Will the Maine Coon become an American Icon?

“The most masculine of cats,” tout defenders of the breed, and they are indeed rugged, solid creatures who look as if they ought to be de-mousing a lighthouse on the stormy coast of Maine rather than sprawling on the settee. That is, after all, what they were probably bred for. Picture a cat, a large one, with tufted ears and a lumbering gait and a cheerful disposition; a coat with an undercoat of insulation, and oversized paws fit for trampling snow or scurrying up a tree trunk. Drooping whiskers, a propensity to sprout extra toes on his feet, an unusually expressive tail, and a dour, owlish expression that is almost a pout complete the Maine Coon, a creature on the cusp of entering America’s national pantheon of icons.

The Maine Coon is fast approaching the status of charismatic megafauna like orcas and eagles and howling white wolves. No other breed of cat has starred in so many viral videos, has inspired so many airbrushed t-shirts or so many wretched – and even a few not-so-wretched – tchotchkes as the Maine Coon. A search for “Maine Coon” returns 56.4 million search results, while its longhaired cousin the Persian returns only 8.1 million and the Abyssinian returns a mere 3.4 million. The Coon’s combination of rugged looks and an undeniably goofy disposition seem thoroughly plugged into that folksy vein of Americana that generated Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox Babe. There is also an almost mystical air to the cat’s provenance.

No one really knows when the first Maine Coon came lumbering out of Maine’s timberlands to sprawl in front of wood stoves, though there are some pretty compelling creation myths floating around on the internet. For the cat to truly become part of America’s enduring iconography of log cabins and cowboys and ironclads and the Stars and Stripes, however, one of these peculiar stories will have to stick. Which one will it be?  The most enduring stories cleave close to the facts, and there are a few Maine Coon milestones that are part of the public record.

by James McGirk, 3 Quarks Daily |  Read more: