What’s it like being owned by a Maine coon?

What’s their temperament like?

Maine coon boys are, basically, big babies. From their chirrupy meow to their ‘need’ to kiss you and cuddle you, they are just big kids. Walter sleeps snuggled up to me in bed when he’s not ‘working*’. Whisky gives head bobs and chirps to get my attention. Cubby and Benjen both like to try and sit on my knee at the same time.

How do they get on with other animals?

In my experience, brilliantly. Our lot are used to dogs, living with Dief, Woody and with friends’ dogs that come to visit. The dogs are often more bothered by the MCs than the other way round.  The kittens are often a bit spooked when they first encounter the dogs, but as the dogs ignore the spitting and hissing, the kittens soon follow the lead of the bigger cats and join in the cuddling and washing. They all seem to accept Dief washing them and Woody trying to carry them around….

Similarly, they’re OK with other cats. Our sadly missed House Cat Louis used to rule the roost over the MCs.

We’ve had quite a lot of ‘foster cats’ and lots of our babies back for holidays. They are normally welcomed by their family members, with Leia hissing at them.

Do they need a lot of grooming?

This is a ‘depends on the cat’ one.  And I am the worst MC owner when it comes to grooming. Popo and Cubby rarely get knots, River and Jupiter are always covered in them.

I have cat combs stationed throughout the house at all points I’m likely to sit down at, and try to do a lot of gentle grooming when someone happens to wander up for a cuddle.

Is it true they like water?

In a word – yes! They’re very unlike other cats in that they’ll often paddle in the water bowl, sink or bath. Flora will actually try and get in the bath with me. Aramis, one of our original stud boys, would stand and pray to the sink god for the tap to be turned on.

This can be a pain when you come home to find an empty water bowl surrounded in water with a MC saying ‘more water in the bowl for me to play with please’!

Indoors or outdoors?

This is an interesting question, and you’ll find breeders who’ll argue vehemently for one or the other.

I’m in the ‘cats should go outdoors’ camp, but with some provisos. Maine coons are often not very traffic aware (see the bit on MC boys and their lack of sparks…), and I know several people who let their MC out and lost it to a car even on the quietest of country lanes. We’ve actually had at least one cat from nearly every litter we’ve had hit by a car… I also know many, many MCs who live very happily as indoor pets.

My recommendation is a compromise – provide your MC with a cat run or cat safe garden. That way they get the joys of the great outdoors, but in as safe a way as possible. One way to look at it is that you wouldn’t buy an expensive television and leave it in the road in the middle of the night. Letting your MC out unsupervised pretty much amounts to the same thing.

How big do they get?

In general, girls will be smaller than boys; in general, a Maine coon adult will be bigger than a cat the same age of a different breed (and a moggie is a breed in our house).

It is practically impossible to predict how big a kitten will grow – Pink has the same parents as her sister Aria, that she now lives with, but is much smaller, and she made some enormous boys – for example Hercules who comes back for his holidays. Pink was the smallest of the litter when everyone else went to their forever homes – they were all fed exactly the same.

Dexter is also quite small for a boy (he was a hand reared kitten, which probably explains it), but his offsping get quite large. Walter is our biggest boy, around 10kg when he’s not working*.

So, in summary, your Maine coon will probably be the biggest cat you’ve owned, but their size is just a part of this amazing breed, there is so much more to them!

How do I go about introducing a new kitten / cat to my existing cats?

There are various recommended strategies for this, and again, it depends on both the new kitten and your existing cats.

We tend to give the newbies their own space for a few days, get them used to the smell of each other, and slowly put their food bowls closer and closer until they’re all eating together – food is a great leveller!

Bish, our first stud boy was introduced to the household when he was over a year old (he came in from Germany, so had to wait for his passport). He came to us as a very shy cat, so I built a screen door for our kitten room and he stayed in there for a fortnight. We then left the screen door open, the other cats wandered in (welcoming banners aloft) and he slowly made his way out into the rest of the house. Oliver was a completely different story – he was a confident little man and left his room on day two…, walking into the living room as if he’s always been here! When Leia arrived, I’d planned for her to spend a couple of weeks in the kitten room with me sleeping in there with her… she ‘broke out’ on the first night and introduced herself to all the other cats…. By night two Louis was in the kitten room with us, washing her. They’ve were a couple ever since, and she mourned for several weeks when we lost him.

What do Maine coons need to keep them amused inside?

The short answer is a willing human with a feather stick. At all hours of the day and night.

The more realistic answer is toys, scratching posts and climbing trees. I have a cat-toy box (in the kitten room, away from the dogs… Woody has a cat nip problem!) that they help themselves to. It gets tidied up every evening before I go to bed, but they’ll frequently get every single toy out overnight. They’re also pretty fantastic about putting their toys under the furniture, so I have a ritual of retrieving cat toys and dog bones.

I have quite an assortment of different things – balls with bells, balls without bells, balls with feathers, cat nip filled toys, mice, springs… you name it! I’ve also got quite an impressive collection of ‘tickling sticks’ – they live in a cupboard though for human/cat games as the kittens have a habit of destroying them. Any that get left out by mistake are usually destroyed, taken out into the garden to get rained on or are eaten by Dief and Woody.

We’ve also got cat tunnels, which are great for hide and seek, and several toys that involve batting and chasing things.

Other favourites in my house are cardboard boxes and paper bags. I’ve also got bird feeders in our front garden and the cats (and dogs) spend a lot of time on the back of the sofa watching them out of the window.

What do I need to do in terms of litter etc if they are indoor cats?

The normal rule of thumb is one litter tray per cat, plus one. This means that if you’ve got a cat that won’t use a wet litter tray, they’ve got options. It also means that if you’ve got a bully, they can’t monopolise all the trays at once.

We’ve found that our cats are much less fussy and most of them prefer to use the garden, so we have less than the recommended amount most of the time.

There are many, many types of litter on the market, and I’m still trying to find the perfect one! We currently use a clumping one. We litter train the kittens with a paper based litter, and we use a variety of litter at shows.

Don’t cats scratch furniture?

All cats scratch. The only way to guarantee you won’t get your furniture scratched is to not get a cat.

So to protect your furniture you need scratching posts. Ideally you need several, and they need to be tall enough to allow the fully grown cat to scratch at full stretch. Have a look at the links page on our website for some suppliers of cat furniture – TT Luxury Towers have some excellent cat trees with scratching posts and Cat Tree King is good.

Additionally there are products you can buy to put on furniture to deter scratching, these range from types of tape to spray. I’ve often put clear tape on our soft furnishings to protect them. I was also the (unfortunate) owner of a set of wicker dining chairs (they were bought pre-Maine coons…) which the cats shredded….

What do you feed them?

Our Maine coons are fed on a mix of dried and wet food. We use Royal Canin biscuits – a mix of Kitten, Maine Coon Kitten (remember MCs aren’t fully grown until they are 4-5 years old), Maine Coon Adult, Oral, Queen and Hair & Skin .They get Cosma and Bozita wet food. They also get cooked chicken and fish and the odd bit of ham and tuna. I personally don’t feed my cats raw meat (PAT animals aren’t allowed to be fed raw), but many breeders do.

What can they be fed as a treat?

Ham is a favourite treat in our house, so is taurine paste, although Walter thinks I’m trying to poison him when I offer it to him… Dreamies are the top favourite that everyone likes. Some of them like cheese and will queue up with the dogs for me to pay ‘cheese tax’. Typically for cats, they all like / dislike different things!!!

Do they talk much?

Some do, some don’t. The boys ‘tend’ to have high pitched, girly meows, Bish (and many of his offspring) meowed in German… Many of the cats will chirp or meow when they want something – the tap turning on, food, attention. Walter and Cubby walk around chirping, to themselves, to me, to the dogs and to the other cats. Cubby snores… loudly. Leia ‘meeps’ at me for attention – usually in the middle of the night.