Rescue me: My Beautiful Maine Coon, Merlin

    

I can watch this “Maine Coon: Gentle Giant” video every day and smile every single time, because it reminds me of the coolest cat I ever knew (also because I love the Nick Drake song, River Man, which is sung by someone else here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmnTzrh6xhQ

In January 2013 I wrote:

I’m a dog person, not a cat person. Dogs are devoted, eager to please, companionable and trainable. They come when you call. Cats? We all know the routine. So, I’m embarrassed at how much I came to love a cat. It’s like being in sixth grade again with classmates taunting “Ooh, you’re in love with MERLIN.”

I adopted Merlin from the pound in August 2011. Claire put me up to it. Poor Merlin, huge and anti-social, was squished into a little cage at the bottom of the stack, facing away from the other cats, and he’d been there for three months, looking ugly and mean in the eyes of everyone but me. One glance, and I was smitten. He cast a spell on me.

      Love that face!

Someone else had named him Merlin for the funny white beard that makes him look like the famed wizard, and I didn’t bother to change the name. I just paid the discounted adoption fee of $25 and sneaked him home, a “clearance” cat, if you will, in need of love and attention, which my husband said someone else should give him, NOT US, for we were absolutely not going to allow another cat in our home. Bobinksi, our first cat, firmly agreed, and did everything in his power to scare Merlin under the bed and into the top shelves of closets. Merlin is an amazing athlete, capable of leaping high with those long, Neanderthal-strong legs.

       

Poor Merlin just wanted to be left alone. He was not the aggressor here. Everyone but me saw him as a Darth Vader. I saw a clown:

  

For all his size and strength, he’s also a ballerina or a butterfly, not a bull in a china shop. He never tips over or breaks things, not even with a swish of his mighty tail. He’s a  hockey player too, a 15-pound Wayne Gretzky with fur, thundering across wood floors, batting a plastic lid around all by himself. He loves to play Attack the Stick poking out from under a door, or chase a string, or watch humans on the treadmill.

   

“It’s him or me,” Tim said, and Miles wanted a cat, so we packed up Merlin, and he thrived in Miles’s apartment.

Miles never tried to hold him, and Merlin was pleased to be so neglected. No other cats or dogs showed up.  He’d terrorize occupants of the bathroom by sliding a giant, tarantula-looking paw under the door. HILARIOUS, Merlin! Whenever I came to visit, Merlin would hide under the bed…the whole time I was there {{ sob! }} but he didn’t hide when Miles’s friends came over. He charmed Aubrey, who asked for custody of Merlin when Miles’s lease was up. No cats allowed in Miles’s next apartment.

Aubrey adopted more cats, which stressed Merlin out. Vicious rumors and scratched legs indicate that Merlin became little…hostile. I brought him home and confined him to our cabin, which worked out for two weeks, but then Merlin would cry and scratch at the door when it was time for me to leave and follow me back to the house. It broke my heart. Merlin had gotten his fill of solitary confinement. I let him outside to walk in the autumn leaves and eat grass, and he’d walk straight to the house and cry at the patio door to get in. How could I refuse him?

  

I brought him into the house one day while Tim was away and never sent him back to the cabin, but I did promise Tim I’d eventually find a permanent home for beautiful Merlin. Our neighbor dog Ted and our dear dying Bailey are gentle and nice, but Merlin hisses at them and goes into hiding. 

 

He does give in and eat dry cat food (Meow Mix, Little Friskies), but he prowls for fish, cheese or sausage. He opens doors and drawers  in search of canned salmon. Someone spoiled him in his previous life. He silently (harmlessly) opens thecorrect  door, stares at the salmon, turns his head and looks up at me with Pity Kitty eyes–a sweet, silent pathos that screams YES to me.

Much as I adore Merlin, Tim, Mariel, and Bobi are united and firm in their resolution: Merlin must go.

Merlin would do best  in a one-cat-only, one-person-only home. A widow, a lonely bachelor, would find a constant companion in him. He hates to be held and won’t sit in laps but he’ll follow you and watch you for hours. He loves oat grass. He’s playful. He’s beautiful, lion-like and majestic. I have squandered countless hours just staring at this creature. Maine Coon, the only cat breed native to America. Genetically it’s impossible, but they look like a mix of half raccoon, half cat. They’re enormous creatures with long hair, bred to survive Maine winters and to hunt mice. Merlin makes eye contact and looks more like a person than a cat, sometimes. I hate to let him go again. If someone does try to “rescue” him from me, I’ll make sure it’s to a forever home this time. 

             

 

Black Harley-biker Leather paws. Lion’s mane. Tufted ears. Why has no one begged me for this cat?

June 1, 2013, Merlin moved to a Victorian house in Illinois with a Harley biker named Keith. Go, Merlin! I MISS YOU but I’m happy you get to live the good life.

Thanks to RescueMe.com, Keith Gleason, who owned two Maine Coons in the past, drove five hours round trip to claim Merlin. My big, beautiful, 16-pound baby hid under the sofa and cried piteously at first but he warmed up to Keith much more quickly than expected. Keith has emailed photos showing Merlin cozy on a bed, gazing out a window, playing Goldilocks with all the chairs, exploring his new home with confidence instead of cowering in the closet. Finally, the little jungle prince is king of the forest. No more daily persecution from Bobinksi, our first cat. Thank you, Keith and wife Terry, for opening your home to Merlin, and to Jeff Gold for founding and maintaining Rescue Me!

Update, April 2014: I still miss Merlin. Still watch that you-tube video and just smile, and wish I’d filmed Merlin that way.