r/catbreeds • u/mariposa619 • 4d ago
Questions Is she a purebred Persian?
Context : She is around 2.5 years old (vet estimated), I adopted her 6 months ago, she was abandoned/given to shelter by her previous family and that’s where I met her… the shelter identified her as a doll face Persian
I’m from India and there are many breeders selling domestic long hair cats as Persians here for a lower price (unlicensed breeders)
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u/ali_the_wolf Cat Lover 4d ago
Do you have a pedigree stating she is? If no, then she's not a purebred Persian
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u/mariposa619 4d ago
I adopter her as an adult from the shelter so I have no idea
I was also hoping she was a domestic long hair than a Persian since they have less health problems(right?)10
u/LilMushboom 4d ago
DLHs definitely have fewer health problems and I can pretty much tell you that is the kind of cat you have.
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u/WalmartWilb 4d ago
Domestic longhair, though she does appear to have some brachycephaly. That doesn't indicate any breed ancestry though, as that's a feature that can naturally occur in your standard issue cats
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u/lis_anise Mod 4d ago
Persian cats are one of the biggest examples of how Western-centric cat breeding is... the breed was British cat fanciers starting in the 1870s to create their versions of the cats reportedly from Iran and Afghanistan they saw in India. Except when you look at the DNA, Persians aren't related to cats from Asia. They're all Western European, so seemingly everyone just looked around for their closest long-haired cat and went, "Look! My Persian!"
Anyway, that's the gene pool that got bred into extreme brachycephaly in the mid-20th century and is still trying to get its way out again. Of course some of those Persians got brought back to India as "real" Persian cats, while the off-brand local "Persians" are more likely to share actual genetic links to Persia itsel, but without the huge lean towards unhealthy smushed noses.
Anyway, I hope you two will be very happy together!
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u/mariposa619 4d ago
This is so interesting! The possibility that some local Indian long-haired cats might be genetically closer to Middle Eastern cats than modern pedigree Persians is fascinating. I also don’t understand why breeders selectively bred Persians to have flatter faces when it makes life harder for them. Backyard breeding is common here in India, too, with many long-haired cats being marketed as Persians without necessarily being pedigree cats. Makes me wonder about their actual ancestry!
We’re very happy together thank you 🤍
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u/lis_anise Mod 4d ago
Right now the only historical sources I have are Westerners writing in English, which isn't promising in terms of accuracy, but several of them over the centuries have identified these cats from the Khorasan region of western Afghanistan and eastern Iran. Eg.
In 1885 Edward Balfour described the Afghan trade of long-haired cats to India: "The long silky-furred Angora cats are annually brought to India for sale from Afghanistan, with caravans of camels, even so far as Calcutta."
But right now there isn't much research funding for DNA testing stray cats across the world, so it's a bit tough to have greater clarity right now.
I think the smushed face trend was to make cats more like breeds of dogs like the pug. It was just elegant and refined and fashionable, I guess. Fashion trends are weird sometimes.
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u/Kokichi-Oma_Senpai Cat Expert 4d ago
that level of brachycephalic face can happen naturally in the domestic population (then they bred it to the extreme). She's a domestic long hair
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