This man on TikTok, Robert Coad (robertcoad530), claims to have bred a Maine Coon/Lykoi hybrid or a Maine Coon Lykoi mix which he calls a Lycoon. And he appears to be doing this informally in his apartment or house.
He presents his efforts on TikTok. He is very pleased with himself but I’m not pleased with him because he is informally breeding cats i.e. bringing cats into the world when there is already a surplus, many of which are unwanted and at shelters where many of them end up being euthanized because nobody wants to adopt them.
Formally speaking the Maine Coon Lykoi mix is hypothetical and will never happen under the auspices of the cat fancy
MikeB
Moan, moan, moan. Yes, I am moaning and being negative and criticising him but I think it is fair to do so. I think Robert is being very self-indulgent and is doing this for his amusement and a bit of TikTok success. It is the same old story: there is a manic desire to attain fame on social media anyway possible. Understandable but not a good idea if the cat – a sentient being – is the vehicle or means to that success.
He thinks it is a good idea or he has not considered whether it’s a good idea or not. He’s just tinkering with nature thinking that he can create a new breed of domestic cat. He has failed to consider the ethical issues.
Hybridization of the breeds is the kind of way that many of the established cat breeds have been created which is to hybridise an existing breed by mating them with another cat breed. But it is not a good idea in the grand scheme of things. In terms of animal welfare and in terms of behaving with propriety and decency.
The cat associations would not approve of this. The CFA breed standard makes it clear that the Maine Coon cat cannot be outcrossed with another breed or random bread cat. The goal is to keep them truly purebred and to maintain the appearance. To fix the appearance as it is. The Maine Coon cat has a very special appearance with very distinctive aspects of their anatomy such as the heavy, square muzzle and the tall lynx-tipped ears. The Maine Coon is very long and never rotund or cobby.
Note: the video above is embedded here. It may disappear and if that has happened, I am sorry. The music is nice. The video quality is crap.
There is another aspect of this which I don’t like. The Lykoi cat breed itself should not have been created because in Germany this cat would be regarded as an example of ‘torture breeding’. It’s a cat without a full coat. The coat is sparse and it looks as if the animal has a health problem which it hasn’t but a cat should have their coat to keep them warm and to benefit their health. A domestic cat has a coat for a reason. Nature gave it to them. Why should we, the human, take it away from them? If you do this you create problems as is evident for the hairless cats which acquire grimy, oily coats as the natural oils from the sebaceous glands have nowhere to go.
The Lykoi Maine Coon mix is a hypothetical cat. It’s been talked about quite a lot and some people think that they should be formally created. Robert is doing this it seems but the video on this page is very poor quality and you can’t see the kittens which he claims to be Lycoons.
I have published the video nonetheless which no doubt Robert will dislike because I’ve criticised him on this page.
