Purebred Maine Coon
So, I have seen a lot of speculation about what it means to have a purebred Maine Coon, how you can tell, and why it is so important to only purchase purebreds. I wanted to talk a little bit about what I have found interesting about this topic.
Starting with what is a purebred Maine Coon? In simple terms, a purebred Maine Coon is just one that is sired from the same breed. To know for certain whether a Maine Coon is purebred you need to know its origins. This is where we get the term pedigree. A pedigree cat means a cat that is registered with a cat association with a traceable lineage. You may have a cat who’s every physical and behavioral trait point to it being a Maine Coon but without knowing its Sire and Dam it can be difficult to know.
Of course, you can DNA test your cat and I highly recommend everyone do so. It is fun to find out what kind of cat you have and what breeds they have in them even if it is more than one. If by some miracle you do have a purebred Maine Coon that you picked up off the side of the street you can get in touch with a cat association and get your cat registered!
The next thing I see a lot of debate about is inbreeding with purebred Maine Coon. Any purebred Maine Coon will have a certain amount of inbreeding in their line. In the 1800s there were only about 35 Maine Coons known to exist in the USA, so of course there had to be some mixing in there somewhere to get the numbers we have today. Other breeds, like Russian Blue’s, only had 5 recorded in the USA as of Pre 19th Century! In fact, Maine Coons are on the higher end of the genetic diversity scale thanks to wonderful breeders who dedicate their time and energy to improving the breed standard.
Cat breeders do their best to combat this in two major ways. The first is to simply do your best to hold on to breeding cats with diverse DNA. DNA tests have come so far that they can show us what percentage of genetic diversity our cats have. Right now, Maine Coons average 32%-37% genetic diversity, which is a very long way from where it was but still far from where we want it. We combat this by holding onto cats with high genetic diversity with the goal of breeding them with another highly diverse cat.
The other way to diversify the gene pool is to carefully replace unfavorable genes with favorable ones. This is usually better left to people who specialize in it because is requires an extreme amount of understanding and ability to manipulate a Maine Coons genetic structure in just the right ways to maintain the good and filter out the bad.
Finally, I want to talk about why purebred and pedigree Maine Coons are so important. The first, and most obvious, is that they have such unique personalities! Take Maine Coons, for example. They are wonderful, gentle, loving cats that act more like dogs in most scenarios. If you were to mix those personality traits with another breed you would likely end up with a much less unique cat.
Many people think that purebred Maine Coons are more unhealthy or more work to take care of and most of the time this is not true. In fact, the benefit of buying a purebred Maine Coon from a responsible breeder versus going to your local shelter to adopt a stray is that you have a full ancestral health history at your disposal with a breeder because they have all that information. Any responsible breeder should be testing for the major health issues that commonly occur in their breed of choice. More than likely if you have chosen a good breeder you are left with a happy and healthy kitten that is more unlikely to have serious health problems than a cat with and unknown origin.
I get very passionate about purebred and pedigree Maine Coons because I think purebred cats of every breed are a celebration of everything that is great about cats. You could sit down and make a list of traits you wanted to have in a cat and probably find a breed that aligned with your wants. It is a beautiful thing to have so many cats that are so different from each other and it is because of that I know that everyone can find their perfect cat.
I have been blessed through my time doing this to watch every single person my cats interacted with fall in love with them, even the ones who claimed to not like cats. Anyone who claims to not be a cat person simply has not found their perfect cat yet and continuing to support breeders when you are ready to bring more love into your home gives us the capability to do just that. To protect, improve, and maintain these beautiful breeds that so many people love so much.
Yuki Matsumoto, Napat Ruamrungsri, Minori Arahori, Hisashi Ukawa, Ken Ohashi, Leslie A. Lyons, Genki Ishihara, Genetic relationships and inbreeding levels among geographically distant populations of Felis catus from Japan and the United States, Genomics, Volume 113, Issue 1, Part 1, 2021, Pages 104-110, ISSN 0888-7543, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygeno.2020.11.018. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888754320320164)
