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Why should you buy a Maine Coon cat?

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This is the other side of the coin to the last article about why you shouldn't buy/adopt a Maine Coon (MC). So why should you? Because if your heart is set on adopting a purebred cat, the MC is the best! Simple. Of course, that is a personal viewpoint but that said polls tell us that the MC is in the top three most popular cat breeds 2022 . Their popularity has surged over the past 5 years. Please note that I have made the presumption that you are committed to adopting a purebred cat. If not, adopt a rescue cat and do a good turn for animal welfare. But no criticism if you don't. America's cat the Maine Coon. Image: MikeB from (cat) Colorado Maine Coons and (flag) Amazon. America's very own big domestic cat Why are they the best cat breed? One reason is that if you are an American living in America, you'd be adopting America's very own purebred cat. And the MC is so American in appearance; big and bold. It would be a patriotic act to adopt one 😊. The MC is co...
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Terms and conditions of a Maine Coon cat breeder in the USA

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It's quite interesting to look at the terms and conditions between the seller i.e. the breeder and the purchaser i.e. the adopter of a Maine Coon in the USA. I've selected a TICA listed Maine Coon cat breeder: BELLATRIX. They are located at: Blanchard, Oklahoma, United States. Bellatrix MCO Maine Coon. Photo: Bellatrix MCO. This is a tortoiseshell. I believe that this Maine Coon cat breeder is from Belarus. They breed European Maine Coons which is understandable bearing in mind the Belarusian link. RELATED:  Difference between European and American Maine Coons . They say that when they sell a cat it will be subject to the following conditions. I'm using my words but based entirely on their statement on their website. They guarantee that the cat or kitten will be in good health at the time of sale. They are unable to state for how long the guarantee lasts because they can only guarantee the health of a cat at the time of purchase. What happens after that is dependent upon...
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Location: Blanchard, OK, USA
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Maine Coon cat clubs and associations - 2021

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Here is a list of Maine Coon clubs and associations as at 2021 which may not be comprehensive but which you might find useful nonetheless. Clubs and associations tend to come and go but the ones mentioned here are well-established. Maine Coon (brown tabby) siting on a table looking very cute. Photo in public domain. The Maine Coon Cat Club , affiliated to the GCCF and established in 1985 (UK based). In 1995 it published a guide to the breed: Introducing the Maine Coon . They have an initial joining fee of 1 pound with a single annual subscription of 5 pounds or a joint annual subscription of 7 pounds. For those under 16 they have a junior subscription of £2.50 but juniors have no voting rights. They have forms on their website to complete. They have a Facebook page, Maine Coon Cat Club UK , on which they say that the club currently has five hundred members, both in Britain and abroad. Membership is open to anyone. You don't have to own a Maine Coon to join. Many of their members...
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Picture of two Maine Coons looking through the window at America

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The Maine Coon is the American cat. It is America's constribution to the world of fancy, purebred cats and what a contribution. Americans are rightly proud of the Maine Coon. Strange name though. But it has stuck so strange names are good. No one quite knows where the 'Coon' part of the name comes from, by the way. A Capt Coon perhaps . Picture of two Maine Coons looking through the window at America. Photo: Reddit. Photo: The Maine Coons are "My girls Mojito (silver) and Amaretto (orange)." What I like about this picture from a Reddit user (I don't know their name) is that it provides citizens of the world who don't live in America a feel for what it's like for an iconic American cat to live in America. To look out the window at a part of America. For me it is quite evocative of the American way of life. They are watching cat television . I expect them to be FT indoor cats. There is a lot of space in the country and this comes across in the photo. ...
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Maine Coon Won Best Cat At First US Cat Show

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At the time of the first American cat show held in the Madison Square Garden, New York on May 8th, 1895,  the now famous and popular Maine Coon was called a "Maine cat". The word "coon" was not a twinkle in anyone's eye. Perhaps the Maine Coon should still be called the "Maine cat" because I don't think the word "coon" does this breed any favours. Of course the first cat show, in what is now the country with the biggest cat fancy in the world, was held in the State of Maine. That makes sense. The winner was a Maine cat, which makes me think of bias but perhaps that is just me being cynical. The winning cat was a brown tabby Maine cat. The brown tabby coat is nice on the Maine Coon to this day because it is a natural coat type, the sort of coat that would have been typical for Maine cats. The winning cat was of course native to Maine. Apparently he was a good cat so was probably a deserving winner. He was a gelding. As the show took place ...
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Location: 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, New York, NY 10001, USA
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The extreme Maine Coon face

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This is an example of extreme breeding. This is a Maine Coon but this cat is an extreme and rare example of this breed. This is not the way they look normally. This face is almost like an aggressive robot with the piercing eyes and the huge muzzle.  Or like a lion's head. The head looks enormous and very heavy. It looks unreal. But it also looks very impressive.  And purchasers like impressive-looking domestic cats. But this not the face of a Maine Coon that wins cat show competitions as it does not fit the breed standard as accurately as the more moderate winners (see below).  In fact, the CFA standard is clear in that the cat should have a balanced appearance although this cat was not bred under the CFA breed standard as I understand it (see below).  Click here for more on the kind of MC which wins at shows . Maine Coon selectively breed to have an extreme face. Image in the public domain. And the Maine Coon is meant to be a large cat, the largest domestic cat b...
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Maine Coon Size - this is a huge one!

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  Enormous Maine Coon with a head bigger than the person holding him. Pic: in public domain. Maine Coon size is very important to both breeders of this cat and the public. I sometimes think that the public is more obsessed with Maine Coon size than the breeders are. The bigger the Maine Coon the better. There is a fascination about it and I confess that there is nothing much more impressive than a huge Maine Coon. They've been bred like this through selective breeding but please remember that they weren't always like this. The original Maine Coons were regular farm cats in the state of Maine in 19th-century and before. They were robust, rugged, medium-longhaired moggy cats but impressive nonetheless. Their impressiveness led to breeders deciding to breed them which in turn led to the breed being accepted by the cat associations and then to win cat shows and become perhaps one of the most famous breeds in the world. The breed standard for the Maine Coon as provided by e.g. Cat F...
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Average lifespan of Maine Coon cat

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How long do Maine Coon cats live for? What's the average lifespan? Do they live shorter lives than the average random-bred family cat? These are difficult questions to answer accurately. In fact, I don't think we can answer them accurately because nobody has been counting. Nobody has a database or carried out a full-blown survey and therefore you will read anecdotal evidence i.e. statements by breeders or people who think they know the answer and these answers get repeated on the Internet. I am not sure that they are accurate. Picture of a Maine Coon who looks like a middle-aged man. Photo: Pinterest. My research indicates that people believe that Maine Coon cats live between about 10 and 15 years old. Some may live longer than that and some may live shorter lives. One well-known Maine Coon, Rubble, lived for 31 years and was at one time the oldest domestic cat in the world. But there will always be exceptions and this article is about the mean or the average although these ...
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Comparison of a black smoke Maine Coon at 6 weeks and 6-years-of-age

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This is a cross-post as the image is so damned good. It is amazing because the cat is amazing. To put the same cat at different stages of their life in the same photograph is a nice idea especially with this Maine Coon (MC) who has an amazingly heavy face. It is so mightily masculine to be almost unbelievable. He has a priceless expression on his face too. Very serious compared to the innocence of his face when he was 6 weeks old. He looks a bit coy when 6 weeks old and a slightly grumpy middle-aged man when 6 years old. Comparison of a black smoke Maine Coon at 6-weeks and 6-years-of-age. Image in pubic domain. No doubt he is huge too. You get a clear sense of that in the image. There is a serious and less impressive side to this image. It's the backstory that people don't really want to read about and discuss or in fact do anything about: heart ( HCM ) and joint disease. The bigger and heavier the MCs are the more predisposed to heart disease they are. Here is the posts on...
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Are Maine Coons illegal in some countries, states or territories?

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One Maine Coon website asks if Maine Coons are legal? My initial response was that it is a bizarre question (second thoughts below), but I'll answer it in my way. I say that it is a bizarre question because the Maine Coon is an entirely domestic cat by which I mean NOT a wild cat hybrid and therefore there is no reason whatsoever to declare it illegal in any jurisdiction unless that there is some other fanciful reason to ban the cat (there might be - see below). Are Maine Coons illegal in some countries, states or territories? No, to the best of my knowledge. Image: MikeB I know of no jurisdiction anywhere in the world that bans Maine Coons which makes sense. Conversely a similar sized domestic cat, the F1-F2 Savannah, is illegal in many jurisdictions (states, territories and countries) because it is a wildcat hybrid. The cat has some wild cat DNA which some legislatures consider to be detrimental to human health and welfare and to the conservation of wildlife (if the cat escapes t...
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5 Maine Coon transformations from kitten to adult (video)

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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.
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Tortoiseshell Maine Coon with split-face

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Maine Coon with "split face". Photo: Screenshot. This is a very impressive Maine Coon. As you can see she is a tortoiseshell and as you probably know almost all tortoiseshell and calico cats are female. There are a few male tortoiseshell cats (and this might be one of them). Their sex is caused by a genetic aberration because the genetics of tortoiseshell cats dictates that they are almost always female. About one in 3000 are male as I recall. Also, it is not that unusual to see this extreme pattern on the face which creates the appearance of a "split-face". This is not what is called a "chimera" but a normal variation of the tortoiseshell pattern. Sometimes you do see what some people call "two-faced" cats with this sort of face due to a sharply defined pattern down the middle of the face. But the genetics behind that is different to this normal tortoiseshell variation. This is a particularly extraordinary looking Maine Coon cat. Not all Maine C...
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Eerie picture of a Maine Coon sitting like a human on a chest of drawers

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This is a slightly scary picture according to those who've seen it. One social media user said it was the devil and "If I walked into a room and saw that, I would assume some shit is about to go down". There is a ghostly stillness and sinister feeling about the image. 'Eerie' is a better description. This attractive cat appears to be completely at ease and comfortable sitting on top of a chest of bedroom drawers. The lighting from below (deliberate?) enhances the eerie effect. It seems possible that this is a photo-edited image but if so, it has been done with great skill. However, I don't think this is Photoshopped. Rethink: to be honest, the more I look at the picture, the more I feel that this is a photo-edited image. It is just too unnatural to be real. Although some domestic cats get themselves into some very strange positions. Maine Coon calmly sitting just like a human on a chest of drawers. Picture source unclear. Image deemed to be in the public d...
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A mightily beautiful orange Maine Coon

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Orange cats seem to feature in films more than other types of domestic cat . Is it because they have good, balanced characters? I am discussing the possibility of a link between coat type and color and character. A big call. A longshot. But possible. I discussed it in another post - click here if it interests you .  So, we love orange cats. They are undoubtedly one of the more popular cat coat types. And that is one reason why this Maine Coon is so damned attractive. What a combination: the size and presence of the Maine Coon, the world's largest domestic cat breed , and the orange tabby coat ( the friendliest cats? ) A mightily beautiful orange Maine Coon. Photo: Pinterest. I think this sort of domestic cat is the most desirable. You would be hard pressed to adopt a better cat but the best ones to adopt are the unadoptable, elderly, black rescue cats languishing in a shelter somewhere . A bit about the orange cat Cat breeders tend to refer to orange as red. The general public r...
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Today's Maine Coons are much larger and longer than the original

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There was a time, during the early years when the Maine Coon's popularity was in decline that the cat fanciers struggled with writing what they believed to be the correct breed standard. There was competition between what Richard H Gebhardt describes as a "progressive standard" or one which was designed to "describe and preserve an existing cat" i.e. fix the appearance. At this time this cat breed was much more a standard looking cat which is probably why it failed to catch the imagination of the cat loving public of America. Maine Coon. Photo in public domain. A progressive standard is one which allows breeders to constantly "refine" the appearance as they might describe it. But this can lead to extreme breeding and extreme appearances such as is evident in the Persian and Siamese. There was a time, then, went Richard H Gebhardt says that cat fanciers asked, "is the Maine Coon cat simply the long-haired variety of the domestic, or American, sh...
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