Honey & Tillie's story

fun facts about us

laura rosenthal

Back in 2020 we got our first maine coon Miss Matilda Jane. Our family was instantly in love with our Tillie. Tillie was the perfect addition to our family. Tillie had all the typical Maine Coon traits she was affectionate, gentle, and was exceptionally sweet with our children. We quickly decided to that Tillie needed a friend and purchased our second Maine Coon Honey from a local breeder. Honey was full of sass, she came when we whistled for her and loved to play in the water. 

One day I came home from running errands and Honey was not waiting at the door for us. I whistled and Honey did not come running. I quickly searched the house and found Honey. I instantly knew that something was wrong. Honey was under my son's bed panting. We rushed her to the vet's office where she was diagnosed with a severe case of Hypertrophic  Cardiomyopathy (HCM). Less than a month after the diagnosis, many days of heartache, and thousands of dollars later Honey lost her battle with HCM and passed away. 

As part of our contract with her breeder we were required to have a Necropsy and genetic panel done after Honey's death. The necropsy came back with an unequivocal diagnosis of HCM.  The kicker of it was that Honey had a clear genetic panel. 

Fast forward six months and we were back at the Emergency vet with Matilda. Matilda was retaining fluid and was in heart failure. On our trip from our vets office to the emergency vet Matilda passed away in our arms. While we did not have a panel done after her passing, we highly suspect that she also suffered from HCM. Matilda's genetic panel showed she was a carrier for medication sensitivity and two copies of a blood clotting disorder but again she did not have a copy of the "HCM" gene. With two back to back losses I knew there was something going terribly wrong in Maine Coon breeding practices. 

Tillie and Honey sent us on a journey to find a healthy maine coon.  After a long search, and little luck, we decided we were going to start our own program and try our darndest to create a healthy long lived line of maine coons. While we can't eliminate every health problem we will do our best to make informed breeding decisions. Our breeding cats will always undergo rigorous testing prior to entering our program. Health will always be the heart of our program. 

At Copper King Coons we travel out of state to have our cats undergo rigorous echocardiograms. We only breed cats with clear hearts.  As we learned with Tillie DNA tests don't mean very much and are not reliable indicators of heart failure.
Maine coons are also prone to hip problems due to their large size. We are in the process of updating all of our cats Hips and Patellas  through OFA. 

OUR STORY