Maine Coon cats have placid characters. Discuss.

I will start this discussion by saying that the UK has its own celebrity, super-sized, Maine Coon cat who is enormous, weighing 24.3 pounds at only 12 months of age. His name is Murphy, and he lives in Worcester, and he is 41 inches long. He's become a media star as you might expect and has been featured in the Mail Online. Here he is:

Placid-faced Murphy carried by his owner in an unnatural way. Image: Emma Trimble SWNS.

But the photographs of Murphy on the Mail Online website indicate to me that he has a very placid temperament. The key to this discussion is that I have seen many Maine Coon cats featured on social media and in the news media being handled in ways which might provoke slight irritability and discomfort in the domestic cat, but it never happens with the Maine Coon.

Every time you see a Maine Coon cat being handled like you see in the photograph on this page (incorrectly) they look totally relaxed and placid. I suspect, by the way, that this lady was asked to hold their cat like this because I can sense from her expression that she is uncomfortable doing it. I think the idea was to show the length of the cat by having him hang from his shoulders. I don't like to see this as it puts a strain on the body.

Here is another placid and huge MC:

Maine Coons are placid. Image: Reddit.com.

RELATED: Infographic: the right way to pick up your cat.

The woman's name by the way is Sareeta Brewin, 46.

And here is another interesting point. If you read the CFA Maine Coon breed standard, as I have done many times, you will not see one reference to the character of this cat breed. To stress: everything in the Maine Coon cat breed standard is about appearance. Breeders should selectively breed for character. Perhaps they are! 👍😊

Here is 2 more Maine Coons chosen at random (not Murphy as you can see) looking very relaxed while being handled. Both pics are in the public domain.

I had hoped to find some sort of reference or guidelines on the goal to breed Maine Coon cats with placid temperaments. I wanted to find the reason why I am seeing a lot of affable Maine Coon cats in the news but no such luck.

My go-to book on the purebred cats doesn't help me either. Gloria Stephens in her book Legacy of the Cat states that Maine Coon cats get along well with children and dogs and other cats. They are people orientated but not over dependent. They don't demand attention but prefer to 'hang out' with their owners.

Perhaps the phrase "hang out" is important in this context. Hanging out implies relaxed and satisfied to simply be there without making demands upon their owner.

Size might be an influence on character

There is a nice little article in The Times today on the "Napoleon complex". This is alternatively known as the "small man syndrome". A study found that being short can cause women to act more aggressively. Scientists writing in Personality and Individual Differences found that shorter people of both sexes scored highly with the "dark triad" traits of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. Looking at the opposite end of the spectrum, to big people and in this respect big domestic cats, perhaps their character is going to be opposite to namely placid, affable, calm and pleasant!

I wonder whether the large size of the Maine Coon cat helps them to be relaxed. Is it true to say that larger animals tend to be calmer and mellow whereas smaller animals tend to be hyper and vicious?

I don't think it's fair to say that small animals are vicious, but I think there may be something in the idea that larger animals are more mellow than smaller animals.

At the moment, I can't find any hard evidence of this, but I sense that the size of an animal makes them more confident particularly in the human environment where domestic cats live with giants, that is the humans! 

Perhaps there is something in that. Confidence certainly helps to make an animal more relaxed because they feel better able to protect themselves and are less concerned about predators or hostile creatures jeopardising their existence.

I'm being too philosophical, but I am struggling to explain why I am seeing dozens of very placid-faced Maine Coon cats even though they are handled in a way which should not engender this response/appearance.