Am I understanding correctly? The only way you can say your cat is a Maine Coon is if it has papers and is bought from a breeder? The cats originally came from the wild, right? Can you have a professional look at your cat and say it is a Maine Coon and get papers that way?

-- Anonymous, October 18, 1998

Answers

Response to Maine Coon Breed

Janet -

You can call you cat what ever you want to. :-)

Pedigree Maine Coon, or plain old 'coon, I'm sure your cat won't care. And I'm sure you wouldn't love him any less, or more, if he had the title 'King of Cats'.

In order to show (or, one hopes, to breed) you would need to demonstrate that your cat is Pedigreed. This is done to control what shows up in the gene pool. In CFA, that would require the last 4 generations behind your cat were all Maine Coons.

But there are plenty of "Maine Coon look-alikes" out there, ruling homes and farms. They are also eligible to be shown in HHP (household pet) catagory, along with other cats on unknown parentage.

My first few Maine Coons predated the 'official' recognition of the breed, so they have been registered. If you want to do a little more reading, I suggest you get a copy of "That Yankeee Cat" by Marilis Hornidge. She has a lot of information about the history of the Maine Coon, and also a little about the struggle to have the Maine Coon recognised by the different associations. Now the Maine Coon is the second most popular cat, in numbers registered with CFA. You might like to attend a cat show too, to see if you can spot the differances between Maine Coon, Norweigen Forest Cat and Siberian.

Enjoy you cat, what ever you call him

regards

Cathy Crossgrove

-- Anonymous, October 18, 1998

Response to Maine Coon Breed

That's correct. You must have registration papers to say your cat is a Maine Coon. There are, however, Maine Coon "look-alikes" which can be registered as foundation cats with the Cat Fanciers Federation. However, those cats are registered as Foundation One cats; it takes four generations of breeding back to registered Maine Coons before kittens originating out of Foundation One cats can be registered as pedigreed Maine Coons.

/All/ pedigreed cats originated out of wild cats. It took breeders selecting for particular type to create registered breeds.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1998

Response to Maine Coon Breed

Well I did'nt even know what a maine coon was till my friend told me I had one .

-- Anonymous, December 16, 1998

A King is a peasant with a pedigree. They are inbreed, some lines tend to be bleeders, and there is nothing to suggest they are any brighter than the average peasant. I have an exceptionally fine looking brown tabby I rescued from a feral litter I found behind my garage. He obviously has Maine Coon ancestery---just like Maine Coon cats entered in shows. I have no intention of ever entering him in a cat show as I have a rather firm belief that show standards are mainly based on simple minded bigotry. A show quality cat or dog can have genetic defects proven by litter after litter, but still have a pedigree and be considered a show quality animal suitable for breeding purposes. Until associations pull the pedigrees of animals with genetic defects proven by their litters, I will continue to have a low opinion of a breeding program which encourages the preservation of genes likely to lower the quality of life of every future animal in the blood line. To further agrivate this simple minded practice; beautiful, happy, healthy animals, with no known genetic defects, and no pedigree, can only be entered in shows when proof of their inability to breed has been supplied. While I have no idea of the "pedigree" of my "Maine Coon" cat, there is a certain amount of peace of mind which comes from knowing nature handled the culling process rather than the "culling" process being handled by fools.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001