About Mainesory

Where Mainesory started

Mainesory was a decision before it was a cattery. We spent a long time on the breed before we owned a single breeding cat — which lines produce the type we wanted, which catteries are worth taking a cat from, and what testing a serious programme is expected to do. Then we registered with the Cat Fanciers' Association as cattery 403381, set up in Damansara Perdana, and began. We are minutes from Desa Park City and Kepong, and our kittens go to homes across Kuala Lumpur, Mont Kiara, Bangsar, Damansara, Subang and the wider Klang Valley — and, increasingly, to families overseas.

There is no more majestic cat than a Maine Coon

It is the largest domestic breed, and the one that looks least domesticated. A good adult male carries himself like something that ought not to be indoors: heavy boning, a broad chest, a deep square muzzle, ears finished with full lynx tipping, and a tail that follows him like a plume. Then he rolls over to have his belly rubbed. That contradiction — the wild look and the gentle temperament — is the whole appeal of the breed, and it is why we chose it over every other.

We are after extreme quality, and nothing else

Every pairing here is planned to push type: not simply a pure breed Maine Coon, but one at the far end of what the standard describes. Our breeding group grows only when we find another supreme bloodline worth bringing in — never to raise output. The consequence is that we place very few kittens in a year, and we would rather place none than place one we are not proud of. Quality over quantity is an easy thing to write on a website. In practice it means turning down the litters that would have made the year easier, and waiting.

A room for every purpose

A cattery should not be one room with a lot of cats in it. Across our four floors there is a nursery where a queen raises her litter undisturbed, separate rooms for the studs, a room for the kittens once they are up and charging about, a play and socialisation room where the handling work happens, a quarantine room for any new arrival or any cat home from the vet, and storage for food and supplies. Our cats live loose in those rooms, with one deliberate exception: for the first weeks after a litter is born, the mother is penned with her kittens. That is for their sake rather than ours — a new mother with the run of a whole room will carry her babies off to wherever she has decided is safer, and newborns need her staying put, staying warm and feeding them. She is let out every day without fail, and once the kittens are steady on their feet the pen goes away for good. The rooms exist so that cats who should not be together are not, and so a queen with a two-week-old litter gets peace and quiet while the rest of the house carries on around her. Come and meet them for yourself. Viewings are by appointment in our showroom, where you can see the kittens and their parents.

We breed when the queen is ready, not when the diary says so

A queen here has at most three litters in two years, and none at all until she has fully recovered from the last one. If she is not ready, she rests. We will be straight with you about what that means: we cannot promise a kitten by a particular date, and how many we place in a year is simply however many our cats are well enough to give. Some years that is very few. We would far rather tell you so at the start than take your deposit and leave you waiting on a kitten that was never coming.

Every kitten goes through a socialisation programme before it leaves

No kitten leaves here until it has been through our socialisation programme. It starts in the first week and runs every single day until the day it goes home: being picked up and held, having its paws touched, its ears and mouth checked, its belly rubbed; the vacuum cleaner, the doorbell, visitors coming and going, and being lifted mid-nap for a cuddle. None of that is incidental — it is structured work, and it is most of what we do here. A Maine Coon's temperament settles early, and you will see the difference the day you take yours home: a kitten raised this way walks out of the carrier and starts investigating your sofa, while one raised in a pen spends its first fortnight under your bed. It is also why the first vet visit, the first bath and the first houseful of guests are all uneventful.

That is how we work. Below is how it compares with what is, unfortunately, common locally, and what we think sets us apart.