board and create a hand-sized hole, having to make several cuts due to the nearly-impracticable angle in the small space available. The first potato was visible as soon as I finished ripping out the last chunk of particle board. Ten more potatoes — for a total of eleven in all — were nearby. That black thing behind them? A rotting wooden spatula, shown here in a larger view of the area beneath the cupboards, so you can see what I was dealing with.

A story in three photos:

    

As just another Joe(anna) who had her own business (but which was actually mine, and I know enough about finances to know the difference between “earnings” and “profit”), I spent some of my hard-earned euros on a big arbre à chats — cat tree. This meant a bit of DIY. For anyone else interested in putting together a cat tree/scratching post:

1. Identify all the parts and organize them so you’ll know which is which more quickly. For instance, this tree has different-length posts, so I laid them out from longest to shortest.
2. Start with the base.
3. Build up gradually. The perch attached to the cat house/box on my tree had a bracket on it that was supposed to bolt to the box, but its screws had ripped out. Luckily I’m Anna the Handywoman! and have a wide variety of screws around, so was able to reattach it, though slightly off from its original position (the original holes were useless).
4. At this point, since you have a cat, you will probably have to take into account the unpredictable addition of extra weight onto various parts of the tree, in the form of a pouncing, rapidly-moving furball. Keep a strong hold of the tree during this delicate period. Finish with the top perch.
5. All done, kitten included!

I found this particular cat tree in several places, but got it from ZooPlus since it was cheapest. (Good-quality cat trees and scratching posts are expensive…!) It’s called Alicante, and is part of the tall models on their French site. On their US site, here’s the Alicante, where it’s among their medium cat trees. I liked this one since it seemed stable (which it is indeed), was tall but slim enough for my smaller-sized apartment, had several platforms, and came in a decent color. It was hard to choose though, there are so many neat-looking cat trees!

Maine Coons love water, as every site about them seems to point out. Kanoko has always dunked his paws in his water bowl, but Malo did the same — the transparent water makes it hard for cats to see just where the surface is, so they’ll often daintily feel for it before drinking. But since Kanoko has grown large and strong enough to jump onto countertops, it’s become clear that his love of water goes much further. He’s even put himself in the sink with the faucet running over him, and he loves it! When I wash the dishes he’ll play with the water, and then snorfle from the faucet during the rinse.

Kanoko turns four and a half months old about now. Here he posed for the camera this morning, and I photographed him blissfully scratching a yucca stump a bit later. Originally I’d planned to pull out the big yucca, but Kanoko loves its stumps so much that I’ve kept it. It’s now regrowing leaves from the tops of the stumps.

Since Malo passed away only two months ago, I still remember how big he was, and can hardly believe that Kanoko has nearly reached Malo’s size at such a young age. Kanoko’s face has really filled out, his whiskers (chopped off by the people who abandoned him) are nice and long now, and his tail is beautiful. He certainly does look very “Maine Coon”. His paws still seem to be growing more quickly than the rest of him! (There’s a photoset of Kanoko that shows his development since my kind neighbor asked if I’d take care of him two months ago.)

There are also pictures of the bougainvillea and other plants on my terrace, including a baby rose plant that surprised me when I found it this morning. My cyclamen are looking to be beautiful again this year, and my lemon tree has been blooming up a storm lately: lots of lemons to come!

As for the crazy neighbor who threatened to kill Kanoko, all has been well since I went to the police, and put up the finer-grade wire on my terrace. I later gave the police report to people in her building, who spoke with their building management about it — it’s far from being the first report that’s been filed against her. Ever since, I’ve made a point of using my terrace normally and ignoring her whenever she came out. She’s stopped going outside very often and no longer bothers trying to scream at me (she never talked normally, only screamed — it’s not an exaggeration that we call her “crazy”, it truly seems that she is mentally ill, which is sad). So Kanoko is fine, I’m fine, and it’s wonderful to have such a quiet terrace.

This is truly a photo that speaks for itself.

These are pots of grass I planted for Kanoko — real wheat seeds I found in the seed for sprouts section of an organic grocery market here (Diététique Malausséna). This way I have a big bag of seeds that I can replant as often as needed. Kanoko loves his pots of grass: he’ll sit on them and enjoy himself.

Today I got Kanoko a harness, and am delighted — he understood it wasn’t a toy after just two “no”s when he tried playing with the lead, and then trotted around the apartment building hallway without a problem. As soon as he’s less wary of the hallway we’ll venture further. Malo abhorred the harness I tried on him as a kitten… even after several patient, gentle tries he would wail and fight it so energetically that I could never get the lead on. It’s great that Kanoko seems to accept a harness! I would love to walk him on weekends.

What with Kanoko’s kittenish penchant for pouncing on my toes at 4am and dashing around the apartment, another scratching post seemed to be in order. Luckily I found a fun one on sale, that’s designed like a pineapple. I hoped Kanoko would like it. At first he only went in the hole, but a bit later he’d hopped up top. Then he realized that the balls made tantalizing sounds when they were batted, and that he could propulse himself in circles around the post while swatting!

This photo is my favorite of the bunch, for Kanoko’s eminently feline expression. Plus you can see how enormous his (adorable) paws are, and the cute ear tufts.

I’ve let Kanoko onto my patio every morning and evening, under supervision until he’s grown a bit bigger. The cat door is lockable, so he won’t get into mischief during the day while I’m at work. Kittens have a real flair for getting into situations you didn’t imagine until seeing them perform with your own eyes. I hereby submit the following evidence:
- Kitten in an aerial position
- Proof of height attained by kitten as related to previous submission

Kanoko is a wonderful kitten: intelligent, well-behaved and sweet. As shown by the photos, he figured out how to climb up, and also how to get back down — I didn’t help him. (I did that on purpose, so he’d become uninterested in climbing. It worked; he only climbed twice and then stopped, playing elsewhere for an hour.) And he knows what “no” means and listens! After just four days he’d learned that there was no point in trying to get on the table when I eat, for instance. He doesn’t scratch me or furniture, since he has plenty of opportunities for play, with toys I use (left over from Malo), a scratching post (gift from the neighbor who gave me Kanoko, since it’s one her adult cat dislikes), and feathers gathered from the patio. I plan on getting a harness soon and familiarizing him with it so that when he’s older, I can walk him to a big park that’s only two blocks away. Despite months of regular, gentle attempts while a kitten, Malo never got used to a harness, but apparently Maine Coons do well with them.

A quick update since Kanoko and I were able to visit the vet this afternoon — I’d nearly forgotten that my vet is open on weekends, it’s so rare in France. Kanoko had no microchip, and so the vet happily told me he’s now mine, and Kanoko got his first round of vaccines. As a big fan of Maine Coon cats, the vet also confirmed that Kanoko definitely has Maine Coon in him! Without a pedigree it’s completely unofficial, of course, but it’s nice to know. The vet told me that Kanoko is two and a half months old, so he would have been born sometime in mid-May.

I can hardly describe how happy I am, mainly for my new kitty. It’s wonderful to be able to rescue pitchouns, and even better when it’s possible for them to suffer from it as little as possible. (Animals can be deeply affected by abandonment.) Kanoko is in very good health and has had his first vaccines right on time. I won’t be putting a microchip in him, mainly because the ID tattoos here give the immediate visual information that a cat belongs to someone, whereas a microchip is invisible. He’ll get his ID once he’s neutered in about a year.

A second sad-but-happy story walked in to the vet’s while I was waiting. A three-month-old black kitten with a white chest and white paws had been found yesterday by a family who had barely heard it meowing in a trash can… tied up in a plastic trash bag… in Monaco. Its whiskers had been cut off, like Kanoko’s. It’s such a horrific mix of disgust, sorrow, anger and helplessness that you feel with stories like that, because you know that for every kitten, cat, puppy, dog, etc. miraculously found, many others aren’t.

Here’s a photo of the little one this afternoon, as he laid down for a nap by the window, which was Malo’s favorite spot too. (A little blurry because I used a slow shutter speed to avoid the flash, and didn’t use a tripod.) This spot on the table is great for watching and listening to the goings-on outside. “Kanoko” means “fawn” in Japanese, and in fabric dyeing, is used to refer to kanoko shibori, of which this obi of mine is an example. I thought it was a great name for the kitten, since he looks so like a furry fawn.

Kanoko is probably a Maine Coon. I do have to say that I’ve contacted a local Maine Coon breeder to double-check whether Kanoko’s original owners can be found, though I doubt it. Kittens are only supposed to be sold/adopted once they’re three months old minimum, and Kanoko doesn’t seem to be more than two months old (he only weighs 1.2kg). It is a known habit (grrrr) for animals young and old to be abandoned this time of year, since it’s when the French go on their month-long vacations… and some would rather dump their animal than bother to pay for a pet sitter. Many of the people do it half-heartedly, if that descriptor can be used (grrrr again), leaving them leashed to a tree (I stopped counting the abandoned dogs I saw tied to trees alongside country roads years ago, it’s f@%king infuriating — they were dead, that’s how I’m sure they’d been abandoned) or inside an apartment building entrance, which is where Kanoko was found wandering. As I wrote yesterday, no one in that building or others nearby claimed him. He may also have a microchip, but again, at his young age that would really surprise me; we’ll check at the vet.

I still miss Malo terribly. I’ve had several pets in my life, and so am dealing with the paradoxical and sometimes conflicting emotions all right, since experience has taught me that indeed, a beloved animal always keeps a unique and special place in your heart. There’s no such thing as a replacement, and each newcomer is a true individual.

If Kanoko is indeed Maine Coon, I’m going to have a very big, playful, affectionate furball on my hands in two years!