What does "breed standard" mean for the Maine Coon cat?

All purebred cats have breed standards. The cat associations such as the CFA and TICA in the USA and the GCCF in the UK, have breed standards for all their registered cats. The Maine Coon is no exception. The breed standard is quite a short document and it allows some discretion for those reading it and applying it.

A Maine Coon which complies with the CFA breed standard as he is a cat show winner. Image: Channan.

Click this for the CFA Maine Coon breed standard.

It is cat breeders and cat show judges who apply the breed standards. In essence, the breed standard is a document which sets out how the Maine Coon should look as decided on by the association administrators. But as mentioned, the document is not and probably cannot be too detailed or scientific. 

This means that it is open to a certain amount of elasticity in its interpretation. This may be deliberate or it may simply be because it's impossible to be very precise when it comes to the creation of a purebred cat. However, I think it could be more precise to eliminate extreme breeding which can lead to health issues.

The cat breeders need to follow its guidelines in order to know their objectives when they selectively breed a Maine Coon cat.

And the judges need to be able to measure what they see on the judging table against a certain standard which is the breed standard. And they can apply a score to the cat that they are judging as per the points allocated to each element of the anatomy. The GCCF don't call it a breed standard. They call it a 'standard of points'. A rather peculiar name if I may say so. But the point is made (sorry about the pun).

There will be some minor differences between the UK and USA breed standards. There are other cat associations with their own breed standards which will also vary slightly.

Because the breed standard is open to a certain amount of discretion in its interpretation, this has led to Maine Coon cats being bred to a very large size. I would suggest that these very large Maine Coon cats are bred to extreme i.e. at the extremity of the discretion allowed in the interpretation of the breed standard. The standard does not demand that MCs are huge.

Heavy-square muzzle of an extreme-bred very large MC. Image in public domain. This cat is doing a 'blep'.

For example, there are two major items of Maine Coon anatomy which distinguished this breed from all others namely the muzzle/chin and the lynx-tipped ears. And of course, they are large cats, the largest domestic cat breed.

RELATED: Is my cat a Maine Coon?

And so, the muzzle should be "visibly square" under the CFA breed standard. It should be "medium in length" and "blunt-ended when viewed in profile". You will see some extreme-bred Maine Coons with very large muzzles, which are very heavy and pronounced. They look unnatural. And I think when selective breeding creates a domestic cat which is unnatural in appearance, you have a problem. Sometimes they no longer look like domestic cats.

And also, for the Maine Coon cat, the ears should be "large, well-tufted, wide at base". In some Maine Coon cats you will see very large ears that are very erect with a lot of hair projecting out of the end of the ear flap. Once again this is arguably over-breeding to the point where the ears look unnatural. They look odd sometimes and this is where I think - and this is a personal view - the breed standard allows too much discretion and the cat breeders use this discretion to go too far in trying to win competitions and make cats which are outstanding in appearance.

The breed standards could prevent this extreme breeding if they were reworded. They could make the standard for the muzzle more precise and even provide measurements if they wanted to. But clearly the cat associations want to provide breeders with some leeway and publish a standard which amounts to a guideline as to how they should selectively breed their cats.