HELP! What does my cat resemble?

[coco2]

This is my baby Chanel, and she's almost 2 years old now. When I first adopted her from an animal shelter in my area at 7 months old, she had a few medical problems that came with her. She developed the kitten cold shortly after I brought her home and also found out she has a heart murmur. I also noticed her back legs weren't properly working (she had a hard time jumping up onto tall counters unlike my three other cats). She came with the name "Ragamuffin" which I thought was odd, so I looked it up and terns out it's a breed that looks very similar to her! There was no information on her previous owners besides "they got rid of her because they had too many cats" which I have never been able to understand why, because she is the sweetest, most fun and loving kitty I have ever been blessed to have. She is doing AMAZING now, no more kitty cold, and her back legs work great. My guess is that she is either a Ragamuffin or Ragdoll cat, and the breeders found out she had that bad gene that some cats develop and they obviously wouldn't be able to sell her, so they just gave her away to the shelter. Not sure, just a wild thought. Anyway, let me know what you think! 

This is her when I first adopted her (the shelter didn't know her exact date of birth but they figured she was between 6-7 months old)

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• coco2
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This is her now

 

[StefanZ]

I suppose a ragamuffin of pet quality is as good a guess as any.    Very sweet and loveable!

 

[coco2]

Does anyone think there's a chance she could be a purebred? If not, what would she be a mix of? Ragamuffin and...?

 

[Kieka]

She is actually closer to a Ragdoll than a Ragamuffin. 

Ragamuffins and Ragdolls originated from the same line in the 1960s (same mother cat for both and early breeding stock) which is why they are so similar in temperament and description. The main difference is that there was a disagreement among early breeders as to the direction the coat colors should take. Ragdolls are exclusively pointed while Ragamuffins are every color EXCEPT pointed.

Your girl is a pointed cat (blue eyes and darker extremities) her coat pattern is most likely a tortie bicolor pointed if you want to get really exact. I am seeing some orange hints in her color, so the tortoiseshell or torite aspect. The amount of white (which is really white and not lighter spots due to the pointed, which would not be considered white which makes sense even if it doesn't sound like it) indicates bicolor which simply means white with a color. The pointed basically mutes the whole thing making her extremities appear darker than the rest of her body. Likely you have seen a darkening to the places where color shows (the non-white areas, like her belly is white and the white on her face, which will always be white). I can see some of the darkening on her face from the younger to older pictures. She likely will continue to darken over the years (fun little fact, she was pure white at birth, hard to believe, right but all pointed cats are born pure white and start to show patterning within their first few weeks).

As to is she purebred? I would say no. While I like your theory she still would have been salable as a pet for a breeder even if they didn't want to use her for breeding. They might not have gotten much for her but it would have been more money to recoup the expenses of breeding than dumping her in a shelter. A purebred Ragdoll pet can bring in a couple hundred dollars even without papers. Even a leg problem wouldn't have affected her price much as a smart breeder could up-sell a jumping problem as a good thing to someone who doesn't want a cat on the counter.

Which to the leg problem, my boy couldn't jump on counters and was terribly uncoordinated for his first 2.5 years (he would miss laps). Last year he broken his leg but also has stopped growing. Suddenly I can't keep him off counters. If she is a Ragdoll or Ragdoll mix (which is actually fairly likely) then she may still be growing and her coordination hasn't caught up with her body. Unless she has a limp, gimp or other indications of problems I wouldn't count her out on the jumping quiet yet. 

Back to purebred, I would guess that she is either a backyard breeder or home breeding off-shot or even actual breeder escapee. You don't mention her size but if she is Ragdoll one would expect her to be around 10 pounds and that she is still growing some at this point. Given her age when you got her she might have gotten out on accident and caught by the shelter. She also might have been a surrender from a person who got her from someone and didn't want her when she got fluffy or she was too demanding or too much a kitten to handle or any of the other reasons people rehome teenage kittens. She does look pretty close to what I would expect for a Ragdoll and at the very least I would say half Ragdoll is a high likelihood. As to what else might be in her I am at a loss. Ragdolls share characteristics with long hair cats and other breeds because they are a combination of many breeds to result in a long haired, friendly, fluff ball of a cat. The Ragdoll part of her is overwhelming anything else she may be mixed with and if that mix was another long hair cat or another pointed cat it would be lost visually.

Unfortunately, without papers we can't ever be 100% sure she is pure anything and there are cats out there that can look strikingly like a purebred without having any relation. So it could be that she isn't Ragdoll at all but just got the right mix to look like a Ragdoll (I have a bicolor pointed that has the right mix to look like a Snowshoe but I know she is from a long line of feral tabbies with random mixing, my profile picture is my other bicolor that people sometimes call a Snowshoe but he isn't).

I'd just call her a Ragdoll when people ask, a tortie bicolor Ragdoll. She looks like one and if she has the temperament of one there is no harm in it. But if you decide to get pet insurance you will save money by going with Domestic Long Hair and without papers she technically is that. 

She is quiet a pretty cat. If she is social you might want to consider taking her to cat shows as a household pet or whatever you local show calls a cat without papers.  

 

[renstwin]

She's beautiful! What a doll! [emoji]128525[/emoji]

 

[coco2]

Thanks guys! I've been looking more into Ragdoll and Ragamuffin breeds online and searching through breeder websites just to keep finding more and more pictures of purebreds that look almost exactly like her! So I'm convinced she's at least half one breed or the other lol! Also, there are Ragdoll breeders in my area and some even close to the shelter I adopted her from. Any here's a few pictures I took this morning I took just to add for fun.

She's about 13 and a half pounds now and the vet keeps telling me I need to put her on a diet because "healthy house cats should be exactly 9 1/2 pounds". She only eats a small portion of food twice a day, once in the morning and once at night as the vet recommended, yet she won't lose the weight. But I also read that Ragdoll and Ragamuffin cats can weigh anywhere up to 14 pounds. Any thoughts on this? Is she really just too over weight?[

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• coco2
• Feb 11, 2017

 

[coco2]

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• coco2
• Feb 11, 2017

 

[coco2]

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• coco2
• Feb 11, 2017

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• coco2
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[Kieka]

Saying a cat should be 9.5 pounds is like saying all human females should be 125 pounds with no regard to any other factors or that a body builder at 250 pounds is overweight even though he has 5% body fat. Height, muscle tone and other factors come into play that affect healthy body weight.

I have a female who is 7 pounds. By your vets logic I need to fatten her up. But my girl is tiny and if she gained 2 pounds to bring her to that weight she would be a round ball with little legs. I would seriously be concerned about her ability to jump or even clean herself at that weight.. I am actually considering putting Rocket on a diet to loose half a pound because she is look a smidgen pudgy around the middle.

There are cat body condition charts out there. Yours being fluffy makes it a little more challenging to see at a glance. You'd have to press down the fur to feel more than see the characteristics.

Personally, if a vet told me that I would look for a new vet. My vet has never quoted and ideal weight. She talks about body condition scale instead.

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

She's about 13 and a half pounds now and the vet keeps telling me I need to put her on a diet because "healthy house cats should be exactly 9 1/2 pounds".

Kieka's advice just above this post is absolutely on point, and were our positions reversed, I believe I'd be interviewing new Veterinarians.  Any Vet who believes that a 4¾ pound female Singapura should double her weight - or that a 30 pound male Maine Coon or Savannah should reduce their body weight by more than two-thirds should really find another calling.  Not to seem harsh, but saying that, "healthy house cats should be exactly 9 1/2 pounds," is quite near the pinnacle of absurdity.

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