Cath­er­ine Creaney

When Coco came into our fam­ily, it was really for me; I’ve always been drawn to cats, prob­ably because I grew up with them. I had my first cat when I was six years old.

Daisy, our dog, was not at all happy when Coco arrived and Coco, who was about 12 weeks old at the time, was very scared of Daisy. Now that the dust has settled though, their rela­tion­ship is well-estab­lished; Coco loves Daisy and Daisy tol­er­ates Coco! They live hap­pily enough together, and often share the same bed together. Coco even seems to be learn­ing things from Daisy. Like what? Well, she knows how to sit on com­mand and yet I have only ever taught Daisy to do that.

Daisy, who’s just turned five, is part Cava­lier King Charles Span­iel and part Bichon Frise. Coco, mean­while, is a Maine Coon mix and that means that she is the dog of the cat world. Maine Coons are very large but although Coco hasn’t grown to be as big as I was expect­ing, she does have other Maine Coon traits – she is very needy and affec­tion­ate, for example, and is more than happy to lick you if you sit down beside her.

Maine Coons also love water – there’s a con­nec­tion with fish­er­men in their breed­ing his­tory – and Coco cer­tainly likes to play with the water in Daisy’s bowl, splash­ing into it with her paw and flick­ing it every­where.

When she first arrived as a kit­ten, she hid under the sofa for three days and hissed at us. I real­ised later that she must have been very frightened, but at the time I was actu­ally think­ing to myself, ‘What on earth have I got here – a feral cat?’

My hus­band was brought up with dogs but he loves Daisy and Coco equally. Coco, though, is def­in­itely my cat, while my nine-year-old daugh­ter Ada abso­lutely adores

Daisy. Def­in­itely her go-to pet, Daisy sleeps with Ada at night and even sits hap­pily on her knee when she’s on the swing in the garden. Daisy is such a lovely friendly dog and a real people per­son, and she’s turned out to be a great com­pan­ion for Ada. Though she was a chewer when she was a pup and des­troyed loads of Ada’s toys; she’s also a very noisy dog – she cer­tainly has a good voice on her!

Have I ever painted either of them? Well, I have done draw­ings of Daisy, and some of Daisy with my daugh­ter. Daisy also loves hav­ing her pho­to­graph taken; she has one of those par­tic­u­lar looks – it’s like she’s a dog from some earlier time, with a dis­tinct­ive olden-days appear­ance about her. As for Coco, I haven’t painted her yet but I will. She has such a majestic bear­ing and expres­sion, so a paint­ing is def­in­itely in the pipeline.

Really, the two of them are incred­ibly beau­ti­ful anim­als, and yet they come with very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­it­ies – Coco has a calm and relax­ing pres­ence while Daisy is so noisy and abso­lutely full-on.

Our house feels like a home with Daisy and Coco there; for me it’s never a proper home without the pit­ter­p­at­ter of animal feet. Daisy and Coco are my two furry daugh­ters and they have com­pleted our fam­ily!

As told to Roslyn Dee