Domestic Shorthair

The domestic shorthair is not a breed, and pretending otherwise is the first mistake people make. It is a population, the enormous, unmanaged, genetically varied group of cats that most of the world actually lives with. There is no standard, no registry, no breeder deciding which traits get passed on. What you get instead is an animal shaped by chance rather than by fashion, and on almost every practical measure that turns out to be an advantage.

Start with health, because it is the strongest argument. Most inherited feline disorders concentrate in closed pedigree populations, where a small founder group and generations of selection fix a fault in place: the cartilage mutation in the Fold, the flattened face in the Persian, the kidney cysts that once ran freely through Persian lines. A cat of mixed ancestry carries no such concentration. It is not immune to anything, polycystic kidney disease, heart muscle disease and diabetes all appear in moggies, but the odds are simply better, and the vet bills across a lifetime tend to reflect that.

Physically the variation is the point. Cats arrive as tabbies in four patterns, black, white, ginger, tortoiseshell, calico, bicolour, and every combination of those with a body that might be lean and long-legged or short and cobby. None of it tells you anything about behaviour. The folklore is persistent, that ginger cats are friendly, that torties are difficult, that black cats are aloof, and there is no reliable evidence for any of it. What we do know is that early handling in the first two to seven weeks of life shapes sociability more than colour ever will, which is why a shelter's behavioural assessment beats every rule of thumb you have heard.

That makes the selection process genuinely different from the rest of this index. For a pedigree, you research the breed and then find a cat. For a moggy, you skip the first step entirely and spend your effort on the second. Go to a rehoming centre on a quiet weekday. Describe your household honestly, hours the flat is empty, children, existing pets, whether you want a lap cat or a spectator, and let the staff match you. They have lived with these animals for weeks and know which one sleeps all afternoon and which one opens cupboards.

Our clear recommendation is an adult. Kittens are charming and are a lottery: their personality has not settled, and you are committing to fifteen years on the basis of six weeks of evidence. A cat of five or over shows you exactly what it is on the first meeting. It is usually neutered, vaccinated, microchipped and litter-trained, it costs less to adopt, and it is drastically less likely to be rehomed than the kitten in the next pen. If you do want kittens, take two rather than one. They exhaust each other, they teach each other that teeth on skin ends the game, and the second one costs you very little more.

Daily care is the least demanding of any cat we cover. A short coat needs a brush once a week at most, more during the spring and autumn moults, largely to reduce the hair that ends up swallowed and later returned to you on the rug. Long-haired moggies exist and need the same two or three combing sessions a week as any pedigree, nobody has bred their coat for manageability. Nails every two to three weeks. Teeth several times a week, which is the single most neglected part of cat care and the one most likely to cost real money by middle age.

Feeding and weight deserve the same attention here as anywhere. The most common health problem in the pet cat population is not exotic: it is obesity, and everything that follows from it, diabetes, joint disease, a cat that cannot groom its own back. Measure portions rather than filling a bowl, weigh monthly, and treat a rising number as information rather than a mood. Our portion calculator does the arithmetic; the discipline is yours.

The last thing to say is the least measurable. There is a particular satisfaction in a cat with no provenance at all, no certificate, no line, no explanation for why the tail is that shape, that simply turns out to be excellent company. Most of the best cats we have known were of entirely unknown origin, acquired for nothing, and would not have won a rosette at any show. If your requirement is a good cat rather than a specific one, this is where to look, and there are far more of them waiting than there are homes.