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Showing posts with the label inbreeding

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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Maine Coons are 12 times more likely to develop "slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE)

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A study discovered that Maine Coon cats are 12 times more likely to develop "slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE). So, what is it and is this important? Maine Coon cats are 12 times more likely to develop "slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE). Image: the study referred to (background). The overall image is by MikeB (Canva). It may interest Maine Coon cat owners and those who want to purchase a Maine Coon to know that this cat breed - in addition to inheriting a predisposition to hip dysplasia - also appears to inherit another hip joint condition which, as I understand it, can sometimes lead to hip dysplasia and this other condition is called slipped capital femoral epiphysis . It affects the hip joint. RELATED:  Infographic on hip dysplasia in Maine Coon cats . The study was published in 2016. It is online. You can read it if you wish by clicking on this link . The study was conducted in Austria. The interesting and perhaps disconcerting conclusion of the study, as me...
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Location: Lastenstraße 2, 2020 Hollabrunn, Austria
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Relative birth weight (to mother's) is lower in Maine Coons compared to smaller breeds

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This is a very short note on an interesting topic as it concerns the weight of the Maine Coon which is important to Maine Coon afficionados. Although Maine Coon kittens have a birth weight which is higher than that of other breeds e.g., Maine Coon kittens 115 grams, Norwegian Forest Cat kittens 106 grams, Birman kittens 97 grams, Siamese kittens 92 grams and Persian kittens at 82 grams, the weight of Maine Coon kittens relative to their mother's weight tended to be lower than for the other breeds mentioned. Lithuanian Maine Coon kitten. Image: the breeder. For instance, Maine Coon kittens' weight relative to their mother's weight was 2.3% in this study. For the Norwegian Forest Cat kittens, the percentage was 2,7%, Birmans 2.8%, Siamese 2.8%, Exotic Shorthair 2.9%, British Shorthair 3.1% and Persians 3.2%. Incidentally this tendency is seen in puppies i.e. smaller birth weight for the larger dog breeds. For comparison the study states that the kitten to female mature weight...
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Maine Coon Coefficient of Inbreeding not mentioned on CFA and TICA websites but is mentioned by GCCF

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This information might interest Maine Coon aficionados i.e. those people who are really into the Maine Coon cat. It's about inbreeding which is measured by the inbreeding coefficient (COI). Sarah Hartwell very usefully provides a diagrammatic chart of the coefficient of inbreeding. It is a scale of 0 to 1 but is often presented as a percentage. So, for example, when siblings are bred to each other the coefficient of inbreeding is 25% and when first cousins are bred to each other the coefficient of inbreeding is 6.25%. COI chart as presented by Sarah Hartwell on her website messybeast.com . Inbreeding depression When breeders inbreed their cats too much it can cause what the cat fancy describes as inbreeding depression which is a compromised immune system and even anatomical defects such as you see in the white tiger. The white tiger by the way is heavily inbred. Inbreeding depression means ill health basically and a shorter lifespan and weak kittens et cetera. It's what you wou...
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Ginger Maine Coon with underbite (malocclusion). Cause?

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Malocclusion is the imperfect positioning of the teeth when the jaws are closed. There are various versions of it. The lady who cares for this extreme-bred, ginger Maine Coon says her cat has an underbite. It is hard to see in the photo. It means that the lower jaw protrudes further out than the upper jaw. It looks relatively slight in this cat. Ginger Maine Coon with underbite (malocclusion). Cause? Probably inbreeding. Photo: u/jourdanlc  She writes on Reddit: Vet thinks he’s around 4 or 5 years! Yeah, he was dumped out in our neighborhood last Christmas 🥺 we’re in Alabama so tbh it’s not surprising. The animals laws here are practically non-existent. I’ll look that up! He’s definitely been a great kitty! She doesn't have a great regard for animal welfare in Alabama 😉. I am sure that she is right. Imagine dumping a genuine Maine Coon. And one with a great character. Really careless and callous I'd say. And rare too. Very few Maine Coons are abandoned. But what about the u...
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Is the Maine Coon cat inbred?

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How long will this Maine Coon kitten live? More than 11 years? Image: MikeB from images in the public domain. The question whether the Maine Coon cat is inbred is very important. I have just written a couple of articles, one about inbreeding depression and how it's caused and its effect on health, and the other an article about the lifespan of domestic cats comparing purebred cats with non-purebred cats. These are important and both affect the Maine Coon. Please click on the links to read them: Inbreeding depression cause and effect Lifespans of some purebred and random-bred domestic cats UK (some startling stats) When I did that research I came across a study and presentation, the results of which you can see by clicking on the second link above , which came to the conclusion that the average lifespan of the Maine Coon cat is 11-years-of-age. I found that statistic shocking.  The Abyssinian's average age is 10 years while the Bengal cat is 7.3 years according to this study. P...
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Admire the huge, magnificent Maine Coons but temper it with realism

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All of us admire the statuesquely impressive massive Maine Coons made famous by the internet's social media websites. They sock you in the face with their sheer size and lion-like, or human faces. Yes, we have seen those extraordinary human-faced Maine Coons from Europe. The MC (Maine Coon) has developed into the top 3 most popular cat breeds. I would expect the breed to be the world's most popular in coming years. Super, human-faced Maine Coon bred by a Russian but at what cost to health? Image credit: see image. Alright, let's enjoy humankind's creation of the MC. Yep, they are a human creation. When you see the stunning MC internet celebs you are not seeing the original MC that happily lived on a farm on the east coast of America. They were tiny and ordinary, almost dull by comparison to today's monsters. The MC cat show winners look rather sad compared to the huge MCs we are used to seeing . You are seeing a 'product' of human ingenuity which is designed...
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House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle's Maine Coon died at the age of 12

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You may have heard the news that the speaker at the House of Commons in the UK, Sir Lindsay Hoyle has just lost his Maine Coon cat, Patrick, who died at the age of 12, two years after being crowned Westminster's top cat. Sir Lindsay Hoyle and Patrick. Photo: EPA. Sir Lindsay Hoyle is an animal lover. He said that Patrick lived a good life. I am sure that he did as the Speaker is clearly an excellent animal caregiver. The information that caught my eye is the age of Patrick when he died. The age of 12 is not a great age for a domestic cat nowadays. I think we can expect the average random bred cat to live normally beyond the age of 15. When I did some quick research on the lifespan of Maine Coon cats, all the websites I visited told me that they did between 12-15 years of age on average. My estimation is that this is about three years shorter than your typical non-purebred cat. I think this is a factor in whether you adopt a purebred cat or not. And I think, too, that this is not ab...
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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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