Maine Coon vs Turkish Van — Side by Side

	Maine Coon	Turkish Van
Lifespan	12-15 years	13-17 years
Size	Large	Large
Weight	9-25 lb	7-20 lb
Energy	Moderate	Very high
Grooming	High	Moderate
Shedding	High	Moderate
With kids	Good with kids	With supervision

What actually separates them

Less hair on the sofa with the Turkish Van. More with the Maine Coon.
Less brushing with the Turkish Van. More with the Maine Coon.
Calmer of the two is the Maine Coon. The one that needs more exercise is the Turkish Van.
Turkish Van tends to live longer — 13-17 years against 12-15 years.
With young children, Maine Coon is the safer default — Turkish Van is listed as "With supervision".

The honest downside of each

Maine Coon

Maine Coons are marketed as a robust, 'naturally healthy' breed, but a lab analysis of thousands of samples found roughly a third of Maine Coons worldwide carry a gene mutation linked to a potentially fatal heart disease, and plenty of kittens are still sold by breeders who have never screened their breeding cats for it.

Turkish Van

The Turkish Van's popular reputation as a friendly, water-loving lap cat doesn't fully match the data — a 2021 behavioral study found the breed scores above average for fearfulness and aggression toward humans and below average for sociability and stress tolerance, and solid-white individuals, especially blue-eyed ones, carry a well-documented elevated risk of congenital deafness.

Read the full pages

Maine Coon · Turkish Van
Health problems, origin and what living with each is actually like.