Here is a quick look at the evolution history of North America’s favorite naturally occurring longhaired cat. Preservation breeders have spent centuries protecting this beloved breed by prioritizing the standard over passing fads. Help us spread the word by sharing if you enjoy watching this video❣️😺
RELATED POST: The Origin & Evolution of the Maine Coon Cat
Video Transcription:
GENTLE GIANT: The Making of the Modern Maine Coon
This is a Maine Coon cat. Cat fanciers call them the gentle giant.
They grew up on farms and wharves of Maine, and nobody can say exactly how they got there.
The earliest dated cat we know of is from 1861, a black long-haired cat named Captain Jenks of the Horse Marines.
Mrs. Pierce, who kept these cats from childhood, wrote that they just “growed,” further back than the oldest inhabitant could remember.
Mainers called them coon cats. Many people believed a house cat had crossed with a raccoon.
A cat cannot cross with a raccoon, and the papers were saying so by 1886.
Another story has sailors bringing long-haired cats home from foreign ports to mix with the local cats. Nobody knows for sure.
By the 1800s coon cats were winning prizes at Maine fares and buyers came calling
One Bangor cat was valued at $1000 in 1884. Farmers sold kittens at five dollars a head, and one shipper sent out 3000 cats in a single year.
In May 1895, a brown tabby of Maine type won at the big New York show in Madison Square Garden.
What exactly did the cat win? The old accounts disagree on the spelling, the sex, the owner, and the award.
The fashion changed. Imported cats arrived with long pedigrees, and judges stopped looking at a cats without one.
By 1904 the Maine cats nearly disappeared from the shows. One 1959 yearbook called the breed extinct. The same book lists Maine cats at shows into 1919.
The cats themselves never went anywhere. They stayed on the farms and along the coast doing what they had always done.
By 1953 the central Maine cat club began holding shows at Skowhegan, with homemade rosettes and prizes from local merchants.
The top a word was best Coon cat for Maine‘s own breed.
Mrs. Robert Whittemore of Augusta won in 1954, and sold Maine Coon kittens from her Augusta cattery for years after.
In August 1968 six owners met Salisbury, Connecticut and formed the Maine Coon Breeders and Fanciers Association.
Their newsletter, the scratch sheet sent out to win the breed a place in every registry.
Recognition came in one registry at a time, starting in 1967.
CFA, the biggest registry at the time, granted championship for the 1976 season and Europe’s FIFe followed in 1984.
In 1985 the Maine Coon became the official state cat of Maine.
Breeders then turns to health. In 1993 researchers found that heart disease ran in Maine Coon families.
DNA test arrived in 2005 in 2006, and screening breeding cats became part of breeding the right way,
Most registered Maine Coons today trace back to a handful of foundation cats, and to one 1978 pairing whose kittens looked so alike that breeders called them the clones.
A breed built on so few ancestors pays for it in health over the long-term, so keeping the gene pool diverse became the next job.
Preservation breeders, still bring in new foundation cats, unregistered long hairs that fit the standard, and work them in carefully over generations.
Every cat is health tested, and every pairing is planned with the breed’s future in mind.
Anyone can pair two cats and get cute kittens. Preserving a breed takes more care than that.
So what exactly are they preserving?
The written standard describes a large, rugged working cat: long, rectangular body, a shaggy coat, big tufted paws, and a long bushy tail.
The Maine Coon’s personality is laid-back and confident. They love to be near people, and will greet your guests instead of hiding.
Mini play fetch, walk on a leash, and keep their kitten energy into old age, talking in soft chips and trills instead of loud meows.
The standard exist to preserve health, temperament, and type. Not trends or fashion.
Some breeders breed for personal preference instead of the written standard, and non-standard traits have begun to show up in the breed.
Colorpoint coats, chocolate, the so-called phoenix colors, and dominant blue eyes in cats with little or no white are not in any Maine Coon standard.
These traits are undesirable in North America’s only naturally occurring, long-haired breed, and responsible breeders avoid them in their breeding programs.
Today Maine Coons live around the world from Sweden to Japan to Australia.
One of them, Stewie, held the world record at 48 1/2 inches from nose to tail.
From the barn to the show bench and back, -the gentle giant is still North America’s favorite native long-haired and natural domestic cat.
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