Thread: Can somebody tell me if my kitten is a Maine Coon?

Of course MC breeders that show their cats want to win, so they need to try to adhere to the MC standards for whatever organization they are showing under. Most organizations have their breed standards online so you can look at them. I know that TICA and CFA MC standards both mention "balance" in several places, so MCs with extremely large ears or the like definitely do not adhere to these standards. E.g., the TICA standard opens with this sentence: "Overall balance and proportion are essential to the Maine Coon and no one feature should dominate the eye's attention over any other."

As for "original" MCs, I think that if you look back at old pictures of long-haired cats from Maine, what you will see is some cats that look very much like CFA/TICA standard MCs of today, but also cats that look quite different, and certainly some that don't look "special" in any way. Writing the first breed standards was apparently fairly contentious since different breeders had different ideas of what a MC was supposed to look like.

Several people looking for MCs have posted sites of breeders that breed more "extreme" MCs, and from what I could see these people by and large do not show. Obviously some people may prefer this sort of look while others will not (I certainly do not). There may be more of such breeders in Europe, though I think that is unclear.

One of the things that I find interesting is how often somebody on this list, from some completely different part of the world, posts photos of their MC that looks very similar to one of ours. That is what standardization is supposed to do, it seems. Suppose there were people breeding, say, beagles with two inch long tails or one inch muzzles. Would we still consider these "beagles" or not? How would this be any different from breeding "Maine Coons" with extremely tall ears or huge muzzles?

The TICA MC page can be found:
TICA Maine Coon Breed Introduction

Check out both the Standard (text PDF) and the Seminar. The seminar links to a PDF presentation of the standard with lots of photos showing good/bad MC features and is a great way to learn what the breed is "supposed" to look like (note that for some reason the seminar PDF has been put in a zip archive).

The CFA standard can be found here:
Maine Coon Cat - Cat Fanciers' Association Breed Council

One of the best sites for historical info on MCs is PawPeds. I find the site quite hard to navigate, so I will directly link some useful MC components:

MC toplevel page:
PawPeds

Maine Coon Heritage Site:
PawPeds - Maine Coon Heritage Site

You can find a great deal of MC history by reading the articles/interviews:
List of articles

MC Ancestors site:
Maine Coon Ancestors - An archive of Maine Coon breeding cats and their breeders

Photos of early MCs:
Maine Coon Ancestors - An archive of Maine Coon breeding cats and their breeders.