This tale has it that a sea captain, an Englishman named Charles Coon, amassed a collection of dozens of longhaired cats to keep the rat population under control onboard his ship. Whenever his ship dropped anchor at New England, the pack went ashore along with the captain. The seafaring longhaired cats of Captain Coon soon met with the local feral cat population, and mating naturally occurred.

After the pack of cats had gone back to sea with Captain Coon, litters were produced with a proportion of longhaired cats. These hairy felines were referred to as Coon's cats.

Does this legend revel the true origin of the Maine Coon breed? Highly unlikely, although Maine State library records of that period do show the existence of a seafaring man named Coon, the captain of a whaler.