Where are the Maine Coons?

We, in the West, sometimes forget that purebred cats are not found in all parts of the world. The idea of breeding purebred cats is essentially a western concept starting in England in the late 1800s. Although there is the difficult concept of what I call "de facto"purebred cats that have evolved naturally. For example the Japanese bobtail was around hundreds of years before it was a cat association recognised cat breed. The Bahraini Dilmun is a current de facto purebred cat but officially a moggie.

Anyway, what of the Maine Coon? America is of course the number one Maine Coon territory as it is where the cat breed started. This is an American cat. Then we have Europe. Not all parts of Europe will have the same numbers of Maine Coon, far from it. The old European countries will have a good number of Maine Coons, such as England, France and Germany. European countries such as Romania, shouldn't even be in Europe! Sorry that is not politically correct. There won't be many Maine Coons in Romania and the other eastern European countries that have recently joined the EU. There will be more in the Russian satellite countries such as Estonia because Russia has a history of cat breeding.

For that reason you will find Maine Coons in Russia too. They have a pretty active cat fancy in Russia.  And the same goes for Scandinavia.

South America is a growing force in the world economy and where there is money there are purebred cats and Maine Coons. It is about economics mainly.

The people of poorer countries are not really interested in purebred cats. They are a luxury, something that you add to your personal world after you have got the basics out of the way first, like survival.

So the African continent will be a Maine Coon desert except perhaps for South Africa and the north African countries such as Egypt and Morocco. The King of Morocco keeps an F1 Savannah cat supplied by A1 Savannahs incidentally. Egypt has few Maine Coons. I am guessing but they are not that concerned with keeping domestic cats.

Moving east, countries such as the rich oil states will have the odd Maine Coon because they are rich but a barrier in places such as Saudi Arabia is the idea of keeping a domestic cat. It is not a part of the culture to the extent that it is in America or Europe.

When we move further east to places such as India, Myanmar, and China there are few Maine Coons if any. Persians are the most popular purebred cat in India but they are unregistered so not formal Persians. China is a domestic cat ghetto where the average moggie gets a hard a life. There may be a few Maine Coons in China with the corrupt rich.

Australia is like the West so you will find a similar state of play - plenty of Maine Coons. Japan too has a pretty active cat fancy so there are breeders there and where there are breeders there are Maine Coons.

I forgot central America. These countries are relatively poor economically compared to say North America, so once again purebred cats in general will be scarce. People in these countries will have to import from abroad - Europe and America. Many breeders do ship internationally but there are some risks in doing that.