Cat Breed Identification — Coat, Build, Head and Ears

Identify a cat breed

Answer what you are sure of and leave the rest. Every question is optional, and the list narrows as you go.

Most cats are not a breed. Around nine in ten cats in North America are domestic shorthairs or longhairs — mixed ancestry, no pedigree. If this key lands there, that is the answer rather than a failure.

1.How long is the coat?

optional

The first split, and the one nobody gets wrong.

2.What is the build?

optional

Body type is what breed standards actually describe, and it is far more diagnostic than colour. Most cats are 'ordinary cat shape', which is itself informative.

3.What shape is the head?

optional

Head shape separates the big longhairs from each other — a squared muzzle, a straight profile and a round face point at three different breeds.

4.What about the ears?

optional

Folded or curled ears each come from a single mutation and identify a breed on their own.

5.Anything else stand out?

optional

Pick anything that applies.

6.What is the coat pattern?

optional

Asked last and it never removes a breed, because pattern is not breed. Calico, tortoiseshell, tabby and tuxedo describe colouring that appears across many breeds and in most cats of no breed at all.