This isn’t an easy introduction to make on my blog and that’s embarrassing to me for some reason. I lost my beloved old lady Macavity last fall and I’ve waited to talk much about our new kitten for several reasons. Primarily, I didn’t want to feel like I was replacing my sidekick and shadow—and I’m not.

That’s because Quincy has a mind of his own and he does what he wants. He’s an Alpha cat. I guess that’s fitting though, because Macavity was too. I loved that about her. She bossed me around and was the most stubborn thing, but she was also very connected to me, and how I felt, and she seemed to really enjoy spending time with me.

Quincy is mysterious to me in ways that are very unlike Macavity. Half the time I think he’s just a pretty boy with his handsome Maine Coon looks, then the rest of the time I just can’t quite figure him out.

Although he’s very loving and incredibly sweet, he’s terribly aloof and truly has simple needs. I think that by far he has the most even temperament of any feline I’ve ever known, and according to my mother’s count, there have at least been several dozen cats in my life since I was a girl so I feel like he’s very special.

It’s not just his even temperament though, this cat is positive. He wakes up every morning and he’s happy, and excited to be alive. This might sound a bit odd, but I think his attitude has been rubbing off on the rest of us old grumps.

Each morning he greets all of us with his characteristic Maine Coon head butts, plenty of chirps, and he just seems so excited to communicate to all of us that he’s happy to see each of us.

He’s my husband’s cat (technically) so let me unpack the name for you.

Quincy: taken from the TV show Quincy, M.E. He thought it would make a great cat name.

Mercurio: I gave him this first surname in honor of Freddie Mercury. He’s one of my all-time favorite singers who also happened to be an incredible cat lover.

Carbone: This is because Quincy was a Christmas gift and in Italy you give lumps of candy coal (carbone) to children in their stockings. Quincy is our little sweet lump of coal.

I think that he’s expressive with his body in different ways than I’m accustomed to and this is also how he shows his Maine Coon DNA. Often, they’re described as clowns and he certainly has plenty of those moments too!

He rarely sleeps like a normal cat and often you find him with his belly up in the air. I guess this makes sense if your breed gets a bit warm with all that fur surrounded by blankets and other warm bodies.

Never have I seen such an affectionate black cat. He’s been attached to Maurice ever since he arrived although Maurice still thinks he’s crazy after 6 months of this treatment. After Macavity passed away, Maurice was sad, and it was clear that he missed harassing her, but she never liked him, even though he tried very hard to get close to her.

Enter Quincy stage right: he’s turned the tables on the old man. Maurice was always a sweetheart, and now he has another cat in his life that thinks the world of him. You’d think he’d appreciate it, but Maurice is a different kind of cat. He’s adjusting.

Whenever Maurice comes back inside after a little walk around the house Quincy greets him like he hasn’t seen him in a week. He gets head butts and nose kisses galore.

But we still don’t really know what Quincy is going to become. I’m introducing him now only because he started jumping off the roof, onto my Japanese maple, and into the garden this week. There is no holding back this little guy from the outdoors. (I shouldn’t say little either. He’s quite large for his age.) It’s also his desire to be with Maurice and I when we’re outside all day. He already punched a hold through one screen door with his head, and he’s body slammed and climbed the other so many times it was only a matter of time before he’d break it down to get outside to be with us.

So Quincy is the newest garden character, and I should add that he comes back inside when I do, and for the most part, he’s only just discovering things outdoors.

For the last few months we’d let him out of the upstairs window onto the roof of the back of the house. We discovered then that he liked to collect and hoard moss he’d picked off the roof himself. Some of this was brought in to us, some was hoarded under the bed with all of his toys.

Yes, he hoards his own toys and will pull them out on his own to play and then he’ll pull them back under the bed to his “den” or “lair”. I like to make Grendel jokes about this behavior because his turf under the bed seems like some secret and special place for him. It’s where he goes when he needs “space” and to be surrounded by all of his possessions and victims. He’s kind of methodical that way.

In closing—since I just posted this on social media—I think I should add that he’s become the Alpha cat at our end of the block and today I saw the bully cat run away from him. Quincy didn’t even do anything. There’s just something about him that other cats can sense. I’ve watched him this past week as all the other mean cats have run away from him. It’s been comical. He doesn’t even need to fight them, they just run.

I also felt my two older and wimpier cats relax as Quincy entered into their outdoor lives to save them from the tougher cats. Maurice went outside for most of the day today, and for a very long time this evening. Now that he’s my old kitty, I want him to be as happy as possible. I hate the idea of losing him, but he’s 15-years-old so you never know, but at least he’s got a little buddy who adores him and follows him everywhere.

Quincy is going to be Maurice’s friend ’til the end. I like knowing that Maurice has such a loyal and tough buddy. He deserves it, and I’ve got to say thanks to my niece and her random friend who had that one last kitten no one wanted—because he was just right for us. He’s made this little cat family whole again.