Meet Kefir, the Huge Maine Coon Who’s Way too Big to Be a Cat
Cats are cute and cuddly animals, which is why they make a perfect choice for a small house pet. However, that’s not the case with Kefir, the huge Maine coon who weighs around 27 lbs. (12.25 kg). With his huge physical characteristics, Kefir has taken the Internet by storm, and many netizens mistakenly take him to be a dog at first sight. However, Kefir was very skinny and not at all attractive in his childhood.
Kefir’s scowling face gives him a formidable appearance, but the owner says he is very gentle and affectionate. Kefir is over two years old now, and he might still continue to grow for some time as huge Maine coon cats are known to develop physical characteristics up to three or four years of age.
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Yulia Minina, the owner, truly adores Kefir.
Yulia Minina from Stary Oskol of the Belgorod region in Russia decided to adopt a white kitten she saw on an Internet ad to make life a little more fun for the family in March 2020. She had no idea that the kitten she adopted would evolve into the massive yet beautiful white-fur giant he is today. However, she found the skinny kitten was prettier in pictures than in real life when she went to pick him up. But she kept him anyway, and the two daughters of Yulia named the kitten “Kefir” after a famous yogurt drink in Russia.
During the fifth month of his age, Kefir started eating everything he could while constantly playing and started to grow. At around nine months, Kefir had tassels on the ear and a massive tail. By the end of the first year, Kefir had already started to outgrow the size of a normal cat of his age. At around two years of age, Kefir weighed almost 27 lbs., and his size also grew to that of a small human child. Today, Kefir is Yulia’s family member. Kefir is so huge that when he stands up, he seems almost as tall as a four-year-old kid. He even has a chair of his own at the dining table, and he keeps his family company during the meals.
Kefir is immensely popular!
When Yulia first clicked photos of Kefir and posted them on her social media, she had no idea that it was going to draw huge attention and popularity for Kefir on the Internet. Yulia’s Instagram post of Kefir went viral in Russia and soon garnered attention from foreign media. Kefir’s pictures get thousands of likes on Instagram, along with several comments from cat admirers around the world. Not just that, one of the posts of Kefir on Reddit has even got almost 50,000 upvotes!
Yulia, the owner who posts Kefir’s pictures on Instagram, has over 63,000 followers on her Instagram user profile, the majority of which she owes to Kefir, the huge Maine coon. Although most people on the Internet complement Kefir for his size and beauty, some also are suspicious that the owners intentionally make Kefir look bigger with optical illusions and lenses.
Why is Kefir so big, after all?
While Kefir seems too big to be a cat, it’s not abnormal for Maine coons to grow larger than most domestic cat breeds. In fact, Maine coons are considered one of the largest breeds of domestic cats. However, that’s only a fraction of the reason Kefir is so big. Kefir may very well be a case of feline acromegaly.
“Acromegaly” is a medical condition that causes animals, including humans, to generate excessive amounts of a growth hormone called “somatotropin.” It happens due to malfunctioning of the pituitary gland. The symptoms include larger body size, taller height, and enlarged facial features and extremities.
The giant cow Knickers, the world’s tallest man Robert Wadlow, Andre the Giant, and wrestler The Great Khali are some popular examples of how acromegaly can cause humans and animals to grow beyond their usual size. Moreover, given the gigantic size of Kefir (even for a Maine coon), the possibility of him having acromegaly also cannot be ruled out.
Here are stories of other humongous animals that make their own kinds look smaller.
1 Tallest dog Zeus:Â
Zeus, a white and grey American Great Dane, holds the Guinness world record for being the tallest male dog at present. The two-year-old pooch has a jaw-dropping height of 3 feet and 5.18 inches. Zeus lives with his family in Bedford, Texas, USA. He measures more than a whopping 7 feets when he stands on his hind legs. Besides exceptional height, Zeus boasts a phenomenal body weight of more than 200 lbs.
2 Tallest horse
Big Jake, a male Belgian gelding, held the Guinness world record for being the tallest horse alive until he passed away at the age of 20 in June 2021. Big Jake lived in the Smokey Hollow Farms in Poynette, Wisconsin, USA. The massive horse boasted a height of 20 hands and 2.75 inches, i.e., approximately 6 feet and 9 inches (210.19 cm)! He weighed around 1180 kg when setting the world record in 2012.
Big Jake was, undoubtedly, a massive horse. But he still could not beat the record for the biggest horse that ever lived. The Guinness world record for the heaviest and tallest horse ever belongs to a shire gelding named Sampson, later renamed Mammoth. Mammoth, who lived in Toddington Mills of Bedfordshire, UK, was around 2.19 meters tall (i.e., about 7 feet and 2.5 inches). Other than exceptional height, he also weighs about 1524 kg!
3 Longest snake ever in captivity
On this day in 2011, Medusa – the longest snake ever living in captivity – was measured and found to be 7.67 m (25 ft 2 in) long ðŸ pic.twitter.com/xTFvKtAKWY
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) October 12, 2016
The Guinness world record for the longest snake ever in captivity belongs to Medusa, a female Reticulated Python. Medusa is freakishly huge, she measures around 7.67 meters long, i.e., about 25 feet and 2 inches. She’s presently ten years old and weighs a whopping 350 lbs (approximately 159 kg)!
Medusa lives in Kansas City, Missouri, in the USA and is owned by Full Moon Productions. She can be seen coiled up in a nook at their haunted house attraction, called ‘The Edge of Hell.’ It requires 15 men to hold Medusa at her full length. She is fed biweekly and can eat one whole deer at a time.
4 Biggest bunnyÂ
Darius holds the Guinness world record for being the largest rabbit (living) with a length of 129 cm (i.e., about 4 ft and 3 inches). Darius, who used to live in Stoulton, Worcestershire (UK), was officially declared the largest bunny on 06 April 2010. Darius was so popular that someone stole him in April 2021! The owners lodged a police complaint for the disappearance of the Guinness world record-holder bunny. They even offered to give £ 1000 to anybody who could help them get Darius back. However, all the efforts were in vain, and Darius could never be found.
5 The giant cow
Knickers, a Holstein Friesian cow, towers over other cows in his herd. He boasts a freakishly tall height of over 6 feet. It makes all the other cows look like calves in front of him. He also weighs over 1400 kilograms (i.e., above 220 stones).
Knickers is believed to be one of the largest steers in Australia. However, he does not hold the record of being the largest cow in the world. The Guinness world record for tallest cow ever belongs to Blosom, also a Holstein from Orangeville in the United States. Apparently, Blosom passed away in 2015.
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