Kiko & MiuMiu

Kiko and MiuMiu were transferred from the five Road Shelter to the Cat Sanctuary in March of this year.   They’re both 13-year-old females who were considered unadoptable after some time at Five Road, but that’s about where their similarity ends.

While MiuMiu is a beautiful “chinchilla” coloured Persian girl, Kiko is just a plain brown tabby.  
MiuMiu was surrendered  because someone in her household had developed an allergy to cat fur.   Kiko was a stray, trapped on River Road.   She’d  been spayed and tattooed so must have been part of someone’s life at one time but no one came to claim her.

Apparently, “miumiu” means “obedient” in Japanese and although no one really expects obedience from a cat (do we?), pretty little MiuMiu hasn’t caused any problems either.  Like many of the other cats in the Moore trailer, she can show a bit of ‘cattitude’ if petted too long or too vigorously but, from all reports, she’s usually a polite and nice cat.

 On the other hand, “nice” is not a word one would ever use to describe Kiko’s behaviour.  “Nasty”  more readily springs to mind for her. 

Although she’s definitely not feral or semi-feral, something in her past has made Kiko wary enough of people to strike out at a friendly hand rather than welcome it.  She sometimes seems to have a soft moment or two when she meows in a friendly and almost welcoming manner but that quickly changes to a growl and a hiss when one tries to reach out to pet her.  It’s impossible to know if her negative attitude is the result or the cause of her being homeless before being trapped and brought to RAPS. If only she could tell us what happened and  be made to understand that all she’ll ever get from now on with us is love!  

But  there’s new hope for a change in Kiko’s relationship with people!  Recently, she seems to have taken a shine to Chris, one of the kitty comforters, and will leave her safety zone, rub against his legs and even insist that he pet her!  I confess that I suspected it was a case of mistaken kitty identity when I first heard of this miraculous show of friendliness from Kiko but I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and took the photos to prove it!  Leslie reports a similar positive interaction with Kiko, which just goes to show that there’s a nice kitty just waiting to re-emerge from that gruff exterior. 

Kiko will never be the beauty queen that MiuMiu is but no one’s giving up on her becoming a nice, normal cat again!  We know that beauty is, after all, only fur-deep.  

Blog & pictures by Marianne Moore