Maine Coon Cats
I love the Maine Coon Cat breed. I love large cats, so the Maine Coon suits me perfectly. With there fluffy appearance and lions mane they have an air of authority about them almost a regal bearing, but are very gentle, social and considered to be extremely intelligent and completely trainable. Loyal to their loved ones, and not necessarily approachable by strangers. The Main Coon cat is not the stereo typical lap cat, but much more so the independent pussy cat.
The coats of the Maine Coon are silky soft but are not considered high maintenance due to a very light density undercoat. The Main Coon comes in a very wide variety of coat colors and lengths. Very adaptable to family life even if their family includes children, dogs and other cats. Main Coons are not dainty by any means or stretch of the imagination…slow to physically mature Main Coons don’t stop developing until they are around 4 yrs. old and when they are finally finished males can reach weights of 18 lbs or more and females somewhere around 12 lbs or more. Maine Coon Cats can stand from the shoulder any where between 10 and 16 in, and from the tip of their little cat noses to the tip of their bushy tails they can reach lengths of up to 40 inches!
One of the many rumors surrounding the origins of this cat breed involves an English sea captain by the name of Charles Coon who kept many long haired cats on board his ships to help keep down the rodent population. When the ships would dock in New England’s harbors the cats would take shore leave and breed with the local female feral cats thus producing litters of long haired kittens referred to as “Coon’s Cats”, and my personal favorite impossibility of origin is that a large feral cat mated with a raccoon…now we all know that’s just plain silly and genetically impossible.