Are Maine Coon cats friendly? Great picture of a friendly Maine Coon

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Asking whether a Maine Coon cat is friendly is like asking whether the dog your father lives is friendly or the cat that your mother lives with is friendly. The answer, yes, 99% of the time otherwise cat and dog domestication wouldn't work. If Maine Coon cats were generally unfriendly there would be none in existence. 

Friendly Maine Coon 'Rex' loves to cuddle in the morning
Friendly Maine Coon 'Rex' loves to cuddle in the morning. Photo: Reddit.

It would be a cat breed that failed at the starting gate. But that would never have happened because you can make Maine Coon cats friendly by treating Maine Coon kittens, until they are seven weeks of age, really nicely and making sure that they get used to people during that very tender and important time of their lives. If cats get used to people they are friendly towards them. Domestic cats become part of the human family and regard themselves as family members.

If you do that i.e. socialise cats, all will be well and the Maine Coon cat created by a cat breeder will be friendly. If that stage is missed out they won't be quite so friendly even if they become used to people and other animals later on in their life. So Maine Coon cats are friendly because every time one is created - and they are indeed 'artificially' created because they wouldn't exist without cat breeders - the person who created them makes sure that they are friendly.

I suppose, if a person owned a female and a male Maine Coon cat and had acquired them informally and let them breed without any intervention, and if the cats mated and created offspring in a barn on a farm then those little Maine Coons would not be friendly until there were fully socialised.

I've painted a fictional picture because this sort of thing never happens or hardly ever happens. Friendliness in essence means that the cat is socialised. That's why feral cats are unfriendly. Feral cats are not deliberately unfriendly, they are simply frightened of people. And they are frightened of people because they aren't socialised to them. This means they aren't used to them and tare in fear of them. It's a natural reaction for survival to be defensively aggressive.

So the whole topic that I'm discussing turns on socialisation. That aspect of a domestic cat upbringing is far more important than the character that they are born with (inhereted character). Of course domestic cats of all kinds are individuals and therefore some Maine Coon cats will be more friendly than others. There's no doubt about that. However, within a natural range of friendliness even the most inherently reticent Maine Coon will be perfectly adequate as a cat companion provided they are fully socialised.

I hope that that answers the question. I have waffled quite a lot in order to fill the page because in essence the answer is straightforward.

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