Ocicat in India: Price, Spots, Urate Stones and Real Costs

What the Ocicat actually is

The Ocicat is a shorthair cat with a spotted coat and no wild ancestry whatsoever, built from Abyssinian, Siamese and American Shorthair lines to look like a small wildcat. That last clause is the whole breed, and it is also the thing Indian listings get wrong most often by confusing it with the Bengal.

The CFA's own history is unusually specific. The first Ocicat, a kitten called Tonga born in 1964, came from an attempt to cross an Abyssinian with a Siamese in order to produce an Aby-pointed Siamese. The breeding produced a spotted kitten instead, and the breeder's daughter thought he looked like an ocelot, which is where the name comes from. Tonga was neutered and placed in a pet home, but his photograph ran in a Detroit newspaper and was seen by the geneticist Dr Clyde Keeler, who wanted domestic cats that mimicked vanishing wild species. That prompted a repeat of the breeding, and other breeders added the American Shorthair to broaden the genetic base.

The standard is mostly about the pattern

The GCCF allocates 25 of its 100 points to coat pattern, another 10 to colour and 10 to contrast, and only 5 to the head. No other breed on this site is judged so heavily on markings. The written description is worth quoting because it names the mechanism: "Each hair (except on the extremities) has several bands of colour, and where the dark bands fall together a spot is formed on the surface of the coat";.

FIFe describes the same animal more briefly as "a medium to large, well-spotted shorthair cat of moderate type", under the code OCI in fully recognised category 3, alongside the Bengal and the Egyptian Mau Fédération Internationale Féline. OCICAT…. The GCCF adds that the spots are well-scattered on the sides, across the shoulders and hindquarters and down the legs, with a well-spotted belly, and that they must not be faint or blurred.

The body, and one feature people mistake for fat

The standard asks for a solid, rather long body with substantial bone and muscle, a deep broad chest, high shoulders and a straight back that is slightly higher at the rear, which together produce a gait the GCCF compares to a wildcat's. It notes that some, though not all, Ocicats carry a loose skin flap called a primordial pouch running from the flank underside to the hind legs, and that its absence is not a fault. Indian owners regularly mistake that pouch for excess weight; it is anatomy, not condition.

Cats of this breed "feel heavy for their size", which the standard flags as surprising. The GCCF's public breeds index gives the working weight as 8 to 12 lb.

Coat genetics, and how a tabby becomes a spotted cat

The Ocicat's coat genetics are ordinary tabby genetics arranged to an unusual end. Every hair is agouti banded, the spots are what happens where the dark bands line up, and the underlying layout is the classic tabby pattern rather than a separate spotting gene.

The GCCF standard states the pattern's basis directly: the spots are "well-scattered in a distinctive pattern, based on the Classic Tabby pattern", and the mechanism is that each hair away from the extremities carries several bands of colour, so a spot appears on the surface where the dark bands coincide. That is the agouti ticking the Abyssinian contributed, laid over a tabby layout, and it is why an Ocicat's spot has soft rather than solid edges when you part the coat.

Where each founding breed shows

• Abyssinian: the agouti ticking that bands every hair, and the ruddy and sorrel colour base.
• Siamese: the modified wedge head, the long body, the voice and the original accidental cross itself.
• American Shorthair: substance, bone, the silver series, and the wider gene pool the early breeders needed.

The CFA records that the American Shorthair was introduced specifically to broaden the new breed's genetic base rather than to add a look. That is a useful thing to know when a seller tells you a silver Ocicat is a rarer or better cat; silver is an American Shorthair inheritance and carries no extra weight in the standard.

Twelve colours, and none of them is worth a premium

The GCCF states that Ocicats occur in twelve different colours, and that all colours should be clear and pleasing, with the pale colours naturally showing less contrast than the darker ones. It also gives a piece of practical identification most owners never hear: the darkest colour is at the tip of the tail, and the tail tip is the final determinant of what colour the cat actually is. Eye colour is independent, with all colours except blue allowed and no correspondence required between eye colour and coat colour.

Registry recognition, which is the strongest of any breed in this batch

Registry recognition is not the Ocicat's problem. All four major registries hold it at full championship level, with dates recorded in each body's own documents, which makes the pedigree question here purely about verifying the paper rather than about whether the breed exists.

The CFA accepted the Ocicat for registration in 1966, two years after Tonga was born, and advanced it to championship status in 1987 after two decades of work on consistent type. It runs a full Ocicat breed council today, listed among the shorthair breeds on CFA's own enumeration.

FIFe recognised the breed in 1992, which its standard prints on its own face as "OCI Rec. 1992", and files it in category 3 with a standard valid from 01.01.2026. TICA lists it among the 73 breeds it recognises. The GCCF carries a full Standard of Points entry at page 209, updated by Council in June 2025, showing in Section 4 Group C alongside the Bengal, the Egyptian Mau, the Sokoke and the Toyger.

What the French numbers say about scarcity

LOOF, which files the Ocicat under its own breed record id 39 rather than folding it into another breed's entry, is the only register publishing a live per-breed count. Its Ocicat figures are small enough to be worth naming individually: 3 pedigrees in 2023 and 5 in 2024, against a twenty-year total of 74 in which six separate years recorded none at all. Full recognition by four registries and a French national total in double figures is not a contradiction; it is what a genuinely uncommon but properly established breed looks like.

FIFe's own registration table puts the same point at international scale. Its Breeding Statistics 2024 covers 96,075 kittens across 54 breeds, and the Ocicat sits 26th with 177 registrations, marked as having fallen in rank. For comparison in the same document, the Bengal is 7th with 3,559 and the Egyptian Mau is 31st with 113. So among the spotted breeds the Ocicat is neither the popular one nor the rarest, and its scarcity is a fact about how few people breed it rather than about whether it is recognised.

Ocicat cat price in India, and the single source it rests on

Ocicat cat price in India comes from exactly one Indian page, which quotes Rs 50,000 to Rs 90,000 for a pet-quality kitten and Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 2,00,000 or more for show quality. That page is worth reading carefully before you use its numbers, because of what else is on it.

We pulled the Indian results for this query on 8 September 2026 with gl=IN and hl=en and read the pages in their raw markup. Nine of the ten results are either overseas price pages quoting US dollars, a marketplace listing for Ocicat-themed merchandise, a general Indian cat-price guide that does not list the breed, or a page for an entirely different breed.

The one Indian source, and its seam

Charwaha's Ocicat page publishes the figures above and a monthly budget of food Rs 3,000 to Rs 8,000, litter Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000, grooming Rs 500 to Rs 2,000, vet Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 and toys from Rs 1,000, totalling Rs 6,000 to Rs 20,000. Those are plausible Indian numbers. What sits beside them is the problem: one of the page's own headings reads "How to Choose a Healthy Puppy", its related-article block is entirely dog content, and it closes with a section headed "Why Native Indian Cat Breeds Are Better for Indian Climate";. This is a template built for dog breed pages with a cat dropped into it.

That does not automatically make the price wrong. It does mean the number has no independent corroboration in India, and that the page carrying it did not have a cat-shaped editorial process behind it. We report the figure and we report what it is sitting next to.

Running the division tests

Petful gives 800 to 2,500 US dollars for a breeder kitten, with most pet-quality kittens between 800 and 1,500. Test the Indian figures against that. Rs 2,00,000 divided by a flat 80 is exactly 2,500, which is precisely Petful's ceiling. Rs 50,000 divided by 80 is 625, which is below Petful's floor of 800, and 800 at 80 would be Rs 64,000. So the top of the Indian range coincides with the US ceiling and the bottom does not.

The homonym that will corrupt any automated price you find

There is an OciCat cryptocurrency token, and it trades for a fraction of a cent. Both Google's own AI answer for this query and the Petful page open by warning readers not to confuse the two. Any scraped or generated "Ocicat price" that comes back as a tiny decimal is quoting a token, not a cat. This is the cleanest example on this site of a breed name colliding with something else in the world, and it is worth knowing before you trust a price aggregator.

Monthly cost of ownership in India, from published rate cards

The cost of ownership for an Ocicat in India is lower than for any longhaired pedigree, because the grooming line nearly disappears. Litter, food, vaccination and parasite control carry the budget instead, and every figure below comes from a named Indian rate card read live.

Read the last two rows honestly. Food and litter are the two largest recurring lines in any Indian cat budget and neither has a published national rate this page could quote. Charwaha's estimates for them are plausible and unverifiable, which is exactly how they should be labelled.

Boarding is the line most owners forget until they travel, and it is worth pricing for a breed this social. PawSpace in Bengaluru publishes a separate cat rate card at Rs 499 for up to four hours, Rs 599 for daycare to ten hours and Rs 649 overnight, with festive-season rates 25 to 30 percent higher and food and litter charged on top.

Where a short coat saves you money

A semi-longhair cat needs professional grooming on a schedule. An Ocicat does not. The GCCF rates the coat low maintenance and describes it as short, satiny and close-lying with no suggestion of woolliness. In practice that removes roughly Rs 700 to Rs 800 a month of Vetic-priced grooming from the budget compared with a British Longhair. Budget instead for the litter that an active, athletic cat gets everywhere.

The line that is not optional for a female

Spaying is a cost line with a specific number behind it for this breed. In Swedish insurance data covering 1999 to 2006, the mean incidence of pyometra was about 17 cats per 10,000 cat years at risk, and the Ocicat is one of eight breeds with an incidence above 60 per 10,000, alongside the Siberian, Korat, Siamese, Ragdoll, Maine Coon and Bengal, with the Sphynx far ahead at 433. The mean case fatality rate was 5.7 percent. Consult your nearby vet about timing, but treat spaying as a health measure rather than a discretionary spend.

Heat tolerance in India, where this breed genuinely scores

The Ocicat has the best heat tolerance of any breed in this batch, and for once an Indian listicle's claim survives checking. The short, close-lying satiny coat has no dense undercoat to trap heat, and the breed's homeland is not as cold as its American origin suggests.

We queried NASA POWER by explicit coordinates for Detroit, where Tonga was born and where the newspaper photograph ran, and for Indian cities, echoing the cell elevation each time.

Two things in that table are worth naming. Detroit's annual relative humidity of 78.74 percent is higher than Chennai's 72.39, so the humidity intuition fails here as it does everywhere else on this site. And Detroit's peak wet-bulb load of 19.03 degrees C is only 7.08 degrees below Chennai's, which is the narrowest homeland gap in this batch of six breeds. A cat from a genuinely warm-summer continental climate, wearing a coat with no undercoat, is a better Indian proposition than the marketing usually is.

Where the ranking pages are right, and this page says so

Heads Up For Tails' fifty-breed listicle rates the Ocicat "suitable for the Indian climate" and calls the short coat easy to maintain and a practical choice for many Indian households. That is correct, and it is worth saying plainly because this site spends most of its time correcting Indian breed pages rather than agreeing with them. The short-coated argument holds up against the temperature data.

What still needs managing

Heat-tolerant is not heat-proof, and this is an athletic cat that will keep playing past the point of sense.

1. Move the two daily play sessions to early morning and after dark from March to June, because this breed will not self-limit.
2. Give the cat a tiled floor or a cool tile shelf to lie on, since conduction outperforms a fan for any cat.
3. Keep two water sources away from food bowls, which matters more here than in most breeds because of the urate stone finding below.
4. Delhi peaks in June rather than May and Bengaluru in April rather than May, so plan the hot window by city rather than by a national rule.
5. Watch the coat through the monsoon in Mumbai, Kolkata and coastal Tamil Nadu, since a short satiny coat dries fast but the skin under it still stays damp in an unventilated room.
6. Rank your own city rather than assuming: hottest-month means run Ahmedabad 35.06 C in May, Hyderabad 33.30 C in May and Pune 28.93 C in April, so Pune is materially easier than Chennai and Ahmedabad is materially harder.

One legal note belongs here. Rule 6(5) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018 requires the temperature where pet animals are displayed or housed to be comfortable, says it varies from breed to breed, and puts the onus on the pet shop owner to familiarise himself with the requirements of the breeds he deals in. That clause protects a longhaired cat more than it protects this one, but it is the shop's obligation either way.

Temperament, and the two registries that disagree about it

The Ocicat is an extroverted, trainable, people-oriented cat, and the two registries that describe its temperament in writing disagree on one word that matters to a buyer: whether it is demanding.

The CFA describes a dog-like personality, cats dedicated to their owners "but neither clingy nor demanding", natural extroverts who welcome strangers, respond well to training, will fetch, walk on a leash and learn voice commands. The GCCF describes the same breed as "active, agile, intelligent, inquisitive and demanding of attention", with a very affectionate friendly nature that desires the company of people or other pets, adding that Ocicats are gentle, easy going and companionable.

Who this suits in India

• Families with children, since the CFA calls them natural extroverts who welcome strangers.
• Households with another cat or a cat-safe dog, which the GCCF standard names explicitly as company this breed desires.
• Owners who want a trainable cat, because fetch, leash walking and voice commands are all on the registry's own list.
• Anyone in a hot Indian city, where the short coat is a genuine advantage rather than a compromise.

Who should choose something else

• People out of the house twelve hours a day with no second animal, because a social breed alone in a flat gets destructive rather than sad.
• Anyone wanting a calm ornamental cat, since this one is athletic and will use the top of your cupboards.
• Households with fragile shelving, which is not a joke about a breed the standard says moves like a wildcat.
• Buyers who cannot verify a pedigree, given that only one Indian page even publishes a price for the breed.

Training an Ocicat, which is the easy part

To train an Ocicat, use food and repetition and start early, because this is one of the few cat breeds a registry describes as responding well to training. Fetch, leash walking and voice commands are all on the CFA's own list of what the breed does.

The CFA's trait section is unusually concrete: many Ocicats will fetch, walk on a leash, learn to respond to voice commands and easily adapt to household rules. Take that seriously rather than as breed flattery. A cat that can be trained is a cat whose vet visits, carrier trips and nail trims are all easier, and in an Indian summer the carrier trip is the one that matters.

The curriculum, in order

1. Start handling paws, ears and mouth at eight to ten weeks, ten seconds at a time, ending in food.
2. Teach a name response before anything else, since a recall in a flat is a safety tool.
3. Introduce the carrier as furniture and feed inside it, never using it only for vet trips.
4. Add harness and leash indoors before ever going outside, and only in a safe, enclosed space.
5. Build fetch on the cat's own offer rather than trying to teach it cold, because most Ocicats offer it unprompted.

What this breed resists

It resists boredom rather than instruction. An under-stimulated Ocicat opens cupboards, knocks things off surfaces and shouts, and Indian owners routinely read that as bad temperament when it is an unmet exercise requirement. The GCCF standard describes a cat that is inquisitive and demanding of attention; a cat like that will find its own job if you do not give it one.

Daily exercise, which this breed actually needs

Give an Ocicat two structured play sessions a day of fifteen to twenty minutes each, plus vertical space it can climb. This is the highest exercise requirement of any breed in this batch, and it is the requirement Indian buyers most often underestimate.

The GCCF standard describes an athletic and powerful cat, graceful and lithe, with high shoulders and a straight back that produce a gait similar to a wildcat's, and substantial muscle and bone development. That body is built for movement, and cats built for movement do badly in a flat with nothing to climb.

The general weight evidence still applies. Among UK cats that died after nine months, lifespan decreased by 0.02 years for every 100 g of deviation, in either direction, from the median adult body weight within the breed and sex strata. A muscular breed that feels heavy for its size, as the standard says it should, is a breed where judging condition by eye is unreliable.

What to provide

1. Install a tall climbing structure or a set of wall shelves, because floor space alone will not do for this breed.
2. Run two wand sessions a day, each ending with a catch and a food reward.
3. Rotate toys weekly rather than leaving them all out, since an intelligent cat habituates fast.
4. Feed at least one meal from a puzzle feeder, which turns eating into the work this breed is looking for.
5. Move both sessions to early morning and after dark from March to June.

A second cat is a legitimate exercise strategy here and the GCCF standard supports it, describing a breed that desires the company of people or other pets. In an Indian household where everyone is out during the day, two cats is often the honest answer rather than a luxury.

Grooming, which is the shortest section on this page

Groom an Ocicat once a week with a rubber brush and that is essentially the whole routine. The GCCF rates the coat low maintenance, and the standard asks for a short, close-lying, satiny coat with no suggestion of woolliness.

The full coat description is worth quoting because it explains why the routine is so light: "Short, satiny in texture with a lustrous sheen. Close lying and sleek, with no suggestion of woolliness. Allowances should be made for seasonal variation";. There is no dense undercoat to mat, which is the difference between this breed and every semi-longhair on this site.

Seasonal variation is written into the standard, so an Ocicat whose coat looks thinner in an Indian summer is behaving as the register expects rather than losing condition.

The one grooming-adjacent thing that does matter here

Skin, not coat. A short satiny coat gives less protection against sun on a balcony or a terrace, and against the tick and flea load an Indian ground-floor flat carries. Parasite control on a veterinary schedule is the grooming budget this breed actually needs, and it is worth asking your nearby vet which product suits a cat in your city rather than buying a dog product by mistake.

Health issues, and the three studies that name this breed

The Ocicat has no life table of its own, but it is one of the better-studied breeds in this batch: three separate peer-reviewed series name it explicitly, on urinary stones, on pyometra and on Toxoplasma gondii. All three findings are actionable in India, and none of them appears on any page currently ranking for the breed here.

Urate stones, not the ones most owners are warned about

In 21,426 feline bladder urolith submissions to the Canadian Veterinary Urolith Centre between 1998 and 2014, struvite and calcium oxalate together made up more than 90 percent of everything submitted. The breed pattern is where it gets specific: compared with domestic short-haired cats, the Tonkinese, Burmese, Devon Rex, Himalayan, Persian and Siamese were significantly associated with calcium oxalate, while the "Egyptian mau, Birman, ocicat, and Siamese breeds were over-represented amongst urate submissions";.

That distinction matters clinically because urate stones are managed differently from the common two. They are a minority stone type overall, and their appearance can prompt a vet to look for an underlying reason rather than simply changing the diet. If your Ocicat produces a stone, tell the vet what the breed is over-represented for, because the prior matters.

There is no routine screening test for urate stones, and no registry asks breeders to screen for them, so this is a management finding rather than a breeding one. What it changes is what you watch for and what you tell the vet.

• Keep at least two water sources, away from food, since dilute urine is the single largest owner-controlled variable.
• Lead with wet food where the budget allows, which raises total water intake more than any bowl arrangement.
• Treat straining, frequent small volumes, blood in the urine or tray avoidance as an emergency in a male cat.
• Ask for the stone to be analysed rather than assumed, because the management for urate differs from struvite and oxalate.

Pyometra, and why spaying is a health decision here

Swedish insurance data covering cats insured from 1999 to 2006 gives a mean pyometra incidence of about 17 cats per 10,000 cat years at risk, diagnosed at a median age of four years, with a significant breed effect. The Sphynx led at 433 cats per 10,000 cat years at risk, and the breeds above 60 included the Siberian, Ocicat, Korat, Siamese, Ragdoll, Maine Coon and Bengal. The mean case fatality rate across all cats was 5.7 percent, slightly higher than the 3 to 4 percent reported in dogs.

Toxoplasma gondii, where the breed sits near the top

A Finnish feline biobank study tested 1,121 cats from eight breeds for immunoglobulin G antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii. Overall seroprevalence was 41.12 percent (95% CI 38.28 to 44.03). Ocicats came in at 38 of 88 cats, 43.18 percent (95% CI 33.33 to 53.60), fourth of the eight behind the Persian at 60.00 percent, the Norwegian Forest Cat at 46.65 and the Birman at 45.20, and well above the Burmese at 18.82.

In the final multivariable model, adjusting for age and lifestyle, the odds of testing seropositive were four to seven times higher in Birmans, Ocicats, Norwegian Forest Cats and Persians than in the Burmese, and older age and receiving raw meat were separate risk factors. Seroprevalence in adult cats was 45.20 percent against 18.79 percent in kittens.

The practical Indian consequence is about raw feeding, not about avoiding the breed. Toxoplasma is a zoonotic parasite and the cat is its definitive host, so a household decision to feed raw meat is a household decision about a human health risk as well as a feline one. Discuss it with your nearby vet before you start, not after.

Life expectancy, where nothing has been measured

The UK feline life tables modelled only the 12 breeds reaching 15 or more deaths, and the Ocicat is not among them. Indian and overseas pages publish 12 to 18 years, which Heads Up For Tails prints as the breed's life expectancy. That is an estimate, not a life table, and this page keeps the two labelled apart. What the UK data does supply is general and still useful: crossbred cats reached 11.89 years at age 0 against 10.41 for purebreds, entire cats carried 4.29 times the odds of dying before three, and non-ideal body weight was significantly linked to a shorter lifespan.

Feeding an athletic cat with a urate stone risk

Feed an Ocicat measured meals with as much moisture as your budget allows, because the one breed-specific stone finding on this page turns on urine concentration. Portion control matters second, and it matters because the standard itself says this cat should feel heavier than it looks.

Water first. The Canadian series over-represents this breed among urate submissions, and urine concentration is the variable an owner can actually influence. In an Indian summer that is not a marginal effect.

• Place at least two water sources, each at least three feet from any food bowl.
• Refresh water twice a day from March to June, because warm stale water is refused.
• Weight wet food into the ration deliberately rather than treating it as a topper.
• Watch litter clump size, which is the observable proxy for how much the cat is drinking.

Portions, and why eyeballing fails on this breed

The GCCF standard says both sexes should feel surprisingly heavy for their size, with substantial bone and muscle. A cat that is supposed to feel heavy is a cat whose weight gain is easy to excuse. Weigh the ration and weigh the cat, because the UK data attaches 0.02 years of lifespan to every 100 g of deviation from the breed and sex median.

The Ocicat kitten timeline, month by month

Plan an Ocicat kitten timeline around four fixed points: the eight-week legal floor for sale in India, the vaccination course, the training window that this trainable breed rewards, and the neutering or spaying decision, which for a female carries a specific pyometra number behind it.

Indian law sets the first date. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018 define an un-weaned animal to include "kittens and pups below eight weeks", and rule 7(15) states that no pet shop shall sell un-weaned or underage animals.

The window that decides the adult cat

Between eight and sixteen weeks this breed learns whether handling, carriers and harnesses are normal. The CFA says Ocicats respond well to training and easily adapt to household rules, which is a statement about a window rather than about a lifetime. A cat that meets a carrier for the first time at three years old will fight it, breed notwithstanding.

What to write down in the first year

1. The registry that issued the pedigree papers, copied from the certificate rather than remembered.
2. Every vaccination date and product name, from the certificate.
3. Monthly weight, which is the baseline the body-condition argument later rests on.
4. Whether the parents were tested for pyruvate kinase deficiency on the Abyssinian side.

Ocicat against the spotted cats Indian buyers cross-shop

Almost everyone who reaches this breed is also looking at the Bengal, and a smaller number at the Egyptian Mau or the Abyssinian. The comparison that matters is not which looks wilder; it is which health evidence exists, and which cat is actually obtainable in India.

The Bengal row is the one to read twice. It is the only cat in that table with a measured UK life expectancy, and at 8.51 years from 73 deaths it is the shortest of the twelve breeds the study modelled. That is not an argument for the Ocicat, which has no measured figure at all; it is an argument for noticing which claims have numbers behind them.

Ocicat against Bengal, on the question people actually ask

The difference is ancestry, and it is documented rather than rhetorical. The CFA's history records that the Ocicat came from an Abyssinian and Siamese cross with the American Shorthair added later, with no wild species involved at any point. A Bengal's founding lines include the Asian leopard cat. For an Indian buyer that matters practically: a breed with no wild ancestry raises no questions about wildlife law, import provenance or generational distance from a wild parent.

Ocicat against the cat outside your building

In the UK life tables, crossbred cats reached 11.89 years at age 0 across 7,117 deaths, against 10.41 years for purebred cats and 1.83 times the odds of dying before three. An Indian domestic shorthair needs no import route and no pedigree verification, and an Indian tabby is already spotted or striped. If the appeal of the Ocicat is the wild-looking pattern, look at what is already outside before you spend Rs 50,000 or more.

Mistakes Indian buyers make with this breed

Five mistakes account for most of what goes wrong with an Ocicat in India, and the first one costs money before the cat arrives.

1. Taking the single Indian price as a market

One Indian page publishes an Ocicat price, and its own headings show it is a dog template with a cat dropped in. A single unverified source is not a market rate. Treat Rs 50,000 to Rs 2,00,000 as one observation to compare against whatever you are quoted, not as a benchmark you owe anyone.

2. Buying a spotted cat and calling it an Ocicat

Spots are not the breed. The GCCF requires the spots to sit on a classic tabby layout, to be well-scattered including on the belly, and to be neither faint nor blurred, and it allows any eye colour except blue. A spotted Indian domestic shorthair is a spotted Indian domestic shorthair, and there is nothing wrong with that except the price difference.

3. Underestimating the exercise requirement

This is the one that produces the returned cat. A breed the standard describes as athletic and powerful, with a wildcat's gait and a demand for attention, does not settle into a small flat with nothing to climb. Install the climbing furniture before the cat arrives, not after the curtains come down.

4. Feeding raw without thinking about the household

Raw meat was an independent risk factor for Toxoplasma gondii seropositivity in the study that also placed Ocicats among the highest-odds breeds. Toxoplasma is zoonotic and cats are its definitive host. This is a decision to make with a vet, especially in a household with a pregnant person or anyone immunocompromised.

5. Leaving a female entire

The Ocicat sits among eight breeds above 60 pyometra cases per 10,000 cat years at risk against an all-cat mean of about 17, with a 5.7 percent case fatality rate. Spaying is the intervention, and it also removes the 4.29 times odds of early death that entire cats carried in the UK data.

Adoption, verification and buying without being fooled

Adopt first, and if you buy, verify three things before money moves: the age, the registry and the parents. Every check is free, and for this breed the registry check is unusually easy because all four major bodies hold the breed.

Start with adoption, and be realistic about what it offers. A purebred Ocicat in an Indian shelter would be extraordinary. A spotted or ticked Indian domestic shorthair with the same short coat, the same heat tolerance and a longer measured life expectancy is not extraordinary at all; it is what most Indian shelters are full of.

The three checks, in order

1. Age. Kittens below eight weeks are un-weaned under rule 2(1)(p)(ii) of the Pet Shop Rules, 2018, and rule 7(15) bars selling un-weaned or underage animals. Ask for the litter date in writing.
2. Registry. Ask which body issued the pedigree papers. CFA, TICA, FIFe and the GCCF all hold this breed, so any of those four is a checkable answer and a seller who cannot name one has told you what you need to know.
3. Parents. Ask to see the queen with the litter, ask about pyruvate kinase deficiency testing on the Abyssinian side, and ask what the parents weigh.

Two further written rules are worth carrying to the counter. Rule 7(14) bars selling a pet animal with any form of mutilation other than necessary curative surgery on veterinary prescription, and rule 7(22) bars selling any pet animal to a person who has not attained the age of majority.

What a genuine breeder does without being asked

• Names the registry and hands over the paperwork with the cat rather than promising it later.
• Shows the queen, the litter and the room they were raised in.
• Volunteers what has and has not been tested, rather than claiming the line is clear of everything.
• Takes the cat back in writing if the placement fails.

Compare with similar breeds

Ocicat sits in 2 Bonbeno groups. Each one compares it directly against the breeds it is genuinely an alternative to, on the same figures.