Maine Coon Gifts: What to Crop and What to Lose

Prices and lead times checked October 2026.

We stitch cats, which is worth stating plainly, because a pet portrait studio is nearly always assumed to mean dogs. Dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, hamsters, birds and reptiles all come through here. Maine Coons, though, are the one animal where the first conversation is almost never about colour or coat. It is about framing. You are buying a portrait of an animal whose best bits are spread from ear tip to tail tip, on a piece of clothing or homeware that has a fixed amount of room, and something has to give.

What are you actually buying when you buy a Maine Coon gift?

This is why generic Maine Coon merchandise so often misses. It reaches for the idea of a big fluffy cat, which is a description that fits a dozen breeds, rather than the four named things that make this one unmistakable. A Maine Coon with no lynx tips reads as a Persian cross. A Maine Coon with a normal cat tail reads as a Norwegian Forest cat. The identity is in the specifics.

It is also a breed where size itself is part of the portrait. People who own a Maine Coon spend a good deal of their lives being asked how big he is, and they are rightly proud of the answer. A portrait that reproduces the face beautifully but gives no sense of the animal being substantial can feel oddly diminished, even when the likeness is perfect. That is a composition problem, not a stitching one, and it is the reason this page is mostly about where to put the edges of the picture.

Why is the crop the hardest decision with a Maine Coon?

Owners of short coated cats never have to think about this, because on a tabby or a British Shorthair the face carries nearly all the identity and the rest of the cat is shape. On a Maine Coon the identity is distributed. That makes the brief a genuine choice rather than a default, and it is much better made by you than guessed at by us.

Here is how the three realistic crops compare. The right one depends on which of the four features you would miss most if it were not there.

In practice most people choose head and ruff for clothing and the whole cat for homeware, and that is a sensible default. The exception is worth knowing: if the tail is the thing the household jokes about, the thing that knocks mugs off tables and trails behind him down the hall, then head and ruff on a sweatshirt will be a lovely portrait of the wrong half of the cat. In that case go bigger and accept the smaller face.

What do the ear tufts and lynx tips need from the photo?

The lynx tips are the single detail most often missing from the photos we receive, and they are also the detail owners most often mention when they get the design back. They are small, they sit at the extreme edge of the silhouette, and they are easy to lose both to a cluttered background and to a flash, which flattens them against the head.

The ear tufts inside the ear are a separate thing again, and more forgiving, because they sit against the ear rather than against the room. Those usually survive an ordinary photo. It is the tips at the top you have to protect, so if you are taking a photo specifically for a portrait, get him in front of something plain and shoot slightly below eye level so the ears stand clear against the background rather than against his own back.

Does the tail have to be in it?

There is a middle route that works more often than people expect. On a sitting cat the tail frequently comes round the front of the body or curls up alongside it, which means a crop taken at the chest can include a good length of tail without pulling back to the whole animal. If you have a photo of him sat upright with the tail wrapped round his feet, that is the most efficient single image you can send us, because it gets three of the four features into one frame at a usable size.

What does not work is trying to add the tail afterwards. If the tail is not in the photograph, we are not going to invent one, because a Maine Coon tail varies enormously in length, density and colour banding from cat to cat, and a plausible guess would still be the wrong tail. Send a second photo instead if the first one does not have it.

Why is the coat short in some places and long in others?

This is the part that surprises people who have only seen Maine Coons in photographs. The coat is not uniformly long. It lies short and close over the shoulders and along the back, then lengthens dramatically into the ruff at the front, the skirt underneath and the trousers on the hind legs. A Maine Coon is a cat with distinct regions, not an evenly furry one.

For a portrait, what matters is the step between those regions. The place where a short shoulder meets a long ruff is a visible edge, and it is one of the things that tells your eye this is a Maine Coon rather than a generic long haired cat. Keep the edge and the cat has structure. Smooth it out and you get a soft oval with a face in it, which is the standard failure of mass produced Maine Coon designs.

Thread has a direction, so the regions are worked in the directions the coat actually goes: close and flat across the shoulders, outward and downward on the ruff, and hanging on the trousers and the tail. Getting that right is more about reading the boundaries in your photograph than about anything else, which is another reason a clear, well lit picture is worth more than a dramatic one.

Coat density is the whole difference here. A British Shorthair has a short, dense, plush coat with no ruff to work around, and a Siamese has no undercoat at all, so neither raises the question this page is about. If the cat you are buying for is tabby patterned, as many Maine Coons are, tabby cat gifts covers how those markings are handled.

Our general guide to the best photo for an embroidered pet portrait covers lighting and angle properly, including the business of photographing an animal who does not take instructions. Every photo is reviewed by a person before any design work starts. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits, and roughly 1 in 25 need a retake, which on this breed usually means the ears vanished into the background.

Which Maine Coon gifts give you the crop you want?

Everything below is embroidered rather than printed, designed from your photo and made to order in our Cambridge studio. Prices are starting prices as of October 2026. Read this table alongside the crop table above: the panel you choose decides how much cat you can have.

If a larger panel appeals, the full range of embroidered bags and backpacks and the personalised pet home gifts collection are both worth a look. For ideas that are not breed specific, what to get someone who loves their cat is the wider guide, and our pet gifts by breed page lists the other breeds we have written up. And if the household also has a cat whose markings rather than whose size are the talking point, Ragdoll cat gifts covers that problem instead, since a Ragdoll is the other semi long silky coat we deal with.

What should you check before you order?

• Day 0, you orderUpload the photo and say which crop you want, and which of the four features you would most hate to lose. One sentence is enough.
• Within a day or two, we review the photoA person checks it before any design work. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits, and roughly 1 in 25 come back for a retake.
• Then, the designYou see it and approve it. Unlimited revisions before anything is stitched, so the crop can be opened out or tightened up until it is right.
• 2 to 3 weeks from order, stitched and shippedMade in Cambridge on one of our 29 embroidery machines and shipped worldwide. Free UK delivery over £75, or £3.99 Royal Mail 48 Tracked below that.

When is Lucy & Lola not the right Maine Coon gift?

Reasonably often, and it is better said now than discovered at checkout.

• Your budget is under £20. Nothing custom and embroidered from us comes in below that, and the cheapest portrait piece is the £25 patch. Our stocking fillers for pet lovers genuinely start at £2, but those are stock designs rather than their cat. If you want his face specifically on a small budget, a printed photo in a good frame beats anything we sell at that price.
• You want a figurine, model or ornament. We do not make them. A ceramicist, a sculptor or a needle felting maker is who you want, and Maine Coons are a favourite subject for all three.
• You need it within a few days. Everything is made to order, so 2 to 3 weeks is the window and nothing shortens it to a weekend. Give a card saying the portrait is on its way.
• You want a painting, print or framed canvas. Everything here is embroidered, aside from a small range of large scale print graphic sweatshirts. Commission a painter or an illustrator instead.
• You want the whole cat at full detail on a small piece. This is the honest limit of the crop problem. On a patch or a t-shirt you are choosing one end of the cat, and if that is not acceptable then a larger panel, or a different medium altogether, is the answer.

Frequently asked questions