Is a Maine Coon, Bengal cross possible?

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The answer, very positively is yes, of course. You are mating a Maine Coon cat with a Bengal cat which is entirely feasible. It has been done and the resultant animal would be described as a "Renegade" or a "Pantherette". 

The former is described as "experimental". In other words, physically, you can mate a Bengal cat with a Maine Coon cat, but the resultant animal will not be accepted by the cat associations, and it doesn't matter which cat association you are talking about, but it will look like a cross between a Maine Coon cat and a Bengal cat. As present I can't find a photo of this hybrid domestic cat which is why I have the image below.

Maine Coon Bengal cat cross is possible but is there a point?
Maine Coon Bengal cat cross is possible but is there a point? Image: MikeB

However, what is the point of creating a hybrid between two very distinct cats which have their followers and fans, and which attract many people. If you mate a Bengal cat with a Maine Coon cat and call the "product" a Renegade, I'm not sure what you have created.

The cat fancy spends a lot of time and trouble creating distinct breeds, one being very clearly different to the other. And therefore, to mate one distinct breed which is very popular with another distinct breed which is also very popular seems to be stupid.

You end up with a cat which is neither one nor the other and I just don't get the purpose of it. And I believe that my opinion is the same opinion as the administrators of the cat associations otherwise they would have registered and accepted this breed. It would be on their books, and we would have a cat show in which the Renegade was shown as a show cat. But it hasn't happened, and I expect that it won't happen.

The "Pantherette" is a cross between a black Bengal cat and they Maine Coon cat. The objective apparently is to produce a black panther lookalike. Therefore, the goal is a shorthair cat with a Maine Coon appearance, and which is black. 

I suppose the people who created this informal "breed" wanted to incorporate the large size of the Maine Coon with the black Bengal cat colouring. The objective: to make a domestic cat which looks more like a genuine black panther.

And the objective of creating the Renegade I will presume is to create a Maine Coon cat with those glorious Bengal spots and rosettes. That glorious golden colour that you see in some Bengal cats. I get the point of it, but you end up, as mentioned, with a hybrid which takes the best from both breeds, but which would undermine the existence of both breeds.

Perhaps that is the point that is really worth making. If you join two breeds together taking the best from each, you undermine the reason for having the two separate breeds in the first place. And the cat fancy like to have cat breeds which are distinct and well separated in terms of appearance.

  • Apparently, there are some other Maine Coon hybrids which have been created but which are not formally accepted such as the: 
  • American Forest Cat Shorthair, which is a short haired Maine Coon type cat, 
  • the Leopold, which is a snow leopard lookalike, 
  • the Maine Coon Rex which is a rexed i.e., curly coated Maine Coon, 
  • and a Siamese, Maine Coon cross called the Siacoon. In addition to the two other "breeds" that I mention above.

I stress that these are all informal, they are not registered, they might be described as experimental, but many years have passed since they were created by breeders and as they have not been accepted by the cat associations over those years, I think it is fair to say that they never will be. In essence, it is cat breeders playing around with the cat breeds to see whether they can create a new cat breed.

It is breeders doing this for their own ends to try and obtain some celebrity for themselves within the cat fancy.

P.S. I did a page on this many years ago which covers similar ground, but my opinions have firmed up since then. You can read that page by clicking on this link.

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