What Breed Is My Cat?

Black and White Cat of no breed -- photo copyright Helmi Flick

People quite often ask, "what breed is my cat". This might sound strange but it is possible to answer that question now, with a reasonable degree of success, without seeing the cat or reading a description of the cat in question. This might sound strange and arrogant, perhaps, but it is true for the following reason (of course, please leave a comment if you disagree and tell me why).

Almost all cats in the world are mixed breed cats. Even that is a misdescription as the parents of most cats are not part of a recognizable breed. This means almost all cats are not a breed of cat. For a cat to be part of a breed, it needs to be purebred. I am not sure of the percentages of purebred cats and it doesn't matter really. There are more purebred cats in the United States than in any other country but even then the percentage is low, perhaps 5% of the total.

That statistic alone would support the answer,"your cat is a moggie or not a cat breed", to the question, "what breed is my cat". But one can be more certain than that. Almost all people who keep and live with purebred cats (cats that are part of a specific and identifiable cat breed) do so deliberately. They would have selected the cat either from a breeder or even a rescue center as purebred cat rescue does, surprisingly, exist.

These people will, therefore, know the answer to the question, "what breed is my cat?" That leaves a very small number of people who may have rescued a purebred cat or a cat that looks purebred and there is no documentation to confirm the status of the cat as purebred. These people might want to find out the type of cat breed, which, without documentation as to the purebred nature of the cat (parentage of all the same breed) and pedigree (documentation as to the parents for a period of three years) will have to guess by a visual check against, for example, the photographs on this website. Even then there is no evidence that the cat in question will be a specific cat breed. These cats would, therefore, have to be called moggies or domestic cats. Most often they will be shorthaired cats and therefore a DSH (domestic shorthair), a cat of no defined breed.

Of the remainder, the vast majority, the cats will also be moggies, DSH cats with the occasional longhair or more often a semi-longhair.

So, the answer to the question is, "your cat is a domestic cat of no fixed breed and a mixed breed cat or moggie". That in no way diminishes the status of the cat or it shouldn't. All cats are born and remain equal in the eyes of all people who keep cats. It that is not the case for a certain person, I would personally doubt the person's suitability to keep cats.

Mixed breed cats can be as glamorous as any purebred pedigree cat. They are shown at cat shows as Household Pets. They photograph beautifully, see Helmi's photographs on this page. They all have middle range cat body types and cat head shapes.

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