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Showing posts with the label inherited character

The reason (sole reason!) why your Maine Coon is naughty!

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I'm reading the Maine Coon Central website while dictating this. And I am irritated to be perfectly honest. I have a completely different perspective to Maine Coon cats and domestic cats in general compared to the woman who writes the above-mentioned website. The first point I would like to make is this: to call a domestic cat "naughty" is to anthropomorphise the cat. In other words, you are humanising a domestic cat, an entirely different species. Image copyright Helmi Flick Maine Coon cats are never naughty in the true sense. They might seem to be naughty in the human sense if you are looking at your Maine Coon cat as if they are a toddler but that's an entirely different thing. I don't think you should look at the Maine Coon cat and think that you are looking at a toddler. You should respect the domestic cat's normal behaviours which are always in response to the environment in which they live. Their behaviour is instinctive based upon inherited behavioural...
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Are Maine Coon cats good mousers?

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The question is asking whether you can expect your Maine Coon cat to keep the mouse population down inside and around your home. I reluctantly have to say that the question is little bit misguided and I'll explain why as I see it. Are Maine Coon cats good mousers? It depends on the individual cat more than anything else. Image: MikeB The Maine Coon cat, as we know, is a domestic cat. They happen to be the largest domestic cat breed but that doesn't change in any way the fact that, in general, they have the personality of a typical domestic cat. And with respect to being keen predators, all domestic cats are pretty keen about chasing rodents because it is in their DNA. They inherit this desire. It's all instinctive. But, the desire to hunt mice varies somewhat from individual cat to individual cat in the general domestic cat population and it will vary somewhat within individual Maine Coon cats. So, the answer to the question is Maine Coon cats, in general, will probably be...
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Are Maine Coon cats stubborn?

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I am taking a simple philosophical approach to answering the question in the title. If you disagree, please comment. In order to answer the question properly, I think I have to start off with the definition of the word "stubborn" because I think we need to figure out whether this word only applies to people or to people AND cat!  I say this because sometimes we anthropomorphise (humanise) our cats and we expect them to behave like little humans because they are seen as members of the family. That's great and it's normal but we need to keep an eye on that aspect of our relationship. The word "stubborn" means: having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so. There are two elements to that definition (1) and unwillingness to change's mind and (2) in the face of good arguments or reasons. Taking number 2 first; this can't apply to Maine Coon cats b...
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Do Maine Coon cats get on with other cats?

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Maine Coons are just like any other domestic cat in terms of whether they get on with other cats. They are not a special case with extraordinary powers of friendliness and amicability. Yes, generally (subject to good socialisation as kittens) they have nice, laid-back characters but this does not override the domestic cat's instinctive behaviour to claim a home range and protect it from 'invaders'.   A person who knows the Maine Coon well, Gloria Stephens, a cat show judge and breeder, says that 'most are nothing but sweet'. Not the qualifying word 'most'. She says that her female is calm and collected 'controlling the house with a mere glance of the eye'. A nice character but still a classic domestic cat in overall character. Omar is a good friend to a standard moggie - a dark tortie. Image: Instagram. A new cat to a home would be nearly always be regarded as an invader. The reaction depends on the cat. It might be mild or there may be aggression. T...
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Some behavioural traits of the Maine Coon according to a large-scale Finnish study

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I think that it is always useful to go to science to examine the behavioural traits of any single cat breed. In this instance, a Finnish study titled: 'Breed differences of heritable behavioural traits in cats', looked at 5,726 individual cats through a questionnaire given to their owners.  Ginger tabby and white Maine Coon chilling. Image in public domain. Maine Coons participated in study as did other breeds and non-purebred cats. They were looking at whether selective breeding of Maine Coon cats and other breeds controlled to a certain extent the cat's character. And they found some correlations between genetic inheritance and behaviour. I have always said that in any chosen breed you can't say that all the individual cats are going to have the same character. That is impossible and it doesn't make sense. That's because there are two influencing factors: inherited character and environmentally altered character through experiences. Also, there are many breede...
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Location: Finland
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Maine Coon cats have placid characters. Discuss.

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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 t...
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Are Maine Coon cats good with dogs? It depends on 3 things.

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A lot of websites are answering the question as to whether Maine Coon cats are good with dogs, and it is a question which looks at half of the issues that need to be dealt with. There are two players, the cat and the dog. There's no point having a cat that gets on well with dogs if the dog they live with does not get on well with cats. 😎. That's the first point. And, further, whether a cat gets on well with dogs it is normally not breed specific. It is about individual cats. This is not something that you can guarantee that breeders breed into the kittens that they create. By this I mean it is not something that is always created through inheritance unless the breeder has selected a foundation breeding pair of Maine Coon cats both of whom are known to have characters predisposed to getting on with cats and a supressed prey drive to chase cats. That's the second point. Are Maine Coon cats good with dogs? It depends. Image: MikeB A dog friendly cat and vice versa is normall...
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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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