Yeah, they're more likely to have kidney problems and crappy teeth commonly. Obviously, there's the cross-eyedness and the kinked tail that show up on occasion, but that's really just cosmetic.
Otherwise, Siamese cats are pretty robust. My parents' cat Michiko, a seal-point traditional siamese, has never had an issue besides dental plaque, and her blue-point brother Squiggy was also healthy as an (admittedly rotund) horse his whole life despite what I'm pretty sure was a rare kind of congenital heart defect.
This is why I hate breeding. Most pure breeds are fuxked up in one way or the other. Yet we keep doing it and it's someone not considered animal cruelty.
Dude, as long as the gene pool is large enough, most cat breeds aren't going to be predisposed to serious health problems like dogs are. My parents' cat could have been a mutt and had the same chance of getting that heart defect. He actually lived for three years past the six months the vet originally gave him.
Not all. Scottish Folds all suffer from health problems. The same thing that makes them cute (the bent ears) also makes them sick. If two humans from the other side of the world with the same genetic disease had children the fact that they are not from the same small gene pool wouldn't affect anything.
As I said, most. Obviously the modern Persians and the other breeds with traits connected to illness aren't the ones I meant. I forgot about the Scottish Folds having connective tissue issues. I meant the breeds like Abyssinians, Maine Coons, Japanese Bobtails, British Shorthairs, Turkish Vans, Siamese, Burmese, Russian Blues, etc, that were originally derived from the cats that live in specific areas. Otherwise known as most breeds.
I do agree that the issues are smaller with cats. I think the problem is that as people took those cats from the areas they came from, the breeding pool got smaller and smaller, so more incest. Also people pushing the limits and selecting bad traits of breeds. We just need to be careful. Personally I would never buy a cat of any breed as to not enough it. Adopting obviously doesn't count, especially when in some case you are picking an older cat that you know willl have problems but still love it like it deserves .
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u/fucking_macrophages Dec 12 '19
Yeah, they're more likely to have kidney problems and crappy teeth commonly. Obviously, there's the cross-eyedness and the kinked tail that show up on occasion, but that's really just cosmetic.
Otherwise, Siamese cats are pretty robust. My parents' cat Michiko, a seal-point traditional siamese, has never had an issue besides dental plaque, and her blue-point brother Squiggy was also healthy as an (admittedly rotund) horse his whole life despite what I'm pretty sure was a rare kind of congenital heart defect.