Please meet our new kitten, Ms. Smoky Jones*, an 8 week old Maine Coon** mix, last of a litter from a home in Lower Sackville, NS***.

I wasn’t sure what to name her until the moment I got her home, sniffed her, smelled the cigarette smoke of her previous home on her fur, and said out loud, “You’re smoky!” The name fit. We added “Jones” to indicate succession from our previous cat, the late Companion Kitten Martha Jones.

Amelia is, of course, understandably apprehensive:

More photos of Smoky here, and of course the relevant Flickr tag.

* No relation to the country music group Smokey Jones and the Three Dollar Pistols or the elephant trainer Smokey Jones.

** Not entirely sure she’s actually got any Maine Coon in her as the breed is tightly controlled, and there are sellers who will just call any domestic longhair a Maine Coon, out of ignorance or to boost sales -— but it’s not uncommon in this region, near Maine, for there to be descendants of older feral Maine Coons, and Smoky definitely shows some signs of the breed with her shaggy coat, bushy tail, long ears, chirpy vocalizations, and strong snout. Real Maine Coon mix or no, she is a pretty kitty and a cute floof.

*** I know we should really adopt rescue, but demand for rescues has been overwhelming, with kittens hard to get lately, so I admit with some shame that we purchased Smoky from a Kijiji seller. This meant she came unspayed with just one vaccination; we will have to bring her to the vet for further feline initialization tasks, including spaying and additional boosters.