Your Maine Coon Guide

There is a high potential for matting in this superb Maine Coon. I know that the coat needs to be shaggy to meet the requirements of the breed standard so they look like genuine barn cats of the late 1800s but this guy needs ongoing maintenance of a serious kind: daily grooming by their human caretaker is probably a must to avoid mats forming. Once they form and take hold, they are hard to remove. Proactive action is far easier and more successful. Maine Coon's trademark shaggy coat. Needs human intervention of the grooming kind! Photo: Reddit. The important thing about grooming your cat is to be gentle. And the best care is proactive. Far easier. And commercial grooming parlours might not that good as they are unregulated and you don't know what is happening.  Will your cat be scared and traumatized? Is he safe? Are there dogs at the parlour as well? How do they dry cats? Are there safety controls? I would not use a grooming parlour as there have been some terrible stories ...

Maine Coons are domestic cats like any other domestic cat. Yes, they are more glamorous than some other domestic cats but in terms of their behaviour there is not one iota of difference between a Maine Coon and a moggy which you can adopt from a rescue centre. Nobody asks whether a moggy is dangerous because they are domestic cats. So the same answer applies to Maine Coons. They are not dangerous in any way. Maine Coon. Silver tabby. Photo: Pixabay There is one caveat which applies to all domestic cats. If a domestic cat is badly provoked by a person for whatever reason then they may retaliate aggressively. They may attack that person and they may injure the person. Under those circumstances a Maine Coon could be described as dangerous but the victim would be the author of their own injuries. It will be extremely rare for a person to provoke a domestic cat but I have seen it and I have seen a well-behaved domestic cat turn very aggressive. You don't have to provoke a cat purposeful...

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...

CFA breed standard - COAT: heavy and shaggy; shorter on the shoulders and longer on the stomach and britches. Frontal ruff desirable. Texture silky with coat falling smoothly. That shaggy coat. Photo: whippedcreamcheese / Reddit The coat is meant to be shaggy under the breed standard. I think we can agree that this individual meets the Cat Fanciers' Association breed standard. It's a little bit wild but I guess with a brush and a smoothing he or she will meet the standard perfectly. I think that you will find that the requirement for a shaggy coat is the cat associations' respecting the history of this cat as a barn cat in the state of Maine in the 1800s. This is essentially a shaggy-coated semi-feral cat working cat refined over a hundred years and more through selective breeding. But at its heart is still that barn cat with a shaggy coat to keep it warm during chilly Maine winters in a draughty barn. Note: the CFA like their Maine Coons more refined than TICA who like the...

There are two outstanding, if one can call them that, health conditions associated with Maine Coon cats. These are inherited conditions due largely to selective breeding for appearance but not always as certainly the causes of hip dysplasia are unclear to the experts as far as I can tell. I'm not going to blame the breeders or be critical of them but all purebred cats can develop inherited health problems because of selective breeding which is another way of describing inbreeding to various degrees.  Maine Coon. Author: brenkee / pixabay.com Patella luxation and hip dysplasia can sometimes be found in Maine Coon cats. One condition can occur with the other. In patella luxation , the kneecap of affected individuals tends to slide to the inside of the leg rather than remaining in its trochlear groove. The signs are quite mild normally and include occasional lameness and a reluctance to jump. Sometimes there is intermittent "locking" of the 'stifle' followed by exten...

In case you didn't know, allogrooming means mutual grooming. It looks like what it is, namely an act of friendship. It's like a woman giving a man a cuddle and vice versa. Cats cuddle each other too! The nice thing about this video is you're looking at 2 really good-looking Maine Coon cats with very attractive ginger tabby coats. It is actually the first time that I have seen Maine Coons grooming each other which is rather strange since I have watched many thousands of videos and seen many thousands of still images of Maine Coons.

WELL, APOLOGIES ALL AROUND . I had two videos on this page of the same event: a cat falling through the ceiling of a restaurant in Asia somewhere, but both of the videos stopped working which I totally expected!!   Anyway, here is another similar event. It is not a restaurant, but Chinese guys are eating and a cat falls through a false ceiling in exactly same way. Clearly domestic cats find their way into these false ceiling which are constructed to house the lighting and wiring because it is warm thanks to the lighting!   Expect this video to stop working one day too 😉👍😢.  This is not about Maine Coons. Sorry (another apology). The reason why the video is here is because the Google adverts on this site seem to make more money :). This video does not render that well sometimes. It looks squashed.  It shows a grey tabby-and-white cat falling from what appears to be the ceiling of the restaurant onto a table of a diner minding his own business.  The cat...