THE MAINE COON CAT

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

 

 

 

 

 

          Myths, legends and lore surround the Maine Coon Cat. Some are amusing, some are fantastic flights of fantasy and some are merely plausible. They certainly provide good material for conversation. Books and articles dealing with these aspects of the Maine Coon cat have been well received as people never seem to tire of the subject and are always eager to know more about this wonderful breed.

 

 

 

ORIGIN

 

          The Maine Coon is a natural cat breed that originated in Maine. A journal article was published about the coon-cat of the late 1800s stating: "... all of them come from Maine, simply for the reason that the breed is peculiar as yet to that State." "Coon-cats have been recognized as a distinct breed in Maine for so long that the memory of the oldest inhabitant runs back to their beginning." "You will find them in almost any village in that part of the world." The Maine cat was recognized as a distinct breed of cat long ago and known as the "coon-cat" in the mid 1800s prior to the Civil War in recorded history and documented early descriptions of the Maine cat by a well known and celebrated Maine author who lived in that era prior to 1850.

 

In the 17th and 18th centuries, domestic cats brought over on ships faced very severe winters in Maine, where only the strongest and most adaptable cats survived. “Natural selection (and climate) has had a significant effect on (longhair/Maine Coon) gene frequency in the 200-300 generations since domestic cats were introduced to America." The Maine Coon developed outdoors into a large, rugged cat with a water-resistant, thick, longhair coat and a hardy constitution. The fur coat developed outdoors into a coat that is particularly unique and distinct from other long-hair breeds.

 

 

 

FOLKLORE

 

          The origin of the breed (and its name) has several, often untrue, folklore surrounding it - all coming from Mainers story-telling and dry sense of humor. One tale comes from this journal account of actual story-telling in 1901 by the down east locals.

 

"Strange to say, there are comparatively few people south or west of New England who know what a coon-cat is. If you ask that question `down in Maine,` however, the citizens will seem surprised at your ignorance, and will explain to you, in a condescending way, that the creature in question is half raccoon—the descendant of `a cross between a 'coon and a common cat.`" Though biologically impossible, this false story, was the result of Mainer's good old leg-pulling and gullible tourists. According to that 1901 account (as you can see), these cats were still referred to as "coon-cats".

 

A related story is that the cat was named after a ship's captain named Coon who was responsible for the cat reaching Maine shores. This story comes from a Mainer named Molly Haley (prior to 1820) as her oral history of the cat’s name that was published in this 1986 Maine newspaper article.

(Born 1911 Lida Tarbox) "Her father's account of the Maine Coon goes back to his great-grandmother, Molly Haley, who lived on the Haley farm next to the Tarboxe's, just up from the `pool,`or gut where the Saco River and the Atlantic Ocean meet. This was before Maine became a state (1820) and when the four-masted schooners hauled cargo to Maine from around the world.

 

A cabin boy named Tom Coon, from which the "coon" cat purportedly gets its name, worked aboard the sailing vessel Glen Laurie. One of his jobs when ashore was to collect cats, which were then used to rid the sailing vessel of wharf rats. On one of these rat-catcher expeditions, Tom smuggled in a beautiful longhair. The safe harbor for both the first coon and her subsequent litter was the Tarbox farm at Biddeford Pool, where the Glen Laurie anchored to take on supplies at the Cutts store at the Pool. When the cabin boy became a captain, he continued to bring the exotic long-hairs to the farm during his ocean voyages." (Documentation of a whaling Captain Coon and his ocean-going family exists in the Maine State Library).

 

Another story is a legend from an island dwelling mainer that the breed sprang from pet cats that Marie Antoinette sent to Wiscasset, Maine when she was planning to escape from France during the French Revolution. This story is told in "The Legend of Rosalind of Squam Island".

 

Nevertheless, most breeders today believe that the breed originated in matings between perhaps pre-existing shorthaired domestic cats and overseas longhairs, perhaps Angora types introduced by New England seamen, or perhaps longhairs brought to America by the Vikings. Maine Coons are similar in appearance to both the Norwegian Forest Cat and to the Siberian.