MAINE COON BREED COUNCIL NEWSLETTER AUG. 2006

There were 40 Maine Coon breeders present at the June Maine Coon Breed Council Meeting in Reno.  What a great representation for our breed! I feel as though we had a wonderful, productive meeting.  Most of the meeting consisted of a presentation by Geree Martin about our Maine Coon Breed Council Ballot for this year.  I have enclosed a copy of what the all the color classes will look like if all items pass the ballot by 60%.  I am working with C.O. on numbers and it is what makes sense.  Hopefully, this will help everyone get their cats registered in the proper color class from the very beginning, as well as help judges with the division of colors, especially in the beginning of the show season.

Nan Moses did not have a formal health committee report at this time.  Martha Auspitz reported on the HCM presentation held by the Winn Foundation on the Thursday prior to our B C meeting.  The feeling of both Dr Meurs and Dr Lyons was not to take the approach of just neutering any cat that may be a “carrier”,  as this will most definitely hurt the breed by limiting genetic diversity.  As they reported, when breeds in the past have done this blanket neutering and spaying, as their genetic diversity got more and more limited, many other issues began to creep into the breed and now they seemed to have worse issues than before.  Both Dr Meurs and Dr Lyons suggested breeding “clear” cats to “carrier” cats and then keeping the “clear” kittens and move forward from there.

Thanks again to Betsy Gaither for a job well done as our Treasurer.  She always does a great job!

We did our presentation of the Top 10 Maine Coon Awards, in Championship, Kittens, and Premiership.  The booklets were a hit again this year.  I personally, thought the rosettes with the State of Maine’s logo were beautiful. 

Everyone at the meeting agreed that the Silver Patched Tabbies & the Silver Patched Tabbies with White should be in their own color class.  So that will be a new addition to our ballot.  There was other discussion on some of our other descriptions such and the nose (bump) and eyes.  We will be addressing those and other concerns in the future, after we see where this ballot goes.

Thanks again to all for attending and I will look forward to seeing you at the International Show.   We will again have a dinner for the Maine Coon B C members and guests, hopefully with our meeting.  Everyone seemed to have such a great time at the dinner we had at the last International.

Respectively submitted,

Martha Auspitz, Maine Coon Breed Council Sec.