Your Maine Coon Guide

  Royal Mail feature a Maine Coon cat and other breeds. Image: Royal Mail For international readers, the UK's Royal Mail is the country's postal service.  They have been in existence since 1516 believe it or not! Amazing. They have the royal warrant. They have introduced some new stamps featuring purebred cats including the Maine Coon and: Bengal, Siamese, British Shorthair, a random-bred tabby cat, a ginger tabby cat and a black-and-white random bred cat as well. A nice selection. I just noticed that there's actually a stamp featuring a tabby-and-white random-bred cat as well. In all there are 8 different stamps. As you can see the Maine Coon is a grey tabby and white; probably the best coat for this breed whose origins are in the barns of Maine, USA hundreds of years ago. You can buy the stamps as a collector item in a range of formats including as sheets of both first and second class stamps in a presentation pack. You can also buy postcards with the stamps on them with ...

We know that the Maine Coon is predisposed to polydactyly. The Maine Coon cat breed is famous for cats having more than the usual number of toes. In fact, it wasn't until very recently that the polydactyl Maine Coon was accepted by The International Cat Association (TICA). Polydactyl Maine Coons are not accepted by the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) as at the date of this post. Polydactyl MC. Image in public domain. RELATED:  Polydactylism was deliberately bred out of the Maine Coon . A study report on SAGE Journals regarding: 'Genetic heterogeneity of polydactyly in Maine Coon cats', concluded that "polydactyly in Maine Coon cats is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait with incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity and this trait is characterised by genetic heterogeneity in the Maine Coon breed". RELATED:  Polydactyl cat record holders 2022 . It might be helpful the break that information down a bit if we can. "Polydactyly" is another wor...

Not really. Maine Coon cats like any other domestic cat would enjoy life more being outside because it's a more natural environment ( depending on how their indoor environment has been enriched ). Also, the history of the Maine Coon cat is very much one of being an outside cat. These were originally barn cats and therefore semi-domesticated. They are built physically to endure harsh conditions. This is noted in the breed standard. And therefore, anatomically speaking they are quite definitely indoor/outdoor cats. Maine Coon on a lead by Ruffians. But, and there is always a but, they are also very popular cats and they have a distinctive appearance. A lot of people recognise the Maine Coon cat. Therefore, you can't let them go outside unless they are supervised. And the only way to do that realistically is to leash train your Maine Coon.  Or you might have 5 acres of land at the back of your house and pots of money. You could then build a cat confinement fence around the entire ...

NEWS AND COMMENT - BATAYSK, ROSTOV REGION, RUSSIA: Don't think ill of these cats. Of course, we shouldn't. Sometimes the press like to get hold of this kind of story and sensationalise it. There is nothing sensational about it. It is just about sadness both for the woman who died without anybody knowing about it for 2 weeks and for her 20 Maine Coon cats who were forced to resort to eating bits of her in order to survive. The whole thing is entirely natural although of course it reads rather gruesomely. This was a female cat breeder who kept 20 Maine Coon pedigree cats in her home. The police were alerted when one of her employees could not contact her. When the police turned up, they found her partially eaten body surrounded by the hungry Maine Coon cats. They believe that she had been dead for 2 weeks. As expected, the cats were rescued and some of them have been rehomed. Interestingly, it is said that the adoption rate in Russia is £29 in British currency. That sounds cheap ...

A brand-new study published on June 16, 2022 which researched inherited diseases linked to a wide range of purebred cats and including non-pedigree cats, is proving useful. It is the largest DNA-based study of domestic cats to date according to the scientists. In all, 11,036 individual cat were genotyped. They included 10,419 pedigreed cats and 617 non-pedigreed cats.  DNA testing. Image: Pixabay. They were looking into the "distribution and frequency of known disease, blood type and physical trait associated genetic variance across cat breeds". I interpret this to mean that they were investigating inherited diseases in purebred cats and comparing that with non-purebred cats. I might oversimplify their stated objectives but it needs to be simplified. However, I am able to, I hope, simplify it having read hundreds of studies over the years. I'm going to go over some inherited diseases concerning the Maine Coon cat as reported by this study which may interest cat breeders a...

  Picture of a red tabby Maine Coon with a combed ruff and a big muzzle. Picture: Pinterest. It is a good photograph and a beautiful cat. The cat is very typically Maine Coon, bred slightly to extreme I would argue because the muzzle is very heavy and 'square', more so than you see on the winning Maine Coon show cats on the CFA website. The CFA show cat winners look more delicate than this individual (see below). Nonetheless this is a great cat. I don't think, personally, that Maine Coon owners should comb their cat's ruff as MCs should be natural, like barn cats and not too coiffed. Below is a Maine Coon show cat winner from the CFA website for comparison. RELATED:  What kind of Maine Coon wins competitions ?

It sounds a bit pretentious to have a video of the Maine Coon tail. No big deal. Why make a video about it? Well, the Maine Coon tail is one of the outstanding features of this very popular purebred cat. The others, in my view, are the square muzzle, the lynx-tipped ears and of course the large size. The shaggy coat is another but I think the first three points are the outstanding points to me. @chakacoon Maine Coons hold the longest cat length and tail length records 👋 #chakacoon #mainecoons #fluffycat #hugecat #petsoftiktok ♬ original sound - ChakaCoon And the CFA in their breed standard state that the tail should be long, wide at base, and tapering. The fur should be long and flowing. And when you see the tail in a video with it moving around you can see how outstanding an item of anatomy it is compared to the tail of almost all other domestic cats. It is probably the best domestic cat tail if that is of any interest to anybody. It is called a plumed tail as you probably...

Anybody who has studied the Maine Coon cat knows that hip dysplasia is a major inherited disease for this highly popular cat breed; the biggest cat breed in the world. It is a health condition which I feel undermines the status of the breed. It is a great shame that it exists and sadly I would have to argue that it is a product of human failure in the creation of this breed.  Elderly Maine Coon with a human face. A cat more likely to have hip dysplasia because of their age. Image: Catsville County cattery I would bet my bottom dollar that the very early Maine Coon cats, when they weren't called Maine Coon cats, did not have this level of prevalence of this hip socket problem. In fact, I would be surprised if those early cats had problems with their joints that were any worse than any other domestic cat living in America at that time. "The condition is a genetically inherited malformation of the ball-and-socket joint that connects a cat’s thigh bone (femur) to its hip" - C...

One Maine Coon owner said on TikTok that if you have a bigger cat, you have bigger problems. As the Maine Coon (MC) is the biggest domestic cat you will have more problems. Bullocks 😎. She has to be wrong. The MC is pretty well like any other domestic cat except for their size and distinctive appearance. I guess they eat more but that is not a great hardship. There is one truth to the statement.  Screenshot from video. The MC is prone to hip dysplasia as you probably know (and patellar luxation - a knee problem). This is a loose hip joint . The biggest MCs are more prone. So size is an issue here. MCs are almost famous for having hip dysplasia. Not a good reputation and size plays a role in this disease. But I believe that she is not referring to the disease. She almost blames MCs for destroying furniture but all domestic cats will scratch furniture if there isn't a really solid scratching post to deter them. Even then they still might do it as it is entirely natural and necessary...

There is a strange, unique it seems to me, study about what I believe to be a very rare condition in cats namely "slipped capital femoral epiphysis" (SCFE). I did some research on it to figure out what it means. And my interpretation of what that difficult to understand medical and scientific language means is that the top of the femur (thigh bone) which is a ball-shaped section of the bone 'slips' in relation to the remainder of the bone as you can see in the picture. In more technical language it is a fracture through the growth plate which results in movement of the end of the femur. It seems that surgery is the fix as it holds that cap at the end of the femur in place and in alignment with the rest of the bone. SCFE on humans. Image: YouTube. The study which took place at the Institute of Pathology and Forensic Veterinary Medicine, Department for Pathobiology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria, concluded that SCFE had only been reported occ...

Maine Coon kitten and his adult self. Photo: Robert Silka. This is a series of photographs by the very famous Maine Coon photographer: robert_sijka. I think he presents his photographs too dark as there is not enough information in the photographs for my liking but he takes great photographs of great Maine Coon cats. In this series he photographs a kitten and their adult version. Each individual cat is a wonderful example of the Maine Coon breed. I can count five examples. In my experience, these Google Blogger videos only work if you click the centre play button and then, immediately afterwards, the play button bottom-left! It sounds bad but the short video is worth watching.

Cats head butt when greeting in a friendly way. This is a good example from a Maine Coon (MC). He is called over from his cat tree and obliges promptly. The bloke did not call his cat vocally but with his body language by lying down. His MC immediately picked up the signal and came. Clearly many times in the past this has happened and the MC remembers the pleasantness of it and wants to do it again. Maine Coon responds to owner's body language to come over and say hello with a massive head butt. Screenshot. The first thing he does is head butt the man's face. This is a video from maxiecoon on TikTok. The allow others to download their videos as it helps to spread the word. RELATED:  Hardest domestic cat head-butt on YouTube ? @maxiecoon My husband and his fav girl 💁🏻‍♀️ #catmomlife #catdad #lifewithcats #mainecoon #maxiecoon ♬ original sound - 🖤Maxie & Foxie🧡 Maine Coons You probably know that the feline head butt is a both a friendly greeting but also the de...