Cats
The Maine Coon is a native New Englander, hailing from Maine, where he was a popular mouser, farm cat and, most likely, ship’s cat, at least as far back as the early 19th century. He is a natural breed and little is known of his origins. Some say the Vikings brought him to North America, centuries before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, others that he is the descendant of longhaired cats belonging to Marie Antoinette, sent to America in advance of the doomed queen, who had hoped to escape there. Sea captains may have brought back longhaired cats that then mated with local shorthaired cats. One thing is for sure: the Maine Coon is not the result of a mating between a cat and a raccoon, even if his brown tabby coat and furry ringed tail suggest that biological impossibility. The resemblance is, however, how the cats got their name; in fact, Maine Coons that didn’t have the brown tabby coat were called Maine Shags.
If you are wondering if the Ragamuffin is related to the Ragdoll, the answer is yes. Some breeders wanted to introduce new colors and patterns while others thought it was important to widen the breed’s gene pool. Because the breeding of Ragdolls was strictly controlled by that breed’s founder, Ann Baker, a new group formed to create its own breed. They outcrossed to Persians, Himalayans and domestic longhaired cats, to increase the size and to bring about other changes in appearance that would differentiate the Ragamuffin from the Ragdoll. The name Ragamuffin was chosen in part as an homage to the founding breed.Their coats are medium-long and fully furred – similar to the coat of a rabbit. RagaMuffins are low maintenance cats. Although their coats are thick and plush, surprisingly they do not readily mat or clump and are easy to care for. Their overall softness makes you want to continually pet them, and when you go, these cats love every minute of your attention and just keep purring.
Like his ancestor the Siamese, the Snowshoe is a pointed cat, meaning she has a light-colored body with dark areas in seal or blue: the tail, legs, and ears, plus a mask around the eyes, broken up by an inverted V-shaped marking in white between blue eyes and over the muzzle. Four white paws punctuate the dark legs, with the front paws termed “mittens” and the rear paws “boots.” The body is more rounded than that of the Siamese, with short hair. The appearance of the Snowshoe harks back to the late Victorian era, with photographic and silk-screen evidence of Siamese kittens with four white feet, but the breed we know today was not developed until the mid-20th century. White-pawed Siamese known as Silver Laces made a brief appearance in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that Philadelphia Siamese breeder Dorothy Hinds-Daugherty decided to create a Siamese-type cat with white paws and a moderate body. She called them Snowshoes.