All the great Maine Coon cats live in America. It is an American cat, after all. And Americans are better at doing ‘large’ than the Brits. But now we have one in the UK and we are very proud of him. His name is Ludo. He weighs 24.5 pounds (11 kg). He is 45 inches long and yet is only 17 months of age so he should continue growing. We’re told that Maine Coons do not reach maturity until several years of age. However, that last phase includes fating up but I think it is far to say that Ludo has not quite finished growing.
You can see in the photograph that he is a brown tabby-and-white. His has classic looks for this cat breed. His caretakers are Kelsey and Matthew Gill who live in West Yorkshire, which is in the North of England.
Mrs Gill runs a chip shop with her husband. Ludo is double the size of his siblings says Mrs Gill.
His character is typical of this breed. He is very friendly and affectionate. Some visitors are scared of him because of his size. He is the size of small-medium sized dog.
Not all Maine Coon cats are this size. It is a fallacy to think that they are because some of them are bigger than the average cat but not a great deal bigger, especially females. But the breed does throw up some very large cats and on average they are the largest domestic cat breed.
We know that an American Maine Coon called Stewie was the world’s longest domestic cat at 48.5 inches although he died in 2013 from cancer. Well, we can see that Ludo is a mere 3 inches behind and therefore it seems possible that he just might end up being the world’s longest domestic cat.
Long does not necessarily mean big. Maine Coons are known to be leggy and long. The are described as ‘substantial’ in size by the cat fancy but I think it is fair to say that their uneven, medium-long fur hides a rather slender body.
Thanks Mathew for that info.
Ludo was bought from Katemaz. I think she’s having a break from breeding cats at the moment.
Google says the GCCF website may be hacked! I wonder if someone has messed around with the pages.
There has been a huge drop in pedigree numbers. I am surprised to see that.
I am not surprised the Persian has been knocked off the top spot. This is possibly partly because of me 😉 . I almost certainly have an inflated view of my influence but I have written quite a few articles on Persian cat health issues arising out of poor breeding practices and a crazy breed standard. For many years these articles were top ranked by Google so they were read by many.
I have stopped dictating (using Dragon Dictate) articles because it is not accurate enough and I was missing some of the errors.
The Maine Coon comes third based on the number of cats registered with the GCCF.
I’m sure the Maine Coon does very well in popularity polls with the voting public, but that isn’t quite the same as the number of people actually buying them. (Or any other breed).
The GCCF have detailed analysis of breed numbers on their web site. Overall, pedigree cat numbers are going down in the UK. In 1997 there was a total of 32,696 pedigree cats registered, by 2014 that number was reduced to 20,236.
In the UK, the Persian has been replaced by the Ragdoll and Maine Coon as longhaired pedigree of choice. As they have risen in the rankings, the Persian has continued to drop.
I did a poll years ago and the Maine Coon came out most popular. That may be because most of the voters were American. It is a very impressive breed of cat. I’d feel more anxious about letting a superbly impressive Maine Coon free roam outside. I am not sure I could live with it.
I am not sure too how the GCCF measure popularity. Probably the number of registrations of individual cats. I wonder if that is an accurate measure of popularity to the public.