Gentle Giants

Lore has it that when cats used by sailors in the 18th century for rat eradication on board sailing vessels, jumped ship, they mated with either a raccoon or a lynx to create the first indigenous cat breed in the US, the Maine Coon cat. Many people unfamiliar with the bred say, oh yes, I know about them. They're those Man Coon cats. The reason the lore about the Maine Coon has to do with either the raccoon or lynx is because the Maine Coon exhibits the color pattern of the raccoon and the tuft of hair on the ears, like the lynx. The first cat show in the US was held in Madison Square Garden in 1895 and was won by, yes, the Maine Cat (as they were called then). The breed does originate in the state of Maine. And if it weren't for the fine people of Maine, the Maine Coon cat might have become extinct. After the MC (I'll abbreviate from now on) won the 1st cat show, they were the cat's meow. But then came the exotic Siamese and the Persian. The MC soon fell out of favor and breeding for show stopped. But the people of Maine, who knew and loved these cats for their stellar stealthing for rodents, kept breeding them. And then in the 1950's, the MC made a comeback and is now the second most popular purebred in the US (behind that skinny, feral faced, loud mouthed Siamese. I fart in your general direction). I have had the good fortune to have had a MC rescue, Frisky, who lived to be 20 years old. I now am owned by two 4 year old MC brothers, Kokopelli and Botticelli, or better known as Koko and Bocce. (Update...1/28/14...my boys are now 9 years old.) Read more...