The extreme Maine Coon face

This is an example of extreme breeding. This is a Maine Coon but this cat is an extreme and rare example of this breed. This is not the way they look normally. This face is almost like an aggressive robot with the piercing eyes and the huge muzzle.  Or like a lion's head. The head looks enormous and very heavy. It looks unreal. But it also looks very impressive. And purchasers like impressive-looking domestic cats. But this not the face of a Maine Coon that wins cat show competitions as it does not fit the breed standard as accurately as the more moderate winners (see below). Click here for more on the kind of MC which wins at shows.

Maine Coon selectively breed to have an extreme face. Image in the public domain.

And the Maine Coon is meant to be a large cat, the largest domestic cat breed and therefore if a breeder is going to breed to extreme this is the kind of direction they will go in where the emphasis is large, heavy and bulky. This is a very well-known photograph and understandably so because you just don't see domestic cats looking like this. I think, though, that some people might get the misapprehension that this is the way all Maine Coon cats look and it's not the case.

Winner at cat shows. More moderate and balanced. Photo: Channan.

This is the original image. I have made improvements to it above.

These sorts of cats normally come from Russia (i.e. are bred in Russia) where they like their fancy domestic cats and where there are many breeders. I think sometimes people forget that. There is quite a healthy cat fancy in Russia. And they breed cats under a different cat association, the World Cat Federation which clearly allows this sort of extreme breeding.

Some commenters have completely misunderstood this page. I am saying that there are very competent Maine Coon breeders in Russia who tend to bred their cats to extreme in size and appearance. That's all I am saying.