Imagine that a cute, fluffy lump is placed on your chest… weighing 12.5 kg! The owner of this cat does not need to imagine it.
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March 2020, during the confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic. Yulia Minina, 34, from Stari Oskol, in the Belgorod region (495 km from Moscow), a mother of two girls, decided together with her husband and children to get a kitten to have more fun at home.
“We’ve never had a cat. We were browsing the ads for a nearby cattery and happened to see a little white kitten. Everyone else seemed normal and he was the only one of the litter at the time. I fell in love right away,” recalls Yulia.
When she went to pick it up she was disappointed as it was much prettier in the photo.
“No one thought that such an ugly duckling would turn into a white mountain of fur,” Minina reasoned.
The children chose the cat’s playful name, Kefir. At first he was very thin, but at four or five months he was already eating everything and constantly playing with his owners.
By nine months, the ear tassels and tail had doubled in size, and by a year, Kefir had tripled in size. She is now one year and 10 months old and weighs 12.5 kg.
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“He has the character of a human. He is very intelligent. He even comes to the table with us when we have dinner, he has his own chair, so he keeps us company”, says Minina about her character.
Maine Coons rarely meow, so only sometimes “quietly coo.”
“Of habits too: sleep on my chest. When I was a kitten it was normal. But now, when he suddenly lies on my chest at night… well, I have to chase him away,” explained the owner.
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Yulia herself does not understand the reason for her cat’s popularity: she took two photos of him for her Instagram profile, and the photos quickly became viral in Russian and foreign media and forums, including Reddit. Kefir’s photo garnered 18,000 likes and dozens of comments on Reddit. Some suggested the cat’s owner was deliberately trying to make him look bigger with glasses and optical illusion, while others pondered his frowning face.
“No, that’s a Siberian lynx. He feeds on unworthy people and only drinks vodka”, “And he does not seem satisfied”, they wrote in the comments.
According to Yulia, most of Kefir’s Russian and foreign fans do not believe the cat is real and ask if it is photoshopped.
“Also a lot of people want to buy Kefir, but that’s horrible. He is already a member of the family. We will never deliver it, we will only take more photos of it,” Minina said.
READ MORE: Eight cat breeds originating in Russia
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