In general cat "breeds" don't even exist, what we call cat breeds are actually just cats with a purely looks based birth defect that people propagate to continue that look on, for example Siamese cats are just regular cats born with albinism that's only half activated, this results in their fur basically being heat sensitive with warmer parts of their body cooking the color out of their fur turning it white, with cooler places like their face, feet and tail remaining the colors they would otherwise be if they weren't part albino, this also results in them becoming darker during the winter months and is the reason they come in multiple colors as flame point as their called are just orange Siamese cats
Yes, exactly, google African wild cat, that's what our house cats used to be before we domesticated them and propagated random birth defects that resulted in different colors, different types of fur from curly to bald, humans were at least good about breeding any health problems that came along with these visual birth defects back out of the creatures, if you want a recent example of a random birth defect turned breed, lykoi or werewolf cats, they literally just popped up from a random cat in 2011
I don't really consider most cat colours to be birth defects just because they're the result of random mutations. Blue eyes are a mutation in humans (which is why they're less common than brown), but they don't inherently make humans who have them less healthy.
The only downside of a cat having, for example, solid black fur is that it might not blend in as well in a brownish environment.
I call them birth defects because that's technically what they are, but like I said any negative health issues that developed with the birth defects were bred out of all these "breeds" resulting in purely visual differences between them, some of these color or fur differences propagated themselves as well due to the genes that causes them being dominant for example, the donskoy propagated naturally in Russia because the genes that make it bald are dominant meaning any offspring will be bald as well, even if the other parents is an average cat, meanwhile the sphinx cat has a gene resulting in the exact same mutation making them bald but for them it's recessive meaning to get a sphinx cat you either have to be lucky or breed only sphinx cats together
1
u/betweenboundary Jul 17 '22
In general cat "breeds" don't even exist, what we call cat breeds are actually just cats with a purely looks based birth defect that people propagate to continue that look on, for example Siamese cats are just regular cats born with albinism that's only half activated, this results in their fur basically being heat sensitive with warmer parts of their body cooking the color out of their fur turning it white, with cooler places like their face, feet and tail remaining the colors they would otherwise be if they weren't part albino, this also results in them becoming darker during the winter months and is the reason they come in multiple colors as flame point as their called are just orange Siamese cats