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Showing posts with the label congenital disease

Hip dysplasia in Maine Coons is not caused by the extra weight of the cat

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I have to keep this very brief. Scientists decided that the health problems associated with Maine Coons concerning the hind limbs namely hip dysplasia and patellar luxation are due to inheriting defective genes and not due to the extra weight of this cat breed which I decided years ago is the biggest domestic cat breed. In the words of the scientists: The authors therefore conclude that genetic or other causes may be involved in orthopaedic hind limb pathogenesis seen in MC cats more often than in other breeds. The word 'pathogenesis' means in this case the development and persists of diseases affecting the hind limbs of the Maine Coon. As you see they conclude that inherited genes cause the problem. They also meekly refer to 'or other causes' but there are none that I can think of and which would be plausible. Separately if hip dysplasia affects both legs it it worse. And bigger Maine Coons have worse cases of hip dysplasia. This may be because as the problem develops ...
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Demographics of hip dysplasia in the Maine Coon cat

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In the world of purebred cats, the Maine completely dominates in suffering from hip dysplasia. No other breed or non-breed comes near in terms of prevalence. The right hip is more likely to be diseased compared to the left. The disease can make Maine Coons aggressive and lose interest in human attention (presumed due to the persistent discomfort) which is sad as this cat is calm and friendly when healthy and well cared for. The disease was first mentioned in 1974. This article sets out information about a large number of Maine Coon cats which suffer from hip dysplasia. I will present the information in bullet form below: There were 2732 individual cat participating in this study of which 99.9% were Maine Coons (2708). The youngest Maine Coon cat with feline hip dysplasia (FHD) was four months of age. The oldest was 60 months of age. Of the 2708 Maine Coon cats with hip dysplasia, 2548 had non-borderline symptoms which meant it was full-blown hip dysplasia. Hip dysplasia was more common...
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How long do Maine Coons live?

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For me, to be very frank, the question is not that useful because it is encouraging me to generalise, and it is wrong to generalise on lifespan because it will vary between individual cats even when they are all Maine Coons.  Precious Maine Coon life beginning. Will he have a long life free of HCM? Image in public domain (as assessed). But I'm going to try and answer the question nonetheless because a well-known website on Maine Coons answers it and they say that you can expect Maine Coons to live beyond 12 years of age. Like I said, that's not extremely helpful. My assessment that their lifespan is 12 years! Not beyond it. See the update below if you want to cut to the chase. HCM the key It seems to me the discussion about Maine Coon lifespan should centre on a critically important inherited disease that affects this popular breed namely hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). A lot has been written about this heart disease. How does it affect lifespan? It must affect lifespan to ...
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How do I know if my Maine Coon has hip dysplasia (HD)?

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We know that hip dysplasia (HD) is pretty common in Maine Coon cats, regrettably . It should be something that Maine Coon cat owners are fully aware of, and I am sure that most of them are. I think that it should worry people who want to adopt a Maine Coon cat. It means that you are adopting a cat that is liable to end up disabled requiring special treatment and perhaps veterinary care. Anyway, that is another topic.  Although the breeders should do more about this as a matter urgency, but it appears to be accepted by the cat fancy which if true is remiss of them. Breeders would normally take steps such as eliminating cats with HD from the breeding programme but clearly this is not happening enough. Perhaps pet health insurance is appropriate , but the problem will be the high premiums because this is a known congenital condition.  Remember, too, that hip dysplasia is more common and worse in larger Maine Coons . It is a trade-off for the impressive stature of these huge cats....
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How prevalent is slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE) in Maine Coon cats?

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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...
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Location: Veterinärpl. 1, 1210 Wien, Austria
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Difference between Maine Coon and domestic long hair

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The difference between a Maine Coon cat and a domestic longhaired cat comes down to the fact that the former has been artificially bred (selective breeding) whereas the latter has usually procreated according to natural selection. Natural selection is random breeding and therefore the domestic longhair is a random-bred cat whereas, selective breeding produces a purebred, pedigree cat registered with a cat association.  Difference between Maine Coon and domestic long hair. Infographic by MikeB. And because each individual Maine Coon cat is registered with a cat association, if they are in genuine Maine Coon, their appearance should comply with the association's breed standard . The breed standard tells breeders what their Maine Coon cats should look like in order that they can win cat show competitions if they want to enter their cat into these competitions. And so, as the appearance of Maine Coon cats is moulded to the guidance of a breed standard (see a section below from the...
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No part of a Maine Coon cat should be exaggerated

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It is interesting to read that the premier cat association, the CFA (Cat Fanciers' Association) - the cat association which really dictates (with TICA) how Maine Coons should look - makes it clear that no part of the cat should be exaggerated, and the cat should be "well-proportioned and balanced".  In other words, any form of extreme appearance such as a particularly heavy muzzle or particularly large ears with extra-long lynx tips are not going to be seen as advantageous in terms of winning cat shows or in terms of having an ideal appearance. As soon as I read that no part of a Maine Coon should be exaggerated, I immediately thought of the extremely large, extreme-bred Maine Coon cats that often come from Russia. These cats have very heavy muzzles.  Lion-faced Maine Coon with exaggerated features. Image in public domain now. In fact, their heads look like the heads of lions. I get the impression that breeders have selectively bred their cats over years to look like male...
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2 top Russian Maine Coon cat breeders which ship internationally

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I am writing this from the West; specifically, near London, UK. There will be quite a few people living in the West who'd like to adopt a Maine Coon cat and they would like to adopt one from a Russian breeder because they do have a certain style.  I sense, although I don't have hard evidence to support this feeling, that the top Russian breeders of Maine Coon cats might be superior to breeders from other countries.  I am putting aside Putin's invasion of Ukraine when writing this article. Some people might object to dealing in anyway with a Russian business on account of that barbaric and illegal invasion. We should remember that Russia has quite a strong cat fancy. They like their cats and they love their purebred cats particularly the Maine Coon. It is in fact a cat breed which is quite naturally suited to the Russian way of life and climate. There's lots of space in Russia with a relatively low population and therefore there are going to be houses with large grounds ...
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