Woman regrets training her Maine Coon to play fetch (sort of)

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The world, now, understands that you can teach domestic cats to play fetch so never think that you can't train cats to do things that dogs do. Beware of what you might be getting into. 

That's because they can enjoy it so much sometimes that they want to do it at a time of their choosing which will often be in the middle of the night; a time when cats can be fairly active and certainly far more active than their human caregivers.

This is not Meatball but a fictional Maine Coon playing fetch in an image created by AI. Thanks AI (DALLE).

This is the problem described by Eve who said that she always wanted to live with a Maine Coon cat. She tried to find one at a shelter but it is near impossible for the obvious reason that there are very, very few Maine Coon cat owners who abandon their cat to a shelter.

She was told by her sister that Maine Coon cats need mental stimulation as they get bored easily. Comment: this would apply to any domestic cat by the way.

But in response to that advice she taught her Maine Coon to play fetch. She named him Meatball.


Meatball loves to play fetch. But it is difficult to video him because when he fetches the object he plays with it and wanders around before he brings it back. It's his favourite game which is why he plays it at 2 AM.

It seems that Meatball tells her that he wants to play fetch by dropping the object (a toy mouse called Mousie) on her face! That is the signal to start playing. And when he wants attention he uses his large, furry paws to grab her and/or prod her on the face.

Sometimes his claws are out and he purrs at the same time in anticipation. As you can imagine, the claws of a Maine Coon are larger than the claws of your average domestic cat.

To add to her amusing woes, Meatball likes to play with his water dish. This means that Mousie gets wet. So when he drops Mousie on her face it is particularly unpleasant. Comment: Maine Coon cats are known to be interested in their water dishes. They like to prod and poke it. No one has provided us with a really good explanation about this. 

Perhaps it is not just to do with a Maine Coon. And it isn't actually because domestic cats in general occasionally like to play with their water dishes. But it seems that the Maine Coon is particularly attracted to this pastime.

Despite these slight irritations she loves Meatball more than her life and he brings her an incredible amount of joy and happiness. She says that he is very smart and took no time to learn to play fetch.

She now has to teach him to enjoy playing fetch between the hours of 7 AM in the morning and 8 PM in the evening but is not sure that he wants to do that.

That is a reflection on the crepuscular nature of domestic cat behaviour which we all know about. Essentially, humans are out of step in terms of their circadian rhythms with domestic cats in general. It's one of those areas where humans have to adjust. Cats also adjust. They are very good at adapting to the human environment.

Full-time indoor cats are more likely to adjust to the human's circadian rhythm of sleeping at night and being active during the daytime than indoor/outdoor cats who retain a little more wildness in their nature.
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Please excuse the occasional typo due to preparing these articles at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I don't have a proof reader.

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