Cat Breeds - Random Breeds and Pure Breeds Compared

Comparing Random Cat Breeds to Pure Cat Breeds

While people who like cat shows and cliché cats tend to go exclusively with ownership of purebreds, pet owners are generally just as happy with cat breeds that pop up in the streets of their local neighborhoods. Whether you go with a purebred or a street kitten, you can generally find the traits in cat breeds that best suit your household. Either way, you still have the great feline domestic pet that is relatively self-sufficient and easy to care for. Give your cat some food, water, a toy, clean cat litter, and a few minutes of daily affection and you’ll have yourself a low-maintenance little family member.

In spite of what your local cat breeders would like you to think, most cat lovers don’t own pure cat breeds. They adopt a kitten or adult cat from the local shelter. Only a few among the wealthy classes of society really go for pure cat breeds because of the high costs of purchasing one of these cats. Having pure cat breeds doesn’t serve much purpose beyond making your cat more of a show piece. As far as being a quality pet, the cat’s health and personality are far more important considerations than choosing between pure cat breeds.

That is not to say that there isn’t a certain satisfaction for enthusiasts of certain cat breeds in owning a purebred cat. When you purchase pure cat breeds you have the advantage of knowing exactly what to expect in terms of how your kitten will look and behave when it grows up. Pure cat breeds have consistent body sizes, fur coats, and body shapes. Cat breeds also tend to have pretty much the same mental and emotional traits from one cat to the next.

Whether your are going with pure cat breeds or going for the random cat breeds you find in the local shelter, the main distinguishing feature in how the cats must be cared for is the length of their fur. If you like having a cat to bathe regularly and brush daily, you may be a candidate to own one of the cat breeds with longer fur. But you must also be willing to deal with more hairballs and flea problems. If you are more into a simple cat to care for, you will probably be happy with the much more common cat breeds that have short fur.

It is important to remember that pure cat breeds are mostly man-made manipulations of breeding. That doesn’t make these cat breeds lesser cats, as they are still cats. But just because a cat doesn’t fall into any particular cat breeds doesn’t make it any less worthy of being a pet. Currently there are about seventy registered cat breeds in the United States, but there are thousands of random cat breeds that have formed on their own which receive no official classification recognition.