I list what I consider to be cat breed mistakes by which I mean cat breeds or developments that should not have got off the drawing board. Strictly speaking these breeds should not exist but this is a personal view. Many people disagree and I accept that. I focus on high profile examples. There …
The California Spangled is extinct but, that said, cat breeds can’t become extinct. Sarah Hartwell says, “The breed was considered extinct in the 1990s”. You won’t get a better authority. This is about 20 years ago. If there were some individual cats with some breeders perhaps they have died. There may be some individual …
People might hate me for writing this. It is deliberately irreverent. Purebred cats are riddled with genetic disease; the longer established they are the greater the number of diseases. They aren’t even the real thing – we made them up. Many people talk about purebred cats (and dogs for that matter) as if nature …
American pedigree, purebred cats knock Russian cats into a cocked hat! In other words, there are more American pedigree cats than Russian pedigree cats and, in addition, the American cat breeds are more popular than the Russian cats. That is my overall assessment. Both countries have quite an active cat fancy (the breeding and showing …
Is Facebook (FB) the right place for cat breeders to advertise and sell their cats? Assuming, that is, you agree that there should be cat breeders in the first place. I was surprised to discover that there are a lot of breeders marketing their cats on Facebook. This is not about meeting and communicating …
Are you as surprised as me at this photo from a 1952 cat show? Is it cat cruelty? It is close to it. The person carrying the cats would probably say that he does it all the time and nothing ever happens. He’d probably say his cats like it. It is still wrong. Is …
In 1903, the cat fancy in England – probably the only cat fancy of the time – considered that the purebred, pedigree cat had a standard set of anatomical features that applied across the board. It made no difference if the cat was short or long haired or whatever cat breed. They all had …
Pedigree, purebred cats have inordinately large eyes. Not all the breeds have the same overly large eyes, but even breeds, such as the Abyssinian, that are meant to be “balanced”, have unnaturally large eyes. Let’s not forget that cats already have large eyes, much larger than ours, relative to head size, as they have …
