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Black bombshell Maine Coon Shedoros Mamboo

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I believe that this magnificently masculine Maine Coon with blazing, golden eyes from the Shedoros cattery in Germany is a black smoke. He reminds me of Richie, the darling of the internet who also has a black face and white surrounding fur. I believe this to be an unusual characteristic of the black smoke coat type. Black bombshell Maine Coon Shedoros Mamboo. Photo: Shedoros cattery on Facebook. The outstanding feature of this black bombshell is the very masculine face. It is so solid and wide. You know what they say about masculine human faces. Wide male faces are linked to dominance and perceived dominance. I get the feeling that this 'man cat' is dominant or seen as being dominant by other cats. The alpha male. Although I bet that he is very calm and gentle actually. Black bombshell Maine Coon Shedoros Mamboo. Image: Shederos. His ears are not as large as they might be for a head this massive. The triangular, large ears of Maine Coons are one of their identifying features ...
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Location: Germany
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Round up of the genetic mutations causing HCM in Maine Coons

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I have decided to do what I would call a 'round up' of the mutated genes behind the disastrous inherited heart disease of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in this very popular domestic cat breed which is in top three most popular breeds on some polls .  Mutated genes cause HCM in Maine Coons, but the problem is fixable by removing studs and queens with the mutation from breeding lines. Why isn't this happening? Image: MikeB By 'round up' I mean pulling together the strands of information that I have discovered about the causes of this disease from research conducted over many years. I have endeavoured to use plain English at all times as this is a very technical topic. A round up is needed because different research projects have come to apparently different findings, but they are overlapping as in all cases the genetic mutation responsible has a negative impact on the creation of heart muscle such that HCM is programmed to occur at some stage in the affected cat...
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Reasons Maine Coon breeder switched from raw to commercially manufactured wet and dry

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I have just read an interesting blog article written by a Maine Coon breeder in the UK about feeding Maine Coon cats and indeed any domestic cat. Her experiences, of course, relate to Maine Coon cats. Her breeding cattery is called Rudycats Maine Coons Ltd . One kitten from Rudycats Maine Coons Ltd. Image by them. I believe that it can be very useful to listen to cat breeders because they have more direct first-hand experience than most people in raising cats. And it is strongly in their interest to raise healthy cats. Their business is dependent upon it. UPDATE : This breeder has been accused of being cruel and callous in her breeding. That is the allegation. It does not directly affect what she says about cat food, but you should know. Click this link to read about this allegation . Therefore, they should be trying very hard and using their best efforts to create healthy and strong kittens. Nutrition is a major way to meet that goal. I don't know the name of the breeder but perha...
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Stud tail in a Maine Coon cat (video)?

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This is a home video showing what looks like stud tail in a Maine Coon. That was not the intention of the video, but my eyes were drawn to the indentation near the base of this superb, plumed tail.   Please note that this is an embedded video which may stop working as it is held on the Reddit.com servers. I can't control that. I have included a screenshot of the video in case that happens. This is an interesting and, in some ways, charming video of a Maine Coon cat playing on the Reddit.com website. I love to see domestic cats playing enthusiastically. However, I noticed that this cat's gloriously plumed tail (for which the Maine Coon is famous) was missing fur towards its base. Does this Maine Coon have stud tail? Image: Screenshot from video. My mind immediately turned to a not uncommon feline health condition called stud tail . I do not know if this attractive Maine Coon is suffering from stud tail, but it looks likely from the video. That is all I can say at the moment. N...
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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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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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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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Popular posts from this blog

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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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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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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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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