Meet the Scottish Fold

We Scottish Folds are a pretty new breed. We come from (you guessed it!) Scotland, and all of us can be traced back to one ancestor: a white barn cat named Susie. Susie lived on a farm in the Tayside region of Scotland, near the town of Coupar Angus. In 1961, a human named William Ross took notice of Susie and her adorable folded ears. William and his wife were British Shorthair breeders, and he asked Susie’s humans if he could have one of her lop-eared kittens. William named her Snooks and the Rosses began to breed us, originally calling us Lops or Lop-ears after a type of ears some rabbits have. We didn’t get our official name, the Scottish Fold, until 1966 when the Rosses registered us with the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF) in the UK.

Human geneticists discovered that the genetic mutation that causes my cute little folded ears is a dominant gene, meaning only one of our parents needs to have the gene to produce lop-eared kitties. The humans say it’s not good for our health to breed two Scottish Folds together, so since the beginning we have always been outcrossed with British Shorthairs (and later American Shorthairs). This is why some Scottish Folds have straight ears and some of us have folded ears. None of us have folded ears when we are born – they start to fold (if they are going to) when we are 3 or 4 weeks old.

Humans aren’t 100% sure, but they think that my ancestor Susie may have had some genes for long hair because I have a longhaired cousin called the Highland Fold (they are technically still Scottish Folds, but they have their own breed standard for cat shows). Some places today (including the GCCF) no longer recognize our breed, but we are still popular in America. The Cat Fanciers’ Association officially recognized us in 1978, and today we are the CFA’s 14th most popular cat breed!