Except for testing, and purchase cost of the parents, they don't spend more than a rescuer doesYou’re not taking into account other things that the breeders pay for, like the breeding cats, to begin with, the insane amount of food to feed a litter (especially if they don’t feed kibble), vet bills in case something goes wrong with the pregnancy.
But. . .the farm cats in Maine were already called coon cats, and Japanese bobtailed cats, well, that's self-explanatory. Plus when we lived in Japan ('80s and '90s), the Japanese Bobtail studbooks were still open so some of the military families would pick up a few bobtailed street cats to take back to the States and sell them to breeders as foundation cats. Were they less of a breed then? It's just a philosophical thought: when does a breed become a breed?Breed implies generations of selective breeding by people. There’s a difference between resembling (or even being related to) landrace cats that a breed was developed from and being that breed
I'm suspicious of this claim too. Usually if you poke the owners/breeders who make these claims enough, it turns out that several of their animals needed surgery because they couldn't breathe (or similar mitigation of whatever extreme trait they're defending), and they just consider that "part of the breed". I don't necessarily think show standards are always in the best interest of the animals involved.Persians that are ethically bred to standard, without excessively exaggerating features are prone to less issues