In 1966 in Ontario, Canada, an ordinary domestic cat gave birth to a hairless kitten named Prune. This cat lived for only a few years before dying, but its descendants bred into one of the most controversial cat breeds in the world today—the Sphynx. No one planned to create a hairless cat. The genetic mutation happened on its own.
The Origins of Domestication
Cat domestication occurred approximately 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. In 2004, archaeologists discovered a 9,500-year-old burial site in Cyprus, where an adult human skeleton lay next to a cat. Cyprus had no wild cats, meaning this cat must have been brought over by humans on a boat. The earliest farmers stored grain, grain attracted mice, and mice attracted wildcats. Those wildcats that were less afraid of humans stayed.
DNA research has confirmed that all domestic cats descend from a single subspecies of African wildcat: Felis lybica lybica. An ancient DNA analysis published in Science in 2017 showed that domestic cats only spread from North Africa to Europe about 2,000 years ago—several thousand years later than previously thought. The urban environments of the Roman Empire provided cats with excellent living spaces.
Royal Cats of Thailand
Thailand has a 14th-century poetry collection called the "Tamra Maew" (Cat Book Poems), which already depicted Siamese cats. At that time, only royalty could own these cats, and stealing a Siamese cat was punishable by death. In 1878, the American consul in Bangkok gifted a Siamese cat to First Lady Lucy Hayes, naming it "Siam." In 1884, a member of the British embassy in Siam brought a pair of Siamese cats back to England for his sister. Westerners seeing these cats with pointed faces and large ears for the first time found them strange-looking.
By the 1950s and 60s, breeders began pursuing more extreme features. Siamese cats were selectively bred to become increasingly slender, with ever-more pointed heads and larger ears. The original round-faced, round-bodied traditional Siamese cats nearly disappeared from cat shows.
Now the old-style cats are called Thai cats or Traditional Siamese, and they are essentially considered two different breeds from modern Siamese cats.
A Timeline of Persian Cats
Persian cats were brought to Europe by Italian nobleman Pietro Della Valle.
Queen Victoria loved Persian cats, and the breed became popular in Britain. The original Persian cats didn't have such flat faces.
Breeders selectively bred generation after generation until "pug-faced" Persian cats emerged, with noses nearly level with their eyes.
The British cat association modified its standards: Persian cats with noses above the lower eye line could not win awards. But North American breeders continued pursuing flat faces.
CFA finally added "muzzle must not be excessively prominent" to the breed standard.
The Health Cost of Extreme Breeding
🏴 Scottish Fold
Scottish Fold cats originated from a white cat named Susie on a Scottish farm in 1961. The folded ear is a dominant gene mutation directly linked to osteochondrodysplasia. A 2001 study found that all Scottish Fold cats have varying degrees of osteochondrodysplasia. Some cats have mild symptoms, while others begin experiencing joint pain at just a few years old. The Netherlands banned breeding certain Scottish Fold crossbreeds in 2019.
🦵 Munchkin
The short-legged Munchkin cat's gene is called achondroplastic dwarfism, a deletion of 3,033 base pairs in the UGDH gene. This mutation is lethal in homozygous form—embryos inheriting two copies of the mutant gene are reabsorbed in the womb. Short-legged cats have higher rates of lordosis, pectus excavatum, and hip dysplasia. Some have crossed Munchkins with Sphynx cats to create a short-legged hairless cat called the Bambino; TICA lists it as an experimental breed but won't allow it to advance to official breed status.
The Numbers Game
Different registries recognize vastly different numbers of breeds. TICA recognizes 75 breeds, while CFA only recognizes 45. CFA, founded in 1906, is the most conservative organization. The same cat might be classified as different breeds by different registries. CFA considers the Himalayan a color variant of the Persian, while TICA counts it as a separate breed. The World Cat Federation counts longhair and shorthair varieties separately, making their breed numbers appear larger.
The Concept of "Breed" is Inherently Fuzzy
There are four variants of the long-hair gene. Maine Coons and Ragdolls may have originated in America. Norwegian Forest Cats represent the Nordic lineage. Persian cats are the oldest, originating from the Middle East. Maine Coons are prone to polydactyly, which would be troublesome in wild cats; excessively long fur easily mats. But domestic cats don't need to hunt, so these issues aren't really problems anymore.
The Genetics of Cat Colors
A 2017 paper published in Science analyzing ancient and modern cat genomes found that tabby cats were dominant until the Middle Ages, and spotted cats were quite rare at that time. Cat coat color genetics are relatively simple: orange is a recessive gene on the X chromosome. White cats are prone to deafness. Blue eyes combined with certain white gene combinations cause hearing problems. The Siamese cat's pointed coloring is actually a form of temperature-sensitive partial albinism—cooler body parts (ears, nose, paws, tail) are darker, while warmer body parts are lighter. Siamese cats living in cold regions have overall darker coats than those in tropical areas.
The Global Cat Population
The global domestic cat population is estimated at between 300 and 600 million. The vast majority are not purebred cats. CFA has over 2 million registered purebred cats on file. The number of cats involved in pedigree certificates issued annually totals only in the hundreds of thousands. The concept of "breeds" is actually a product of just the last 150 years. The 1871 Crystal Palace Cat Show made people take "showing cats" seriously for the first time. Before that, no one cared what cats looked like—as long as they could catch mice, that was enough.
From mouse-catchers to show champions, the story of cats is really a story about us—our desires, our aesthetics, and our endless fascination with reshaping nature to match our dreams.