This is Zarniwoop: Multiple kilos of pure feline savant-idiocy – possibly the most human-centred cat I've ever known, and the most prodigious climber and leaper – this cat has his own personal gravity control: he'll fire himself into the air on a ballistic trajectory then, at apogee, he simply switches off gravity so that he can hang around for a while to adjust re-entry parameters, fine-tune his landing zone and then simply drop in, sans fuss, sans bother. His favourite trick is to accelerate hard along the hall, through the open door of my office, launching himself at me from the threshold, about 3m from my chair: I'm then confronted with the site of an incoming giant economy-size Maine Coon, travelling at about eye height and at 30kph or thereabouts. There is only one thing to do: stay absolutely still – I don't even feel him land on me, save for the sudden dampness as my nose gets washed in greeting.
]]>Much of the research for this has been carried out online. Wherever possible, demonstrably trustworthy and hopefully authoritative sources have been used: Journals such as Science, Nature and the sites of insitutions such as the Smithsonian. In other cases, and especially where references are to specimen or out-of-print sources, I've tried to make sure that corroboratory information is available from multiple sources, without their appearing to be direct copies of each other. Where Wikipedia contains a useful reference, I've tended to provide that here – as a collaboratively edited source, outlandish or inaccurate references tend to be edited out very quickly.
]]> Illustrations:All modern Maine Coon photographs are by the author, and of his cats.