On Pedigrees
At this point in human history, there are many people who can travel anywhere they wish to go. We learn of faraway lands through the peephole of the internet, board a plane, and the world’s mountains and oceans become as nothing to us.
Of course, in times past, a mountain or an ocean would be insurmountable. Hemmed in to our native lands, we would remain burrowed there for generation after generation— likewise our local cats.
Wherever cats found themselves, walled off into pockets around the world, many acquired a local look over time. Russian cats were blue; cats in Japan were bobtailed; and in Norway and Maine they were fantastically big and robed in warm fur.
The Siamese cat, that is, is nothing more than the cat which was found in Siam, now called Thailand; the Persian is simply the way that cats looked in Persia, and so on.
Cats from what was called the East tend to be slim with a pointy face, and have a gregarious personality. Cats from the West tend to be solid with a broad face, and have a dense coat.
These pockets of cats around the world eventually came to discovery by the sorts of people who feel that when they see things in faraway lands they have discovered them.
Thus, at a certain point, certain cats were suddenly Breeds — named, rarified, and signifying of class. While “cat shows” had long been held as an exhibition of the animals’ hunting prowess, the first Cat Show was held in 1871, not for mousing, but for newly established breed standards.
These pedigreed cats’ features, like their eye shapes, skull sizes, and coat colors, were observed with myopic obsession by cat fanciers. Over time, breeders emphasized these small differences to a point of violence, breeding the Siamese from a naturally slim cat into one so delicate that its bones easily snap, and breeding the Persian’s naturally compact face into one so flattened that the tear ducts are squeezed to jelly. These are the standards which would win the Show.
Once the foundational cat breeds became established, combinations and variations led to more breeds: the Tonkinese was created by mixing the Burmese with the Siamese. The Balinese is a Siamese except with long hair. The Ocicat is the Siamese combined with the Abyssinian (which actually happened by accident), and so on.
I would like to contrast this approach to cat breeds with the way dog breeds were developed. People looked at dogs and said, ‘I want you to accompany my fire truck’ and bred one to the height of the truck; ‘I want you to chase rats through tunnels,’ and bred one to hate rats; ‘I want you to herd sheep’ and bred one to a capacity for understanding commands; ‘I want you to pick up ducks after I shoot them’ and bred one to swim well.
Perhaps we could have created cat breeds to suit human purposes, as we did dogs. We could have made one that would grab things for us with their paws, so much more dextrous a dog’s. We could have made one to catch us rabbits and fish in the manner of falconry, or one to slink into tight spaces on our behalf.
But no — only dog breeds were made for a task, while cat breeds were made… simply… to look like cat breeds.
Even as the field matured and new breeds proliferated, pedigrees remained rooted in the randomness of genetic mutation which had always driven the cat’s evolution. In the haphazard matings of street cats and barn cats, something interesting turned up now and then, which would be cultivated for addition to the fine breeds kept by the rich.
A litter was born with white feet so cute that they became the Snowshoe. The American Bobtail began with a cat that was born tailless in Arizona. Someone liked the looks of three drain cats in Singapore and made the Singapura. A cat was born with a painful skeletal abnormality in a barn on the Isle of Man, and was perpetuated as the Manx.
The ‘Rex’ breeds known for their curly coats originated with a rescue in Montana (the Selkirk Rex), a farm cat in Cornwall (the Cornish Rex), and a feral in Devon (the Devon Rex), with each interesting kitten being back-crossed to its parents to create the breed’s initial generations.
In this way, many new cat breeds began at random and without previous intent. But some enterprising breeders would get a little idea and pursue it. For example, à la designer t-shirts that cost $150, the Havana was created by mixing the Siamese with the ordinary black cat, for a more elite version of the ordinary black cat. Another breeder, seeing that some people grew tired of brushing their Persians every day, mixed it with an ordinary short-haired cat to make a lower maintenance version.
One begins to recognize that, in some sense, a purebred kitten is a scam. You are paying $1,700 for the descendent of nothing more than a randomly selected Canadian barn cat, who is predisposed to certain health defects.
But in another sense, there is a je ne sais quoi in the purebred cat which does account for its price. To the cat fancier, these cats are not “grey,” they are blue; they are cinnamon, peach, lilac, chocolate, or snow. The eyes, always copper or hazel in an ordinary cat, are usually a fanciful blue or green in those that are pedigreed. And many cat breeds are missing one or more of the three hair types found in an ordinary cat’s coat, so that they are particularly downy or silky, or altogether without hair. These enchanting details are the markers of your luxury, to which the cat herself is indifferent.
So the word is not exactly ‘scam.’ You get something for your money — that is, the cat’s unique genes. But examining the history of each pedigree puts one in a post-modern mood. If someone once enjoyed the placid temperaments of a random litter born in California, and from these declared the Ragdoll was now a breed, why shouldn’t my own cat be considered in this way, or yours?
My cat has very nice genes, too. One might consider that she is an extremely rare and valuable breed which I have discovered, consisting of a single prize-winning specimen.
Although of course, tabbies are nothing special. My cat is just one among the most common coat variety, a gene carried by all cats, even when the pattern has been hidden, or altered by breeders. It is the coat of their original wildcat ancestor, it is the coat that was depicted in this Roman mosaic, and it is the coat that most cat owners will enjoy for generations to come.
The tabby pattern has, however, been wrangled into the latest fad in expensive cats, and that is broken stripes, aka spots. In the last thirty years, new breeds mimicking the appearance of spotted wildcats have arrived, proliferated, and overtaken in popularity many standby breeds. In several cases, these are cats derived from mixing the house cat with actual wildcats: with the Asian leopard cat for the Bengal; with the serval for the Savannah; and with the jungle cat for the Chausie.
Early generations of these hybrids, even with their 1/2 domestic ancestry, remained intractably wild and unsuitable as pets. In fact, they were never meant to be pets, at first. The domestic cat was originally crossed with the Asian leopard cat because the Asian leopard cat is immune to feline leukemia. Researchers wondered if the healthful gene could cross over to the general domestic cat population, and save the day. It didn’t work, but the hybrids looked cool.
From there, breeders and buyers sought exotic-looking spots, big ears, and long legs, while also hoping for domesticated behavior. For seemingly the first time, people have actually invented new breeds along these lines, rather than new breeds inventing themselves.
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But in complete keeping with the rest of cat fancy history, these breeds have been developed not for any particular purpose than to be utterly catlike.
I see Bengal kittens advertised (disconcertingly often as purebreads (sic)) for $2,000 and more in the Seattle metro. The advice I’ll give you about this matter is free — just like most kittens.
If you have $2,000 to spend on a cat, go and buy floor-to-ceiling cat trees, deer-hair cat toys, heated beds, window perches, icelandic sheepskins, artisan-made scratching posts, limited ingredient wet food, a catio &c. Then get a kitten from the gutter or the pound.
There is really no more pleasing way to spend one’s hard-earned money, I can attest, than on a little moggy like this one.
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hillary