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What can Maine Coon breeders do to minimize inherited diseases?

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Maine Coon breeders can take several steps to minimise the incidence of inherited diseases such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), hip dysplasia and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). In my view, the quality of a Maine Coon cat breeder depends on how energetically they adopt the following strategies which I don't claim is a complete list. As a purchaser of a Maine Coon kitten I'd ask some pertinent questions when meeting the breeder as to how they deal with these aspects of their operation. Genetic testing: the competent and committed Maine Coon breeder will engage in genetic testing. They will in fact prioritise it to identify carriers of specific diseases. They want to know if there foundation cats are free of inherited diseases. If they carry the genetic mutations which create these diseases. And there are DNA tests available for the three diseases mentioned above. These are the major inherited diseases. Breeders will select breeding pairs that are free from these genetic mu...
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What are Maine Coons related to?

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This is a very complicated area. Some parts of the answer might seem straightforward but the whole issue tricky. And it can't really be simplified. It is about DNA analysis ultimately. But there are some clear connections. Maine Coon. Image in public domain. Norwegian Forest cats I am going to have to criticise the number one website on Maine Coon cats which is Maine Coon Central. It is a horrible site; it is written for 14-year-olds with a ton a waffle to pad out boring pages. I don't want to but they answered the question in the title and the author produced her usual huge amount of waffle and came to the conclusion that the Maine Coon cat is related to the Norwegian Forest Cat. And that is about it. The connection between the two is probably/possibly because there are stories about the Vikings bringing across from Norway longhaired cats hundreds of years before the European settlers emigrated to America. Are Maine Coons and Norwegian Forest cats related ? It is possible alth...
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How to confirm that your Maine Coon cat is purebred without pedigree papers (and more)

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How to confirm that your Maine Coon is purebred without pedigree papers (and more). Note: this is not a Maine Coon but the picture is here from the Wisdom Panel video for illustrative purposes only. It shows a saliva swab being taken which is sent to the laboratory. Wisdom Panel provide a DNA testing service by mail. The business certainly operates in the USA and the UK and possibly other countries. You apply for a testing kit online. In the UK it currently costs £58.49 p. At the moment they are giving out free WHISKAS samples with every order.  They say they scan for 70+ breeds and populations, 45+ health tests and 25+ trait tests. So it is a comprehensive testing of your cat's DNA which they assess through a swab of their saliva.  You send this swab to their laboratories and they will send you the report in the post and/or perhaps online in an email as well. It's as straightforward as that. Click on this link to go to the UK website for the service . If you live in the USA I...
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How to tell if your cat is a Maine Coon mix

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The little Infographic below tells you the essential information that you need to know in deciding whether the longhaired cat that you have acquired is a Maine Coon mix or not. The basic default situation is this:  If you've 'acquired' a longhaired cat such as a tabby and you don't know whether he or she is a Maine Coon mix or even a fully-fledged purebred Maine Coon, then your cat is NOT a Maine Coon and it is not a Maine Coon mix. That's the starting point. You have to beat that DEFAULT situation. Infographic my MikeB at PoC. And the only way to beat it is to have a DNA test done (I don't think they are available) which is rather pointless and it will obviously cost a little bit of money. Or your cat might show some genuine appearance characteristics strongly indicating that they are a Maine Coon mix or even a purebred Maine Coon. Personal viewpoint In my personal view there is not much point knowing if you cat is a Maine Coon mix because all you are proving i...
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Your Maine Coon might help solve crime

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This thought applies to all domestic cats in homes including Maine Coons, currently in the top 3 most popular cat breeds.  Forensic researchers at Flinders University in Australia and Victoria Police Forensic Services Department believe that a criminal's DNA might be on the household's domestic cat companion. Your Maine Coon might help solve crime. Image: MikeB. DNA can be transferred to cats. And nowadays DNA plays a very important role is catching criminals. The researchers say that there is a "lack of data on companion animals such as cats and dogs in their relationship to human DNA transfer." The researcher's co-author Heidi Monkman said: "These companion animals can be highly relevant in assessing the presence and activities of the inhabitants of the household, or any recent visitors to the scene." 20 cats participated in the research from 15 different homes and with the owners all having different levels of interactions with their cats. DNA samples...
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Largest DNA-based study - info. on Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency in Maine Coons

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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...
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Maine Coon has the wrong name as it comes from New York

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DNA testing has shown that the cat breeds can be separated but only over the past 150 years or so. The point about this DNA testing is that it shows that extensive selective breeding by purebred cat breeders has taken the cat breeds away from their origins.  So, for example, the Persian is meant to come from Persia but none of the Persian cats in existence today have any connection to Persia, now Iran. Selective breeding has distanced the current breeds from their origins and this applies, I would argue, to the Maine Coon cat. Maine Coon from South America. Photo: Dani. You would have thought that all the current Maine Coon cats in America had their origins in the state of Maine in America. You would have thought that these cats had been brought over by European settlers in the 1600s to the state of Maine on the East Coast, become farm cats and then refined into show cats at the end of the 1800s. A DNA test should be able to establish that the current Maine Coon cats in America ...
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Location: New York, 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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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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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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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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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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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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