The Gentle Giant Arrives in China
I still remember the first time I saw a Maine Coon in person. It was 2009, at a small cat show in Chaoyang District. I had been keeping British Shorthairs for a few years—nothing serious, just a hobby that had gotten slightly out of hand—and I thought I knew what cats looked like. Then this creature walked past me. Walked is the wrong word. He moved like something between a cat and a small lion, this enormous red tabby with ear tufts that made him look perpetually surprised.
The Maine Coon, for those who don't know, is North America's oldest natural longhair breed. They trace back to the working cats of nineteenth-century New England, shaped by brutal winters and farmers who valued function over form. The name probably comes from the state of Maine, though there's this ridiculous old legend about raccoon ancestry—genetically impossible, but people still repeat it. I've had to explain this at least a hundred times over the years.
Beijing in 2009 had maybe twenty purebred Maine Coons total. I'm not exaggerating. Pet shops sold Persians, British Shorthairs, American Shorthairs—the usual. A Ragdoll was considered exotic. Veterinarians kept calling my first Maine Coon a Norwegian Forest Cat, which drove me crazy. Yes, they're both big fluffy cats. No, they're not the same thing. The facial structure is completely different. Wegies have that triangular face; Maine Coons have the strong muzzle, the squared-off chin. But try explaining that to a vet who's never seen either breed.
What makes a Maine Coon a Maine Coon? The body should be rectangular, long—mine have measured over a meter from nose to tail tip. Broad chest. Substantial bone. Males typically hit eight to twelve kilograms, though I had one absolute unit named Baikal who topped fourteen before we got his diet under control. They mature slowly, not reaching full size until four or five years old, which means you spend years thinking "surely he's done growing" and being wrong.
The ears sit high and wide with those distinctive lynx tips. The tail—god, the tail—is this magnificent plume that they wrap around themselves when sleeping. Very practical in a New England winter. Less practical in a Beijing apartment with central heating, but they do it anyway.
You expect a cat this size to be aloof, maybe a little intimidating. Instead they follow you around like dogs. They chirp and trill instead of meowing—I can't really describe the sound, you have to hear it.
But here's what really gets people: the temperament. You expect a cat this size to be aloof, maybe a little intimidating. Instead they follow you around like dogs. They chirp and trill instead of meowing—I can't really describe the sound, you have to hear it. They tolerate being handled in ways that would get you shredded by most cats. My daughter used to dress them up when she was small. They just sat there, these enormous beasts in doll clothes, looking mildly resigned.
The Market Transformation: From Enthusiast Pursuit to Viral Commodity
Between 2009 and 2013, owning a Maine Coon in China meant being part of a genuine subculture. We all knew each other—there weren't enough of us not to. Pedigreed kittens cost between 8,000 and 15,000 yuan, which was real money but not insane. People bought them because they loved them, not because they'd seen them on Douyin.
Then around 2014, short-video platforms happened.
I don't think anyone predicted what came next. Maine Coons are absurdly photogenic. They're huge, they're fluffy, they do weird things like play fetch and come when called. Someone posted a video of their cat standing on hind legs to reach a treat, and it turned out the cat's head came up to the owner's waist. Millions of views. The comments were all the same: 哪里可以买?
The prices went insane. By 2016, the same quality kitten that cost 12,000 in 2013 was going for 25,000 or more. By 2018—this was the peak of the madness—ordinary pet-quality kittens were selling for thirty to forty thousand yuan. Breeding females could break a hundred thousand. I heard about Russian imports going for over two hundred thousand, supposedly "champion bloodlines," though I suspected a lot of those champion claims wouldn't survive close scrutiny.
Two hundred thousand yuan for a cat. I kept turning that number over in my head. Yes, they're magnificent animals. Yes, breeding them properly costs money. But two hundred thousand? That wasn't about the cats anymore. That was about showing off on WeChat, about having something your neighbor didn't have. Pure speculation, like those people buying garage-sized apartments during the property boom because prices could only go up.
What nobody seemed to understand—or maybe they understood and didn't care—was that expensive didn't mean good. You could spend two hundred thousand yuan and still end up with a cat carrying every genetic disease in the book. Price and quality only correlate when buyers know what they're looking at. Most didn't.
The Proliferation of Backyard Breeding
The business model was simple: buy one breeding pair from a legitimate cattery, then maximize output. I watched it happen. Someone I'd sold a kitten to—as a pet, with a spay contract—bred her anyway. Posted the kittens for sale at half my prices. When I confronted them, they acted like I was being unreasonable. "Everyone's doing it," they said.
They weren't wrong. Everyone was doing it. Four, five litters a year from the same queen. Kittens sold at eight weeks instead of twelve to sixteen. No genetic testing, no health screening, no socialization worth mentioning. Just production and profit.
The thing is, proper breeding costs money. Real money, ongoing money, money that makes the whole enterprise financially irrational if you're trying to maximize returns.
Genetic testing alone—HCM, SMA, the basics—runs several hundred yuan per cat through accredited labs. Then there's cardiac screening: annual echocardiograms performed by veterinary cardiologists, because genetic tests only catch known mutations and heart disease can develop later. Hip X-rays for dysplasia. Patella evaluations.
Food matters more than people think. Breeding cats and growing kittens need quality nutrition. I spent—actually, I don't want to calculate what I spent on food over the years. It would depress me.
And time. Kittens need handling during critical developmental windows. Hours every day of human contact, play, exposure to household sounds and activities. That's how you get a well-adjusted adult cat. You can't shortcut it. Well, you can, but you end up with skittish, poorly socialized animals that hide under beds and bite when startled.
Backyard catteries skip all of this. Every yuan saved goes straight to the bottom line. They could undercut legitimate breeders by half and still make profit margins we couldn't touch.
I lost count of how many times someone told me my prices were too high, they'd found the same thing cheaper elsewhere. I wanted to explain—about the testing, the screening, the care—but mostly I just felt tired.
The Genetic Shadow
This part is hard to write about.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—HCM—is the most common heart disease in cats, and Maine Coons have elevated rates. The heart walls thicken progressively, eventually compromising the organ's ability to pump blood. A cat can seem perfectly healthy for years, then throw a clot one night and lose the use of its hind legs. Or just die. No warning. You go to sleep with a purring cat on your chest and wake up to find it cold beside you.
I lost my foundation queen that way. Duchess. Eight years old, tested clear for the known mutations, regular cardiac screenings that showed nothing concerning. She woke me at 3 AM crying, her back legs dragging.
I lost my foundation queen that way. Duchess. Eight years old, tested clear for the known mutations, regular cardiac screenings that showed nothing concerning. She woke me at 3 AM crying, her back legs dragging. By the time we reached the emergency vet—
Anyway.
The genetics are complicated. There's at least one identified mutation, MyBPC3-A31P, but additional factors clearly contribute. Testing helps. Screening helps. Neither guarantees anything. All you can do is reduce the odds.
Spinal Muscular Atrophy is different. SMA follows simple recessive inheritance—two copies of the defective gene cause the disease, one copy makes a carrier with no symptoms. Kittens look normal at birth. Around three or four months, you notice something wrong. Weakness in the hindquarters. An odd swaying gait. Trouble jumping onto furniture they managed fine last week.
It gets worse. There's no treatment. Some affected cats live for years, but with severely compromised quality of life. And here's the thing that makes me genuinely angry: SMA is completely preventable. A DNA test—costs a few hundred yuan, takes a week—identifies carriers. Don't breed two carriers together. Problem solved. Zero affected kittens, ever.
Backyard catteries don't test. Why would they? It costs money and nobody's checking.
So people spend twenty, thirty thousand yuan on a kitten. They fall in love with it. They watch it learn to climb things and knock things over and sleep in ridiculous positions. Then one day they notice the wobble in its walk, and a vet tells them their cat has an incurable degenerative condition because someone couldn't be bothered to spend three hundred yuan on a test.
I should mention hip dysplasia too—yes, cats get it, not just dogs—and PKD shows up occasionally, probably from historical Persian outcrossing. But I've gone on long enough about diseases. The point is: these problems are largely preventable with proper breeding practices. They persist because the market rewards cutting corners.
The Correction
COVID changed everything, didn't it? Lockdowns made people impulsively acquire pets. Then economic pressure and lifestyle changes made people give them up. My phone started ringing with rehoming requests—people who'd bought Maine Coons during the boom years and now couldn't keep them for one reason or another.
The secondhand market filled up. Prices dropped. By 2022, pet-quality kittens were back to fifteen or twenty thousand yuan, which is probably close to what they should actually cost.
The backyard catteries mostly evaporated. No accountability, of course. They'd made their money and moved on, leaving behind a population of poorly-bred cats with unknown health status and uncertain futures. Some of those cats were fine. Some weren't. Nobody was tracking outcomes.
Those of us who'd maintained standards throughout? Nothing really changed for us. We were still losing money. We still couldn't compete on price. We were still explaining genetic testing to people whose eyes glazed over halfway through.
I don't know why I kept going, honestly. Stubbornness, maybe. The cats themselves—they're hard to give up once you know them.
For Those Considering the Breed
If you're thinking about getting a Maine Coon, here's what I'd tell you:
Find a registered cattery. CFA or TICA registration doesn't guarantee the breeder is doing everything right, but if they're not registered at all, that's a red flag. Why aren't they? What are they hiding?
Ask for genetic testing documentation. HCM and SMA results for both parents, minimum. From accredited laboratories, not just someone's word. Legitimate breeders have these ready. If a breeder gets cagey about testing, walk away.
Cardiac screening too—beyond genetic testing, breeding cats should have regular echocardiograms. Genetic tests only catch known mutations. A cardiologist's ultrasound catches actual heart disease developing in real time.
Visit the cattery if you can. See where the cats live. Are they clean? Comfortable? Do they seem happy to see people? Kittens should be raised in a home environment, not stuck in cages. If the breeder won't let you visit, or keeps making excuses, ask yourself why.
A good breeder will interview you. They'll want to know about your living situation, your experience with cats, your plans. A breeder who'll sell to anyone with money doesn't actually care where their kittens end up.
On pricing: below ten thousand yuan, legitimate breeding isn't mathematically possible. The costs of doing things right establish a floor. When someone offers you a "Maine Coon" for six thousand yuan, you're either getting a cat of unknown parentage or you're subsidizing abuse of breeding animals. Sometimes both.
And be ready for the long haul. These cats live twelve to fifteen years. They need space, attention, regular grooming—that coat doesn't maintain itself. Veterinary care for a large breed gets expensive. This isn't a decision for the kitten phase. It's a commitment that might outlast your current apartment, your current relationship, your current life plan.
Why Any of Us Do This
There's a question I've never been able to answer satisfactorily, even to myself: why does anyone breed Maine Coons legitimately?
The math doesn't work. One or two litters a year—which is all you should be doing if you're spacing them properly for the queens' health—might gross thirty to sixty thousand yuan. Against that, you have: genetic testing, cardiac screening, hip evaluations, vaccinations, quality food, veterinary bills for everything unexpected, registration fees, the costs of maintaining cats you're not breeding from anymore because they've aged out or developed issues, housing, equipment, and hundreds of hours of labor that you're not getting paid for at all.
I've never had a year where breeding broke even. Not once. And I'm not exceptional—everyone I know in this seriously is in the same position. The backyard operations can turn a profit because they've stripped out everything that makes breeding ethical. The rest of us are essentially subsidizing a hobby with our savings.
I think it's the cats. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but it's true. They get under your skin. You watch a litter grow from blind, wiggling things into actual personalities.
So why?
I think it's the cats. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but it's true. They get under your skin. You watch a litter grow from blind, wiggling things into actual personalities—this one's bold, that one's cautious, the red tabby is already bossing everyone around—and something in you doesn't want to stop.
My wife thinks I'm crazy. She's not entirely wrong.
The Weight of It
I'm writing this in a house that feels too quiet. My last breeding queen retired two years ago. My old man, Baikal—the fourteen-kilogram monster I mentioned earlier—died in September. Kidney issues, not unexpected at his age, but still.
Fourteen years. The title of this thing wasn't arbitrary. Fourteen years since that first cat show, that first impossible glimpse of what a cat could be. Fourteen years of early mornings and vet runs and kittens being born and kittens going to new homes and emails from owners sending photos of their cats sleeping in ridiculous positions.
Fourteen years of losing them, too. That part doesn't get easier. You'd think it would. It doesn't.
The living room is the same size it always was, but it feels smaller somehow with no one occupying the sunny spot by the window. Work continues the next morning regardless. You can't explain this grief to someone who hasn't felt it, and you don't need to explain it to someone who has.
I don't know if I'll start again. There are breeders I know who are getting older, thinking about retiring their programs. The next generation doesn't seem as interested—who wants a hobby that costs money and breaks your heart? The backyard operations will continue, of course. They always do. Wherever there's demand and profit, there will be people willing to meet it without asking too many questions.
Maybe that's fine. Maybe the breed will be fine. They survived Maine winters and decades of obscurity; they'll survive this too.
But I'll miss the good breeders when they're gone. I'll miss the cats they might have produced—the ones bred with care, raised with attention, placed with thought. The ones that get to be what a Maine Coon should be, instead of just what the market will bear.
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