Cat Breeds
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Cat Breeds trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Most cats have no pedigree at all, which is part of what makes the recognised breeds so interesting. Each one began somewhere specific: a farm litter with an odd mutation, a ship's cargo, a royal gift, or a breeder with a plan and a great deal of patience. The names are often misleading, and the legends attached to them are better still. This quiz asks you to name the breed from a description of its coat, build, habits or history, and to match breeds to the places and wild relatives they came from. It also covers the vocabulary that owners and show judges use for colours, patterns and body types. No pictures are needed, so it works for a family quiz night, a classroom or a long car journey. The easier questions suit anyone who has ever shared a sofa with a cat, and the hardest will test people who can tell a show champion from across the hall. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The hairless Sphynx breed began with Prune, a kitten born bald in 1966, in which country?
Canada
Canada is where it began: Prune was born in Toronto to an ordinary black-and-white house cat. Early breeders called the cats Moonstones and Canadian Hairless before settling on Sphynx.
Q 02Which shaggy breed is the largest domestic cat that is not a wild hybrid?
Maine Coon
Maine Coon tails are long, bushy and ringed, which fed the impossible myth that the breed is part raccoon. Another legend says it descends from pets Marie Antoinette shipped to America before her failed escape.
Q 03The dark face, ears, paws and tail of colorpoint cats come from a pigment enzyme sensitive to what?
Temperature
Temperature controls the pattern: the enzyme only makes pigment where the body is coolest. Kittens are born pale all over and darken at the extremities in their first few months.
Q 04Which spotted breed did Jean Mill create by crossing house cats with the wild Asian leopard cat?
Bengal
Bengal comes from the wild cat's scientific name, Prionailurus bengalensis. It is the only domestic breed with rosettes, the ringed spots worn by leopards and jaguars.
Q 05Which breed began with Blackberry, a Louisiana stray whose kittens had unusually short legs?
Munchkin
Munchkin breeders borrowed the name from the little people of L. Frank Baum's Oz. The short legs come from a gene so controversial that several countries ban breeding the cats.
Q 06Which owl-faced breed descends from Susie, a white barn cat found on a Tayside farm in 1961?
Scottish Fold
Scottish Fold ears bend forward because of a gene that affects cartilage throughout the body. Kittens whose ears stay upright are known as Scottish Straights.
Q 07Which large, blue-eyed breed, nicknamed the puppy cat, did Ann Baker develop in 1960s California?
Ragdoll
Ragdoll refers to the way the cats go limp and relaxed when picked up. Baker said her founding animals were ordinary alley cats, not pedigrees.
Q 08Which breed's first documented arrival in the United States was a cat sent from Bangkok to the Hayes White House?
Siamese
Siamese cats were a novelty: the Hayes cat, named Siam, is the first of the breed documented in the country. Many early imports had crossed eyes and kinked tails, traits later bred out.
Q 09Which word for a striped or swirled coat with an M on the forehead is often mistaken for a breed?
Tabby
Tabby is a coat pattern, not a breed, and it turns up in pedigrees and street cats alike. It comes in four types: mackerel, classic, ticked and spotted.
Q 10Which tall, lanky breed began in 1986 with a kitten whose father was a serval, an African wild cat?
Savannah
Savannah was the name of that first kitten before it became the name of the breed. Early generations can be as big as dogs, and one stood 19 inches tall to set a world record in 2016.
Q 11Which silvery grey, green-eyed breed was first shown in England as the Archangel Cat?
Russian Blue
Russian Blue cats may have originated in the northern port of Arkhangelsk, known in English as Archangel. Sailors are believed to have carried them to Northern Europe in the 1860s.
Q 12The Japanese Bobtail, model for the maneki-neko figurine, has a tail likened to which animal's?
Rabbit
Rabbit is the usual comparison for the short, kinked tail, which varies from cat to cat. The lucky figurine is most often painted as a calico, the colouring the Japanese prize most in the breed.
Q 13Forebears of the American Shorthair are said to have hunted rats aboard which ship in 1620?
Mayflower
Q 21Which long-haired pointed breed with four white 'gloves' is also called the Sacred Cat of Burma?
Birman
Birman cats were almost wiped out in World War II, when a single pair named Orloff and Xenia de Kaabaa was all that survived in Europe. Legend makes the breed the companion of temple priests.
Q 22Which glossy all-black breed did Nikki Horner of Kentucky develop to resemble a miniature panther?
Bombay
Bombay was chosen as a nod to the black leopards of India. Horner began in 1958, crossing sable-brown cats with black American Shorthairs until she had the sleek coat and copper-gold eyes she wanted.
Q 23Which fluffy breed with dark points appears as Sassy in Homeward Bound and as Jinx in Meet the Parents?
Himalayan
Mayflower cats earned their passage by guarding the stores from rodents, at sea and then in the colony. The breed was called the Domestic Shorthair until it was renamed in 1966.
Q 14Cats with pure white coats and blue eyes, in any breed, are unusually likely to be born what?
Deaf
Deaf white cats have an inner ear that degenerates in the first weeks after birth. In a cat with one blue eye and one of another colour, the ear on the blue-eyed side is the one more likely to fail.
Q 15The short-legged Minuet breed of the 1990s was originally named after which European ruler?
Napoleon
Napoleon was chosen because the emperor was popularly believed to be short. The breed's creator, Joe Smith, had previously bred Basset Hounds, another animal built low to the ground.
Q 16Which informal word, common in the UK, describes a cat of no particular breed, as most pet cats are?
Moggy
Moggy cats are the ones vets and shelters record as domestic short-haired or long-haired. Pedigree breeds are newer than most people think: over 85% have appeared since the 1930s.
Q 17In Norse legend the skogkatt, linked to the Norwegian Forest cat, is a fairy cat gifted at what?
Climbing
Climbing sheer rock faces that defeated other cats was the fairy cat's talent. The modern breed is a very adept climber too, and Vikings may have brought its ancestors to Norway around AD 1000.
Q 18The Chartreux, a grey breed that legend links to Carthusian monks, comes from which country?
France
France counts Charles de Gaulle and the novelist Colette among famous Chartreux owners. The monk story is shaky: in 1972 the monastery's prior said its archives held no record of such cats.
Q 19Which breed with a 'ticked' coat, each hair banded in several colours, bears the old name of Ethiopia?
Abyssinian
Abyssinian cats first shown in England had been brought from Abyssinia, hence the name. The breed may not be native there, though: it could have arrived with travellers who had stopped in Calcutta.
Q 20Which stocky, broad-faced breed is said to have inspired John Tenniel's drawing of the Cheshire Cat?
British Shorthair
British Shorthair cats are best known in solid grey, a colour breeders call British Blue. Their calm temperament has made the breed a frequent media star.
Himalayan cats came from crossing a long-haired breed with a pointed one, work that began at Harvard in the 1930s. In the Homeward Bound films, Sassy was voiced by Sally Field.
Q 24A spotted breed begun in Washington State in the 1980s was first claimed to be part which wild North American cat?
Bobcat
Bobcat fathers were the founding legend of the Pixie-bob, but the breed is now regarded as purely domestic. Its founder, Carol Ann Brewer, gathered 23 cats from around the Cascade Range that she believed were hybrids.
Q 25Which word describes cats with extra toes, once prized as lucky by sailors and typical of the Pixie-bob?
Polydactyl
Polydactyl cats are also called Hemingway cats, after the novelist's own collection. The trait spread along shipping routes out of Boston because sailors thought such cats brought luck.
Q 26Which US state named the calico its official cat because the colours echo its state bird, an oriole?
Maryland
Maryland chose the calico in 2001 because its black, orange and white match the Baltimore oriole. Calico describes the colouring alone, so the honour belongs to no single breed.
Q 27Which tiny breed was said to descend from three Southeast Asian drain cats?
Singapura
Singapura is the Malay name for Singapore, where the three founding cats supposedly lived in drains. Import papers found in 1987 showed they had been taken there from the United States first.
Q 28Which curly breed began with Kallibunker, a kitten born in England's most south-westerly county?
Cornish Rex
Cornish Rex cats have only the soft down layer of a normal coat, with no guard hairs over it. Their sleek build and galloping run earned them the nickname 'the greyhound of the cats'.
Q 29Which breed gave its name to the coat pattern of a white cat coloured only on the head and tail?
Turkish Van
Turkish Van cats lent their name to the 'van' pattern. Cats from the Lake Van area are nicknamed swimming cats for their fascination with water, though the breed's founding pair came from elsewhere.
Q 30Which patchy-coated breed, developed in Tennessee in the 2010s, is commonly called the werewolf cat?
Lykoi
Lykoi comes from the Greek word for wolf, and owners call the cats' heavy moults 'wolfing out'. Over a lifetime an individual can range from fully furred to almost entirely hairless.