American Shorthair

Start at the beginning, because no other American breed can. Over fifty of these cats stood in the benching rows of the first American cat show in 1895, and when CFA formed in 1906, the breed was one of its first five. (The 1895 Best in Show, for the record, was a Maine Coon named Cosey: this breed was present in force, not on the podium.) It was America's working shorthair, refined into a pedigree.

The name took sixty years to settle, and the story is better than the date. First plain "Shorthair," then "Domestic Shorthair" from around 1930, a label the breed's own national club calls a grave mistake once it came to read as ordinary rather than American-bred. From 1961 the fanciers pushed for the current name.

CFA dates the change 1965, Canada's registry says 1966, and the 1965 Cat of the Year was recorded under the old name "later to be called American Shorthair." A rename that happened mid-stride. That is exactly how our domestic shorthair explainer untangles the confusion the old name left behind: the breed was bred FROM the everyday shorthair population, so the resemblance runs backwards from what most people assume.

In the flesh, the standards ask for balance. TICA's own text says this "is not a large, heavy boned cat as is the British. It is a very balanced medium size, medium boned cat, with a firm muscular feel." The head is an oval, slightly longer than wide. The coat: short, dense and hard-textured, built per CFA to "stand up to rough weather, bushes and brambles." Honest numbers where numbers exist: no registry prints a weight, no measured study exists, and secondary sources cluster adults around 6-16 lb. Our British Shorthair comparison settles the most-asked look-alike question with the registries' own words.

On personality, this breed owns one genuinely remarkable measured result. In the one study comparing it to eleven other breeds (veterinarian-rated, Japan, 2009), it scored FIRST on novelty-seeking, the boldest cat in the table. It also scored second on friendliness, playfulness and demand for affection, while sitting mid-table on aggression and among the least timid. One country and no significance tests, so hold it lightly. But it matches the registry portrait: a good-natured, adaptable companion that never stopped being a working cat around household insects.

Health reads differently here than on our other profiles, because this breed's own two registries disagree in public. CFA acknowledges HCM was "noted in some cats in the 1980s and 90s" and describes it as largely bred away. TICA says the breed is "not known to be prone to any genetic or hereditary illnesses." We print both, alongside Cornell's list (which includes the breed among HCM-prevalent ones, without a rate) and the fact that no DNA test exists: echocardiogram screening and open paperwork are the real buyer questions.

The kidney-gene story is a lesson in sampling. It runs 47 percent in a Japanese study of cats already suspected of kidney disease, and 2.97 percent (not statistically significant) in a general caseload, and neither UC Davis nor the UK's Langford lab flags the breed for PKD at all. Details, tests and the two quietly good findings (PK deficiency essentially absent; virtually no type-B blood) are in the health section below.

Two buying notes. The palette runs past 100 combinations by CFA's own count, mapped with registry classes on the colors page, with the silver tabby as the breed's face and black as its search-volume king. And the market has a trap built into the name. Named US catteries charge $1,200-2,900 (the receipts), while the cheap listings wearing the breed's name are, by their own captions, ordinary kittens. Outside North America the breed is genuinely scarce, and the UK case is almost funny: GCCF's own page grades it "Green: not applied, probable acceptance." In a century, nobody has filed the form. The breeders page has every registry's actual position.