Our First Maine Coon and the Unexpected Journey That Led Us Here

Hi! My name is Raylee, Cat’s older sister, and while I am now married and out of the house, I’m still close to my family and my furry siblings. Growing up we have always had at least two cats in our house, and I can’t imagine it any other way, but we didn’t always have Maine Coons! That love started back when we lived in Kentucky, on a crisp fall afternoon. We were all out at a fall festival when a lady approached us with a little kitten. She had found this wee babe under a truck and scooped him up, but she couldn’t keep him, so we took him and named him Autumn. Autumn was one of the best family cats we ever had, he grew to be large and cuddly, and he absolutely loved us kids.

Every night was a competition to get him to sleep in our bed and keep us company as we drifted off to sleep. In retrospect, he put up with a lot! He let me and my sister dress him up for fashion shows and let us try to train him to jump through hoops or perch on our shoulders. But time with Autumn was short, only maybe a couple of years. He was an adventurer at heart, and we couldn’t keep him inside. He passed away and we found ourselves deeply missing our friend.

There was a silence in our home without him. We found ourselves searching for the characteristics we had loved so much about him, his playful nature, cuddly demeanor, and laid-back attitude. What we were led back to was Maine Coons. We began to suspect he was part Maine Coon, but the day we walked into a breeders house we knew. That was where we got Sunny, our current American Maine Coon, and while he is unique and in no way able to replace our Autumn, he has all the same mannerisms and behaviors and has made himself the king of our home. Sunny has been with us for almost 13 years now and I've never met a creature that didn’t get along with him, and I see his mannerisms in all of the Coons in the cattery.

And that’s really how this whole thing began. Autumn may have been a surprise, but he showed us just how much love a cat could bring into a home. That longing for his big-hearted energy, for that gentle giant who could keep up with our chaos and curl up with us at the end of the day, is what led us to Maine Coons—and ultimately, to breeding them ourselves. We wanted others to feel what we felt: the joy, the comfort, the playful companionship of a cat that feels more like a family member than a pet. Our cattery was born from that wish, one big purr at a time.