Current world’s tallest domestic cat (2022) is slightly overweight!

NEWS AND OPINION: The title of the “world’s tallest domestic cat” is slightly artificial. It doesn’t mean much because the cat is a quadruped, walking on all fours. Their height is not really important. If they were bipedal, tallness would be a more important factor in their appearance and anatomy. The photos are confused because the photographer has asked the owner to get their world record holder to go onto their hind legs to make them ‘taller’. It is a bit bizarre.

What the title means is that this individual cat, currently an F2 Savannah cat, Fenrir, is the tallest from their paw pads to their shoulder and that distance is 18.83 inches (47.83 cm). It is the case that F1 or F2 Savannah cats nearly always win this title because they are biggest domestic cats. Note: The Savannah is a wild cat hybrid. The biggest purely domestic cat breed is the Maine Coon. For a long time, in the early years, the Savannah was not accepted by the cat associations.

There’s one man in America, Dr. William John Powers of Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA who likes to own Guinness world record cats. He owns Fenrir and a previous couple of Guinness world record cats one of whom was Arcturus. Both his previous world record cats died in a tragic house fire five years ago.

Personally, I don’t like people chasing world records for their cats. It just seems to me to be a desire to seek fame vicariously through their cat. It doesn’t look right to me but perhaps I am out of step with the rest of the world. In fact, a lot of the time if not all of the time that cat owners seek fame for their cat or cats, they are in truth seeking fame for themselves. You see this all over the internet.

I should say, as indicated in the title, that Fenrir is, in my opinion, slightly overweight. Savannah cats are meant to be lithe and slender like their wild cat ancestor the serval. There shouldn’t be an ounce of fat on them. And yet when you look at this Guinness world champion you see a slightly overweight cat. That is very apparent to me, and it has not been mentioned, as it won’t, by anybody else.

It seems that Dr. William Powers has not recognised that fact. And I think he should have. He proudly shows off his cat but at the same time he is telling the world (in my opinion) that he has allowed his cat to put on a little bit too much weight. This is probably because Fenrir is a full-time indoor cat which all F2 and F1 Savannah cats have to be because they’re too valuable and too outstanding to be allowed outside unsupervised. They’ll be stolen or scare the neighbours if they are allowed to wander around.

And of course, when you keep a cat indoors full-time there is quite a challenging obligation on the owner to ensure that they are exercised and entertained in order to keep the mentally and physically well.

The mother of Fenrir is a same as that of Arcturus. Clearly, this family has tallness in their genes. Arcturus holds the tallest domestic cat ever title at 19.05 inches.

For quite a long time, the Savannah cat was not recognised by the cat associations, but they are now and The International Cat Association (TICA), the world’s largest registry of purebred cats, state that the Savannah cat “torso, is long, lean and well-muscled with a full deep rib cage”. As I said, this cat should be lean and fighting fit.

Unlike the Bengal cat which is famous for those rosettes and doughnut markings on their golden-brown coats, the Savannah cat cannot have rosettes. They have spots on their coat, and they must be no other colour other than dark brown to black. This is in line with the serval, their wild cat ancestor.

Below are some more pages on world records.