The Size of a Cat and Its Problems for Cat Fanciers

You might think that size wouldn't be a problem for cat fanciers or breeder. After all, most breeds of domestic cat are fairly uniform in size. Shouldn't this make creating new breeds easier? Doesn't it mean that you can cross breeds and experiement without having to consider size?

The answer to the second quesiton is yes. The answer to the first is, unfortunately, no. Unlike dog breeders, who are able to work with a wide variety of sizes, cat fanciers and breeders are very limited in design. The difference between the largest breed and the smallest breed is barely 12 pounds in weight and less than 1 foot in length. The diffference between the largest and shortest facial profiles is only 2 inches. This isn't a lot to work with in terms of developing new breeds.

This presents a problem for cat breeders that dog breeders simply do not face. If you have only one size to choose from, new breeds, or even variations on a single breed, are difficult to come by. Despite this limitation, breeders have managed to create more than fourty distinctive and recognized breeds. While this may not be as many as dog breeders have been able to create, it is still impressive given the limited variables cat fanciers have to work with.