Premium Nutrition, Planned by Life Stage
A cattery is only as good as what it feeds. Growth, coat quality, digestion and immune development in the first year are decided far more by diet than by anything else within a breeder's control, and a Maine Coon spends longer growing than almost any other breed — three to four years to full size. Feeding a single bag of food to every cat in the house, whatever its age, is the most common shortcut in breeding, and it shows up years later.
Our cats are fed Royal Canin®, and Mainesory is enrolled in the Royal Canin breeder programme. That gives us access to their breeder range and to nutritional support, but the reason we use it is simpler: the formulas are separated by life stage, and that separation is what a growing kitten actually needs.
In practice that means a queen in kitten and a nursing mother are fed differently from a growing kitten, and a growing kitten differently from an adult. A kitten's energy requirement per kilogram of body weight is several times an adult cat's, and the protein and calcium balance that supports steady skeletal growth in a large breed is not the same as the balance that keeps a neutered adult in condition. Feeding the wrong one is rarely dramatic; it just quietly produces a smaller, softer cat than the pedigree promised.
Every kitten goes home with a Royal Canin® starter pack containing the exact food it is already eating. This matters more than it sounds. A kitten leaving its litter is already handling a new home, new people, new smells and a first night alone — an abrupt food change on top of that is the most common cause of the loose stools new owners panic about in week one. Keep it on the same food, and one variable is removed.
You are not obliged to stay on it. If you would rather feed something else, wait until the kitten has settled — usually a fortnight — then change over across seven to ten days, mixing an increasing proportion of the new food into the old. We will tell you honestly whether the food you have chosen is suitable for a large slow-maturing breed, and we would rather you ask us than guess.
We are happy to talk through feeding before you collect, and for as long as you own the cat. Nutrition questions are the most common thing owners contact us about years after a kitten has left, and that is exactly what lifetime support is for.