And what about the novelty factor? Only in the pedigreed ranks can you find cats with ears that fold forward or back, cats with kinky fur — or none at all — and cats with little or no tails or short legs. Some of these breeds are controversial — to say the least! — but they certainly do expand the choices when the time comes to “think cat.”
The overwhelming majority of cat seekers do not choose a pedigreed cat. For some, the choice may be a matter of price and convenience. Pedigreed cats can be expensive — a couple of hundred dollars, at least, and climbing into the thousands of dollars for kittens of rare breeds and colors. They can be hard to find, too, if you journey past the most-popular breeds. Upkeep on the coats of some breeds may also limit many cat lovers to admiring them from afar. In addition to the difficulties keeping long, silky coats in order, some breeds have become increasingly short-faced (the veterinary term is brachycephalic), which in cats as in dogs can be a source of significant health issues.
Considering how little they had to begin with, modern breeders have developed an incredible variety of colors and patterns in today’s pedigreed cats. The Cat Fanciers’ Association lists more than 60 color patterns for the Persian alone.
Not that what they started with wasn’t beautiful — and isn’t beautiful still.
By far, the most common cat color/pattern is the “tiger-striped,” or tabby, markings that you can still see in the wild ancestors of the domestic cat. The name tabby comes from Atabi, a silk imported to England long ago that had a striped pattern similar to that of the domestic tiger cat.
Tabbies come in many colors, such as red (more commonly called “orange,” “ginger,” or “marmalade”), cream, brown, or gray. The tabby pattern is so dominant that, even in solid-colored cats, you can often discern faint tabby markings, especially on the head, legs, and tail.
Smoked, shaded, and shell describe the varying amounts of tipping that appear on each individual hair, with shell being a dash of color at the very tip, shaded a little more tipping, and smoke, at the other extreme, being a coat so heavily tipped that it may look solid, except as the cat moves and the lighter color becomes visible underneath. Fur can also be ticked — that is, banded with color, as in the agouti pattern seen in the Abyssinian, where dark-colored bands alternate with lighter ones on each hair shaft.
Pointed cats are those such as the Siamese, with lighter-colored bodies shading to darker, complementary colors at the points — the face, the ears, the legs, and the tail.
Bicolors are any other color (or pattern, such as tabby) paired with white, and particolors have three or more colors, as is true of calicos (commonly with patches of white, red, and black) or tortoiseshells (with swirled red, cream, and black).
Mixing these color types can have some unpredictable results. The spotted Ocicat, for example, was created as the result of mating a Siamese and an Abyssinian!
Characteristics by Breed
Pedigreed cats are roughly divided by experts into two groups that are distinguished by body type and activity level.
The breeds in the first group, the Oriental, are notable for their long, sleek bodies and active participation in the world around them. They’re not happy unless they’re supervising dinner, climbing to the top of the bookshelf, teasing that dopey dog, or seeing what every member of the household is up to. The way these cats see the world, you’re not capable of running your own life without their help. Cats in this group, such as the Siamese, and Abyssinian, are often touted as being more intelligent and trainable, as well as the Oriental Shorthair, basically a Siamese coat but with a broader range of coat patterns and colors.
The non-Orientals see things a little bit differently. If you’re big and beautiful, the world comes to you with all your needs. Why interrupt a good nap to see what’s on top of that bookshelf? Cats in this group, such as the Persian, Ragdoll, and British Shorthair are generally happy to sleep in your lap while you read — and not bat at the pages as you turn them!
At first, the differences between these breeds may also seem to relate to their coats, with the sleek shorthairs falling in the Oriental group and thicker-set longhairs in the other. That assumption would be true except for the work of those who want to offer you even more options in a cat, such as longhaired versions of the Siamese (the Balinese) and Abyssinian (the Somali) and a breed that’s pretty close to a shorthaired version of the Persian (the Exotic).
Unlike purebred dogs — who are divided roughly by purpose: sporting, herding, and so on — pedigreed cats aren’t quite so easy to categorize. Not surprisingly, really, if you consider that each cat himself is unique — and if you don’t believe it, just ask him!
Not happy with the two divisions the experts offer, we break down the various breeds into categories, a task almost as difficult as herding cats themselves. The breakdown’s not perfect — some longhaired cats are also among the largest, for example, and some of the more active breeds are also distinctive in other ways. (In such cases, we list the breeds twice, once in each category.) But we figure that breaking the almost 50 breeds down into categories would make thinking about what sort of breed you may want a little easier.
The go-go group
Consider the Siamese (shown in Figure 2-2) the prototype of this group. Always into everything, always looking to see what you’re up to, and always loudly suggesting ways you can do it better — these characteristics are the essence of this cat, one of the world’s most easily recognizable breeds with his distinctive “pointed” markings. The Siamese is such an important breed that its genes went into the development of many others, such as the Himalayan (a pointed version of the Persian); the Balinese