Thread: What made you choose a Maine Coon?

Good question…

When I was a child, my neighbours had this beautiful, big long haired cat. I don’t think it was a real maine coon, but one of its parents most probably was. My parents didn’t like the idea of pets with long hair, so I was only allowed short haired cats (and dogs for that matter) as pets. But I fell in love with the looks of our neighbours’ cat and knew that one day I wanted to own a cat like that as well.
When I went to university, I wasn’t allowed to have pets in the student dorm, and I missed it so much, that when my boyfriend and I decided to rent a place together after we graduated, the first thing we did was get pets! Our first cat was our house cat, Pixel. But since we would be out of the house all day for our jobs, we decided it would be better if she had a friend to play with. I very much liked to have a pedigree cat (yes, one with long hair), and so I started to do research on the internet. I bumped into two cat breeds that I liked: Norwegian Forest Cats and Maine Coons. After reading more about them and looking at lots of cattery websites and pictures, in the end, I decided that the looks and character of the Maine Coon appealed to me a little more than that of the Norwegian Forest Cat (although they still come in a second place, especially since I got to know the breed better thanks to visiting and participating in cat exhibitions).
I then started searching the net to see if there were catteries close to where I live; and I bumped into the website of cattery of the white witch. The cattery is only at a 10mins drive from our house, and at that time, Willow and his brothers and sisters were only about 3 weeks old. I saw Willows picture on the website and immediately fell in love with him. I sent a mail to the cattery telling them a little about myself and asking whether Willow would still be available and if it was possible to get more pictures. The same day I received an answer from the cattery, telling me more about the way they work (medical tests, how they raise the kittens, …), about their cats and the kittens and attached to the mail were lots of pictures. It seemed like we immediately got along, and when Ollie got home in the evening, I showed him the e-mail, cattery website and the pictures. He also thought that Willow was a beautiful kitten, and since I was having some time off, I decided to go and visit the cattery a week or two later. I spent almost the entire afternoon at the cattery, and have to say that I also immediately decided that Willow would be coming to live with us.
When Ollie got home that night, he asked me how it was, and I was very enthousiastic of course. He was like: “ok… so I guess you made up your mind then!”. Haha He didn’t really have any say in it, but lucky for me, he didn’t object!
After Willow came to live with us, we started to love coonies even more, so when that same year, Willows half brothers and sisters were born, we very quickly decided that the red male in the litter, Indy, would join our family as well.
And since then, we got Maine Coon addicted! So at the end of 2009 we welcomed n°3: our beautiful black princess, Esme. And I’m pretty sure that from now on, we’ll always have Maine Coons in our lives.