How to Care for a Maine Coon

Maine Coons are a special breed of cat. As a Maine Coon breeder and a Guardian of quite a few of them, they hold a special place in my heart. This article was written by me with care. Here are some tips on how to care for this wonderful breed and happily fulfill the average lifespan of your Maine Coon.

Grooming and Fur Care

Maine Coons are considered long-haired cats. Typically, their hair is shorter on the top of the body and shaggier underneath. For the most part, they are a low-maintenance cat when it comes to grooming. Typically a good combing once per week is enough to keep them nice, smooth, and tangle-free.

However, this simple grooming rule doesn’t apply to all of them. While the majority of the Maine Coon cats have silky {almost human-like] hair, not all of them so. One of my big guys has hair that’s the texture of cotton. It’s more to manage than the others, and his hair mats very easily. He needs routine brushing and combing more frequently than the others. Even with daily brushing, he manages to get mats in his fur.

For best practice, start by giving your kitty daily grooming with a metal comb. These seem to work the best when it comes to smoothing and detangling the fur. Start doing this as a kitten so he’ll get used to being groomed. He’s going to bite and grab at the comb but it’s OK. He’ll get used to it and eventually will enjoy grooming time. As your Maine Coon gets older, you’ll learn his grooming requirements and can adjust the frequency accordingly.

I usually take my cats outside when I comb them because hair flies everywhere! Check out this video I took of Omega getting his weekly combing. His hair is easy to manage and doesn’t mat at all.

Recommended Comb/Brush for a Maine Coon

I’ve tried several different combs and brushes for my Coonies. Oddly enough, each of my cats has slightly different fur types. For example, Big Ben’s fur is like that of cotton. It’s very soft, and his undercoat is thick. His fur mats easily. On the other hand, Finlay has very fine, easy-to-manage hair. There s a few different combs that I like to use on them.

First, for daily combing and de-shedding, I use the glove brush. It’s literally a glove that you put on your hand that’s made for combing your pets. You use the same motion as you would if you were petting them, so they like it. The bristles are short, however, so it doesn’t really combs all the way to the root and works through tangles that could later become mats.

Every 2 or three days, I comb them all using a slicker brush. This has hard stiff bristles that really comb through their hair and separate the strands, thus preventing mats. The clicker brush was recommended to me by my groomer. I do like the slicker brush the best. You just have to be careful since the bristles are very stiff, and it’s easy to poke your cat with them. They’ll let you know if you poke them, so don’t worry too much!

Once you use the tools regularly, it just becomes very easy to maintain a nice, smooth tangle-free coat on your Maine Coon cat.

Quality Food and Water

Quality food is important for your Maine Coon. There are plenty of opinions out there as to what you should and should not feed your cat. And believe this or not, this can be quite a controversial topic in the cat fancy. Be sure to do your own research about what food is best suited for your baby. Maine Coon cats are obligate carnivores, meaning that they only require and thrive quite nicely on strict protein. There’s no need for them to consume carbohydrates of any type. They also need adequate taurine for heart health.

The ultimate choice for your cat would be a raw diet. 80% meat/muscle 10% organs and 10% bone. I’m experimenting with the raw diet right now and giving it to my cats occasionally. It’s a lot of work though, I’m not going to omit that fact. I don’t think it’s for everyone – including me. I do keep a container in the refrigerator at all times to give them as special treats. They love chicken thighs and chicken hearts.

Recommended Food Brands for Maine Coons

If you’re not into a raw diet, then here are some preferred brands:

• Instinct
• Orijen
• Hill’s Science Diet
• Royal Canin
• Purina ProPlan

Be sure to check out an article I wrote specifically focused around what to feed your Maine Coon.

As far as clean water goes, standing water just doesn’t appeal to me so much. There always seems to be fur, dirt, and other weird objects that land in the water bowl.

My cats have a Catit Flower Fountain which offers a filter and maximum oxygenation for freshwater. Not to mention it’s also very cute sitting on the floor and seeing the kitties drink water from a flower just makes me smile real big. Call me weird, but it’s ok.

Litter Pans

Maine Coons are very large cats, so you may find that a traditional litter box doesn’t work well for them. It’s also no secret that while the necessity of owning a beautiful Maine Coon is scooping the litter box, I don’t think anyone would label this as “fun”.

I’m about to give you a very logical way of making a good decision about scooping poop. This is the exact process my mind underwent before deciding on the best litter box money can buy. The average lifespan of a big Maine Coon is 12.5 years. If you do that math that’s 4,562 days on average.

If you’re anything like me I am completely obsessed with having a clean litterbox For your Maine Coons and zero cat smell. So I would scoop twice per day. Scooping sweeping and disinfecting took me 5-7 minutes each time.  That’s 10-15 minutes per day spent scooping poop or one hour per week!

How to Care For A Maine Coon

[Spend Your Life Loving Your Fur Babies Rather Than Scooping Poop]

Stay with me, this is how my analytical brain works. If you spend one hour per week scoping doo doo, that means you spend 30 hours per month or 360 hours per year playing in poop. It gets worse, over the lifespan of a cat you would have spent 4,500 hours digging in the litter pan.

Life isn’t always about being cheap or doing it because you have to.  There are too many cool products available to do the dirty things that we don’t want to.  This is where the best litter box on the planet comes in.

The Litter Robot

When you break down a finally buy one of these, you’ll discover that the value that you’ll get from not having to spend 4,500 hours of the next 12 years scooping pee and poop is far more than the price of a litter robot.

It’s an automatic self-cleaning litter box. It keeps your litter box clean 100% of the time. Depending on how many cats you have all you have to do is change the waste drawer every 3-4 days.  NO MORE SCOOPING! 

Toys

Just like any other cat, giant Maine Coons love toys. Be careful when selecting toys for them because they’ll easily tear up and destroy a typical feather toy in 5 minutes. For example, I just bought my furries a butterfly toy on a wire. Its supposed to emulate the flight of a butterfly and the cats chase it. It works!

The challenge comes in when the 20-pound cat attacks the butterfly and tears it in half within the first 5 minutes. Eventually and I mean within an hour the whole butterfly is ripped off leaving you with just a fragment of a toy.

Select toys that are sturdy in nature as a concrete ball for example. Just kidding that’s probably a bit of a stretch.

Cat Trees and Scratching Posts

All of my Maine Coons love their cat trees! Some of them are obsessed, in fact, and will scrap for the top cradle position. You have to keep in mind how large the cat will get, and accommodate their size in everything they use. Nearly everything on the market is for the “average” size cat. Including cat trees. When I got my first Maine Coon, I bought him the biggest cat tree I could find on Amazon.com.

After about 10 months, the tree was falling apart due to his leaping and jumping on and off the tree. It also had a cute little bowl for napping in. Eventually, all that fit in the bowl was his head. Since the Maine Coon cat gets much larger than the normal house cat, the cat tree must be able to handle this. Cat trees are awesome for giving your cat the tools he needs to scratch, which is his instinct. If you’re wondering “Should I Let My Cat outside?” then read this article. The reasons listed in that article, is why cat trees are so valuable for your indoor kitty.

That was when I discovered Furwood Forest. He’ll custom design a custom cat tree, large and durable enough for your Maine Coon cats. They’re a bit pricey but built to last their entire life. You can replace your cat tree every year for $80 each, or you can spend a bit more to get a quality cat tree made out of REAL Trees!

Declawing Cats

If you’re thinking about declawing your Maine Coon, PLEASE read this article about declawing cats before you make any decisions. Your precious kitty needs his claws for so many reasons, and it’s inhumane to declaw a cat.

Boxes and Beds

When you order the Litter Robot, Just give them the box. When you order your food from Chewy, just give them the boxes. And buy a king size bed for yourself because they love to snuggle at night and they’re about the size of a human toddler. LOL

Do you Want Your Own Maine Coon Kitten?

Now that you’ve got some good tips on how to care for a Maine coon cat, it’s time to get your own! They truly are gentle giants, with very loving and charming personalities. This is why I decided to become a Maine Coon Breeder. I absolutely love them and you will also.

You can check to see if we have some available kittens for sale.