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Thread: What made you choose a Maine Coon?

  1. #1
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    What made you choose a Maine Coon?

    We all know Maine Coons are the best breed ever, but what made you choose the breed?

    I will post our story first to get it going.
    6 years ago me and fiance at the time moved in together and both loved cats and decided to 'rescue' one, so we found a breed rescue place with every intention of taking in a persian

    When we went to view our possible persian, as we walked into where the cages were the lady let out this huge black boy Maine Coon called George, he just followed us around chattering to us whilst we were looking at our persian, we nearly changed our mind and chose George, but he looked really happy and comfortable with life, the persian looked scared and in need of a lot of love, so we took the persian home, she was already named Purrdie and she is a gorgeous white Chinchilla
    Think we always wanted a Maine Coon after that and decided (after Purrdie had a short spell of illness in the summer) that we would not want to be without another cat, so took the plunge and started searching for a silver tabby maine coon

    No regrets!
    ToniGee likes this.

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    About two years ago my husband was at a clients house and they had a Maine Coon. He came back home that evening and kept talking about this fantastic cat he had seen. He said it spoke to him all evening and then sat on his lap and he had never seen such a beautiful cat. I had never heard of them before that. I looked them up and agreed they were a king amongst cats and we have always said if we were ever in a position to have a cat that would be the one we'd get. Well the timing seemed right and I mentioned it to my husband one evening a couple of weeks ago, had a chat with my dog breeder to ask if she thought I'd have a problem with my dogs and a cat and the next weekend we were driving down to see a litter! My son keeps telling his friends we are getting a lion

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    Thats a lovely story Diane.

    Well, my hubby went to work in the US and his friend had a Maine Coon kitten and whilst he was there, he was telling me how great this kitten was and that he was such charachter. When he got back he told me that if we was ever to get a cat then we will choose a MC.

    4 years passed and we never really thought about it anymore, until a lovely stray cat came to our lives last summer, she came from nowehere and decided to live with us for 3 months. Despite searching for her owners etc, we never found them. We really got attached to her and even called her Ruby. Then one day, she just didnt come back, we looked for her for days but with no joy. So we assumed that she must have gone back to her original owners.

    The whole family was so sad when she left and we realised what we have been missing. So, we decided that maybe a pet cat would be lovely. Then we remembered the MC that my hubby met 4 years ago. So we decided to research the breed and the more we read about them, the more we knew that a MC would be a suitable pet for our family. Now, the rest is history! We love him to bits... and yes NO REGRETS!
    balam likes this.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Karena View Post
    My son keeps telling his friends we are getting a lion
    Haha! My son came home today and said "No one believes me mum when I told my friends how big our cat will grow!" bless him.
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  5. #5
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    Had a longhaired cat years ago (ordinary moggie) but it was just a fantastic looking cat. Sadly it got killed in a car accident on the morning we were bringing it to the vets to get neutered
    I always said that if I was ever in a position to get a cat again, I would get a longhaired cat.
    My husband and I recently bought our apartment and we had been considering a dog but after careful consideration, thought a cat would suit living in an apartment much better then a dog.
    After doing some research on pedigree breeds I chose the Maine Coon. My Aunt had 2 Persians cats but I just prefer that proper wild cat look and they sounded like such characters that I won won over.
    Contacted 2 breeders and got a chance to visit one and have a look at her cats and kittens and the rest is history

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    I first read about them in a novel years and years ago and thought I would love one.

    Last year at the perth ag show we saw one and I told dh that I'd always wanted one of them, so after discussing it he said I could get one.... the boy we saw was so beautiful.

  8. #7
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    When I was 3yr old we moved into our new home which unfortunately had a pretty bad mouse problem. From what Im told it wasnt uncommon to see one per day. So my dad went off to a cat home to find the best mouser cat he could find.
    At the cat home, he walked along the row of pens looking in. Each cat in turn would turn and look at him. About three quarters of the way down the line of pens he arrived at a pen with a black cat in it and put his hand on the pen bars to entice the cat closer.
    It worked, a little too well in fact. Within seconds he was nursing a big scratch down his hand!
    ..and so our first ever cat which I named 'Dumper' (as in Dumper truck, hey.. I was 3 at the time!) come home.
    I absolutely adored Dumper. Not only for the size she grew to which was pretty big, but for her ability to do anything she wanted without any regard to anyone else. Very few people would be allowed to smooth her. If they got close she would hiss, a bit closer and it would be louder hiss, within smoothing range and you'd better be wearing protective gear.
    Me however, she would come and sit on my lap. Let me smooth her. Play games with me etc. She quickly became 'my' cat
    Sadly, as is inevitable, she died when I was 16/17yr old. The memories are awesome and I definately have an affection for cats which are intelligent and have plenty of character.

    Now coming up to present day. Our previous home didnt lend itself to looking after cats as it was near two busy roads and when I say near, I could easily throw a stone onto them from our front door. However, we've recently moved into a large house which is outside of the city & in a nice quiet cauldesac (if I spelt that correctly). Plenty of room both in the house and out in the garden which started my 'hmmmm we could get cats..' thoughts running again.

    So after a little bit of browsing the web we chose.. Bengals!
    Yep. Thats right. Not coonies, but bengals. My wife being a tiger lover thought they looked amazing. It wasnt until a bit later we stumbled on a few write ups with words to the effect of "these cats will destroy your home if they want to and there isnt a lot you can do about it". I wasnt willing to take the risk of having two mobile furry shredders moving from room to room so the search for 'our cats' started up again.

    Now the bit about coonies
    A few days later, and I dont know why I didnt think of this before, I typed something like 'breeds of cats' into google and spent a few minutes going through a long list of breeds. Within that list was 'estimated size when fully grown' and Im thinking "surely a typo!!! What type of cat gets to 18lbs in weight!!!"
    open new web window
    goto google
    type 'maine coon' in and hit enter
    click on images
    Shout "holy (insert word)! Sue.. come see this!!!" to wife who is in next room.

    Im a bloke, we tend to like big things. So big cats which have such awesome markings were an instant hit for me. I then spent the remaining day light hours researching maine coons finding out that they have excellent temperments, huge depth of character, trainable, one of the most intelligent cats, use front paws a bit like hands, very smooth silky coat, minimal maintenance needed of coat, arent really lap cats, have a unique meow, some like to talk to you and the selling point for me...
    They sometimes pick one person in a family to bond with them

    From that point on it was a done deal. I bought books on them, searched the web & filled up my favourites bar with breeders and websites with good info, spent hours and hours looking for kittens until finding the absolute perfect pair for myself & Sue.
    Joanna Ward and Goldie like this.

  9. #8
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    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.

  10. #9
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    Everything starts with my dream to have a dog. I spent the last 5 years to partecipate to trainings about education and obedience, I've visited lot's of breeders in order to found the best one. I was too near to realize my dream, it should be autumn 2009 but unfortunately problems at work and not only interupted everything... my heart was broken, I waited so long, I studied so hard, I spent so much money... and then nothing.... I was depressed. After some days we saw at the television a cat show about "norvegese delle foreste" and we were so impressed that we started to search on internet some information. We found an article that compared that breed with maine coon, love at first sight! Then we started to look for a kitten, a red one and we found him, after one week Mellow was at home!!!
    We were in a hurry, so we didn't visit the breeder and weren't informed about the diseaes about maine coon breed, but we were lucky. Now I'm very informed about it and Mellow is heal. The breeder has really beautiful cats, heal, he tooks lots of attention to the health of his cats and to the kitten socialization.

  11. #10
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    I had always had dogs growing up, and my wife and I had gotten a pair of maltese puppies the year before our daughter was born. About 6+ years ago my daughter had been asking for a kitten and had been reading up on the different breeds. Meanwhile, my wife began feeding a neighborhood cat that she finally realized was stray (everyone had thought he belonged to somebody else). He was a large orange long-haired cat--the neighborhood alpha male! He had been around for some time--at least through one winter--and we had chased him off several times when he was hunting birds by our feeders. Anyway, when I found out that she had started feeding the cat (it was November), I was not happy, as I did not want a cat and certainly not that one. However, as I began seeing him coming for food and it got colder, I became the one who put out a blanket with heating pad and a heated water bowl. It got so I was taking him a plate of meat first thing every morning--and he would be waiting. Turned out when you got up close to him, he was quite beautiful, and we noticed he had many of the characteristics of a Maine Coon according to my daughter's books. Eventually we took him in and had him neutered. Since he was horribly matted, he was shaved, so was very cuddly due to being cold, and I got quite attached to him because he slept right next to *me* in bed every night. Unfortunately, about a month after we took him in he went into congestive heart failure--turned out he had HCM! Anyway, we were able to keep him alive for another 4+years thanks to medication. He became a wonderful pal over that time--and I decided I loved cats--at least I loved MCs. Because of that guy's wonderful temperament (definitely a MC mix), we ended up getting a purebred Maine Coon. We now have four of them: two girls and two boys.

 

 
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