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American Shag (cat)

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What is the American Shag ?! No, it is not describing a passionate encounter between two Americans. I think that's why the name was dropped 😃. You might be able to guess that it is an alternative name for the Maine Coon . The Maine Coon cat actually has a lot of different names in its history such as the: American Coon Cat Maine Trick Cat American Longhair American Forest Cat American Snughead It appears that in the early days, somewhere between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the cat fancy struggled a bit with how to name this cat and they eventually settled on the "Maine Coon", which surprises me greatly because it is a horrible name (by today's standard at least).  Shaggy coat of the Maine Coon inspired the American Shag name. Image in public domain. Well, the first bit of the name is good but the second bit is ridiculous and the name as a whole now has become objectionable because of the second part, which has racist connotations. Anyway, the second part mig...
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"Maine cat"

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The name "Maine cat" was an early version of today's 'Maine Coon cat'. It was used by Frances Simpson in 1902 in her book, " Cats and All about Them ". It is perhaps the earliest fully fledged book on the domestic cat and the breeds. She also edited "The Book of the Cat" which I believe was published in 1903. In this book she commissioned and collated the writing of breeders, naturalists and veterinarians. The quote below comes from the former I believe. "From my earliest recollection I have had from one to several long-haired cats of that variety often called Maine cats . As to how and when they came, I would say, like Topsy, they just “growed,” for their advent reaches far back beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant." Personally, I would have to say that the earlier version of the name is much better than the later version particularly now in a woke world where any mention of the word "coon" is uncomfortable. For the l...
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Maine Coon cat names that connect with the state of Maine

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These are my thoughts on Maine Coon cat names. The Maine Coon (MC) is an American cat. It developed, it is believed, as a cat breed over 400 years in Maine before it became formally recognised as a breed in 1950s. It was informally recognized in the 1860s being a farm cat and shown at farm livestock shows. Classy MC needing a classy name. Pic in the public domain. This is a gentle cat with a shaggy coat. The voice is quiet. The MC is independent but loyal and friendly. An all-American boy or girl in human terms. I guess the name should be built around this history and character. Boys are goofy and girls are more dignified. See personality . I'd start with names of well-known people from Maine that fit the character.: Males Howie - nice name for a Maine Coon boy. After Howie Carr a journalist, born in Portland, Maine. Nelson - named after the governor Nelson Dingley Jr. (lived 1832-1899). Joey - named after Joey Gamache. World Boxing Association Lightweight Champ...
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Location: Maine, USA
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Name "Maine Coon" needs to be changed because of 'woke' culture

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It is unlikely to happen but there would seem to be a reasonable argument to change the name of this very popular cat breed; the Maine Coon . The problem is this: the second word is a highly derogatory and insulting word describing people of colour. It is a word that you can never use as an insult or almost all other contexts and rightly so. And, in the woke era, where there is a much greater sensitivity towards the inappropriate use of language and attitudes, the word "Coon" has, arguably, become out of place in present society. This argument is supported by TikTok. The administrators of that massive website think that "Maine Coon" is a term or phrase which describes inappropriate human behaviour. It's true. Go to the TikTok website and search for "Maine Coon". Their custom search engine does not find anything. They put up a warning instead to say that the search is inappropriate . See the screenshot above. A sign of the times. RELATED:  Maine Coon...
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Location: Maine, USA
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How Maine Coons got their name

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The title is bold and confident. I am not that confident about this! But I think I know why Maine Coons have their strange name. Of all the cat breed names the Maine Coon is perhaps the strangest. The first half of it makes sense because this all-American cat hails, predominantly, from the state of Maine. That's fine but what about the 'Coon' part of the name? That's initially baffling. How Maine Coons got their name. These early 'coon cats' looked like standard large domestic cats. No selectively bred Maine Coon features per the breed standard. Just regular cats. Image in the public domain and I am thankful to Sarah Hartwell's website messybeast.com. They used to call the early Maine Coons 'coon cats' in lower case, no capitalization. The Lowell Sun (a local newspaper, I presume) on November 25, 1893 reported on 'coon cats'. Here is the report, verbatim: "A correspondent of Science tells of seeing in a private house in Chicago recent...
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Location: Maine, USA
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Why are Maine Coons called that?

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Why is this cat breed called "Maine Coon"? That's the question. There are two possible answers. There are various hypotheses for the origins of this breed. One of them is that a certain Captain Coon, an English sea captain (ostensibly a Chinese bloke), frequented the shores of Maine in his trading seagoing vessel. And, he loved cats!  A Maine Coon bred in The Netherlands. Photo by Dani. He had his little feline army on board. Whenever he went ashore some of his cats managed to follow him where they fraternised with the local strays and domestics. The offspring founded the long-haired cat population of North America and the Maine Coon cat. In that story you have both elements of the cat's name namely, "Maine", a reference to the state of Maine on the east coast of America and "Coon" a reference to Captain Coon who brought the cats to America in the first place. There is another far-fetched possibility in that at one stage some people thought that...
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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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Picture showing a Maine Coon as big as a child

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Another good example of the size of the bigger Maine Coons. Photo: Reddit.com This is a good photograph from the point of view of comparing size because it is from above and so we can see the full length of this almost totally black Maine Coon with white boots. The cat looks bigger than the child which is possible because I've seen Maine Coons which are positively enormous. I'm sure breeders of this cat go out of the way and bend over backwards to breed the biggest Maine Coon that they can. It's a challenge. They're not meant to necessarily be as big as this, as far as I know. That wasn't the initial objective under the breed standard. The standard does not say that Maine Coons must be enormous. In fact, the Cat Fanciers' Association breed standard, in the opening paragraph provides an overview of the cat and there is no mention that this cat should be very big. It is reproduced below (great cat though): "GENERAL: originally a working cat, the Maine Coon is...
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Should Maine Coons wear collars?

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Should Maine Coon cats wear collars? It's a question posed by the owner of the website Maine Coon Central and I think the question is not a great one to be perfectly frank but it does just about need to be addressed which is why I am writing this article. Maine Coon cat wearing a collar. Photo by Warren Photographic (modified by MikeB) and used with his express permission. You could ask the same question about any domestic cat that goes outside. Cat collars normally contain an identification tag. Cats that go outside might get lost. The ID tag can help them be reunited with their owner without recourse to having to scan for a microchip. The thing is though that it is probably exceptional for a Maine Coon cat to be allowed to go outside unsupervised. Quite rarely people take them outside on a harness and lead to allow them to explore the outside and be mentally stimulated. However, under these circumstances you don't need a collar with an ID tag for obvious reasons (unless they ...
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