Not Sure What Breed My Baby Boy is.

crvansr

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This is my baby boy, Pumpkin. He is 4 months old and 9 lbs. I am sure he is simply a Red Tabby, but he is exceptionally large. The vet asked me yesterday if I had seen his parents due to his size. My wife did see his feral mother and her description of her was that she was very tall but similar looking to Pumpkin.

Regardless, he is my buddy and I love him.
 

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lutece

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He's adorable!

I would describe Pumpkin as a red mackerel tabby and white domestic shorthair. Most cats are not any particular breed. Some cats, especially male cats, can be quite large. My family had a 30 lb cat when I was a small child, he looks enormous in our family photos.

It makes sense that Pumpkin's mom would have looked like him. Red boys get the color gene for red from their mothers. The mother of a red boy almost always has some visible red on her... she would have been either red tabby like Pumpkin, or tortoiseshell or calico.

Pumpkin looks like a wonderful cat and looks so happy in these photos! It's great that you have him.
 
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crvansr

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He is indeed happy purring machine! I have always been a dog owner and he is my first kitty. At first, I had some issue with the constant, exploration playfullness, but as I have learned to understand him more, I have become so attached to him and his mischievous playfulness. I feel he truly needs me and loves me as much as my two dogs, albeit in a different yet equal manner.

I look forward to many years with my little troublemaker!
 
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crvansr

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Ok. I received Pumpkin's BasePaws report. As I am sure with most domestic cats, he is a mix a of several breeds or types. He is now 6 months old and is over 14lbs. What has been striking g me the most about him is his length, smaller-looking head and his somewhat large ears for his head.

Well, based on the report, the largest percentage of his DNA belongs to Western breeds (55%): Ragdoll (17%), ASH (10%), Maine Coon (5%) and some others. He has an assortment of Eastern breeds all totaling up to about 15%.

Now, the explanation of his length, size of his head and ears come into play: he is almost 15 percent exotic cat. Amongst the exotics, he is 9% Savannah Cat, 2% Egyptian Mau and 3% broadly exotic.

He is a little bit of everything, but he uses his length to his advantage in many ways. One such way is reaching up to open doors with lever handles. It is hard to keep him out of rooms. He is a very fun cat.

My daughter in the photo is six and she is not a small girl. Pumpkin is her baby. She picked him out from a litter of homeless kittens.
 

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lutece

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Basepaws doesn't actually tell you what breeds are in your cat's ancestry. Most cats aren't a mixture of breeds, unlike dogs. Basepaws explains this on their web site here: Finding Your Cat’s True Breed

It is a mistake that is easy to make, though. Most people do seem to assume that their Basepaws report represents their cat's "breed mix."

All Basepaws reports show a lot of breed matches. This makes their product very entertaining and interesting to the cat owner. Most cats do not actually have ancestry from the breeds listed. However, for most cats like yours that do not have known ancestry, there is no way to double check Basepaws' report to see if it is accurate.

Here is a Basepaws result for a pedigreed Chartreux cat (click to enlarge). This cat has documented Chartreux ancestry going back to the 1930s. You can decide for yourself how accurate this test result is.
Basepaws Results.jpg
 
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crvansr

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Regardless,
He is tall enough to pull the lever to open a door, has a very long torso, neck and legs and a smaller head with tall ears. Whether the genotype assessment is correct about any percentage of Savannah Cat or not, he has certain similar phenotypes.

They look at alleles to determine similarities to the alleles of tested felines in groups of cats belonging to "breeds." Whether a subject cat is truly a part of that "breed" or not, it still shares a certain amount of common alleles that have been "matched." Because there are matching sequences, there are indeed similarities which would likely result in similar phenotypes.

It does not matter whether he is truly matching of any of the listed "breeds." What matters is he does have similar genetics that would result in similar expressions (phenotypes).
 

lutece

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Most of a cat's DNA is not expressed in its phenotype. The 9% of your cat's DNA that Basepaws considers to be "similar" to cats in their database identified as Savannah cats may have nothing to do with physical structure at all.

It's also not clear how closely linked this DNA actually is to the Savannah breed. You can see that the Chartreux that was tested came out with a 2% match to the Savannah breed... this breed didn't even exist at the time when the Chartreux breed was founded from native French cats. It is impossible for this breed to be a component of this cat's ancestry.

This is from Basepaws' web site (the page I linked above), with my emphasis:

"Unless you have papers proving your cat’s pedigree, then your cat probably does not have purebred ancestors. However, even if your cat does not have purebred parents, your cat shares more ancestors with some cat breeds than others. Because most cats are not actually “mixes” of different breeds, Basepaws developed a different type of genetic test that will be more useful to all cat owners."​

Basepaws acknowledges that most cats aren't mixes of breeds, and do not have purebred ancestors. However, most cat owners would be disappointed if Basepaws' test returned the result, "Your cat is a domestic cat and is not a mix of any breeds." So Basepaws developed a test based on loose "similarity" (not precisely defined by Basepaws), that shows a lot of possible breed matches for each cat, even though most cats do not have ancestors of any particular breed. The test pretty much allows you to read into it whatever traits you see in your cat.

Reading a Basepaws report, and linking the listed breeds with your cat's traits, can be a little bit like looking at an astrological chart for your friend or relative. Nearly any trait that you see in your friend can be linked to traits on an astrological chart, but that doesn't mean your friend's traits are due to having "Scorpio rising," for example.

In this case, you find your cat's body length interesting... and you see "Savannah" on this report... and it's tempting to ascribe your cat's body length to "Savannah." Most cats' Basepaws reports are going to have a non zero match for "Savannah," so lots of people with tall or long cats are likely to draw the same inference that you did.

Imagine if you received the exact same test results, but you had a different looking cat. If your cat was fluffy and chubby, or if your cat was seal point and white in color, you would be very interested in your cat's 14% match to the Ragdoll breed. If your cat was solidly built with a medium short muzzle, or if your cat had a bold classic tabby pattern, you might be very interested in the 10% match to the American Shorthair breed. If your cat was large and long bodied with long hair, you might be very interested in the 5% match to the Maine Coon breed. Any Basepaws report has lots of options that might "explain" nearly any traits you would see in your cat's phenotype.

It's entertaining for owners, and there is no way to disprove it, since it's not really based on any particular evidence. This is how Basepaws satisfies its customers and makes money.
 
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sabian

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Man that cat has a set of paws on him! It almost looks like he has fingers! It may be possible he has some distant ancestry to a Savannah, Maine Coon or maybe even a Bengal and that's where he gets his size. There was a member here that had a Maine Coon / Siamese mix. Both parents had papers and it just looked like a big domestic shorthair. Your boy would be considered a domestic shorthair. Without papers it's just hard to know for sure. I'd love to see some picks of him in about 6 months to a year and see how much bigger he gets. Beautiful cat though.
 
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