Cobby, Foreign and the Shapes in Between

Body type is more informative than coat or colour, and it has a vocabulary that is standard among cat people and unknown to everyone else.

The three broad types

Cobby. Short, broad and deep in the body, on short thick legs, with a round broad head and a short tail. Persian, British Shorthair, Exotic Shorthair.

Foreign or oriental. Long and slender, on long fine legs, with a wedge-shaped head, large ears and a long whippy tail. Siamese, Oriental Shorthair, Abyssinian.

Intermediate or semi-foreign. Everything in between, which is where the great majority of cats sit, including nearly all random-bred cats.

Why the intermediate build is the default

Because it is what cats are without selection. The cobby and oriental extremes were produced deliberately over decades of breeding, and both are considerably further from the ancestral shape than the intermediate type.

That means an intermediate cat is not a cat that failed to be a breed. It is the normal form, and it is what most of the world's cats look like — which is the argument made at more length in most cats are not a breed.

Where body type is genuinely diagnostic

At the extremes. A truly oriental cat — long, fine-boned, wedge-headed, with very large ears — is unusual enough that breed ancestry is a reasonable inference. Likewise a genuinely cobby cat with a flat face.

In the middle it says nothing, because the middle is where most cats are.

Size within the substantial type

Maine Coons, Norwegian Forest Cats and Siberians are all large, long and muscular with heavy bone. They also all resemble large random-bred longhaired cats closely, which is the source of most misidentification in cats.

Size alone is not evidence. Large random-bred cats are common, and a large cat is more often a large cat than a Maine Coon.

The health end of the spectrum

The extremes carry consequences.

Flat-faced cobby breeds have shortened airways, dental crowding, tear duct problems and, in the most extreme, difficulty eating. This is a direct consequence of the skull shape and is not avoidable within the type.

Very fine-boned oriental types are generally healthy in structure, though some lines carry specific inherited conditions.

That is the same pattern seen across dog breeding: selection toward an extreme produces the appearance and the problems together, which is what the Scottish Fold's ears and what they cost describes for a different trait.

Using it

Body type first, then coat, then colour last — colour being the least informative of the three, as calico, tortie, tabby and tuxedo are not breeds sets out.

Ear set and size

Part of body type rather than separate from it. Oriental types carry large ears set wide and low on a wedge head; cobby types have small ears set high on a round skull.

Ear size scales with the type rather than varying independently, which is why an intermediate cat has unremarkable ears. Very large ears on a slender cat is a coherent oriental package rather than two separate observations.

Judging a cat that is overweight

An overweight cat reads as cobby regardless of its underlying build, because the depth and breadth of the body increase while the legs do not.

Assess condition before assessing type: ribs should be feelable under a thin covering, with a visible waist from above. A great many cats identified as cobby are simply heavy, and the underlying frame is intermediate.