What's more common - long or short haired?

3956 Views 18 Replies 16 Participants Last post by catloverami, Mar 23, 2012

Straysmommy

Discussion Starter · Mar 18, 2012

In my area most cats are short-haired and grey with tiger stripes. Kind of the default. There are no long-haired cats (or medium-haired), unless purchased from a breeder. Prince stood out in the streets because he's white with medium-length hair. He called everyone's attention. I cringe just from remembering him in the streets. This is a big part of why I adopted him - such a unique-looking cat for a stray, and so gentle and loving, I was afraid for him.

What about your area?

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BotanyBlack

· #2 · Mar 18, 2012 (Edited)

in my neighborhood, where a renter put out 5 cats when they moved and another left behind 2. It is mainly short haired tuxedos and black cats. We do have a male black manx running around since a few months ago and he seems highly dominate, so may see the genetic dynamics change some. (if I don't get him caught and snipped that is. Patches was the only white with orange male and he was a dump, he has been since snipped so I am sure he didn't get a chance to put in his genetics anywhere. There has been one long haired male cat running around for the last 5 years that I know of, but I have not seen long haired kittens (as far as I know he is a pet that is allowed to roam though).

In the feral colony a few blocks away, I spotted several tabbies and a few Torties, again all short hair.

as to peoples pets. it varies a lot in color and size. My seniors are all from a few hours away and do not resemble the strays in my current area much. Gypsy was a dump with a few other kittens and her coat has been growing in more of a med. length, her litter mates all are short haired and smaller then her.

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cooncatbob

· #3 · Mar 18, 2012

Straysmommy said:
In my area most cats are short-haired and grey with tiger stripes. Kind of the default. There are no long-haired cats (or medium-haired), unless purchased from a breeder. Prince stood out in the streets because he's white with medium-length hair. He called everyone's attention. I cringe just from remembering him in the streets. This is a big part of why I adopted him - such a unique-looking cat for a stray, and so gentle and loving, I was afraid for him.

What about your area?

Like this?

Chiquita's is you basic silver grey mackerel tabby, she was a stray and to survive on the streets this seems to be the perfect sized cat.
I know you live in a hot climate so I'm not surprise that the native cats are short haired.
I read once if you took a bunch of pure bred dogs and allowed them it interbreed in about 6 generations you get your 30-40 mutt found all over the world, I think the basic short haired tabby is the cat equivalent.

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Carmel

· #4 · Mar 18, 2012

From what I can see, short haired cats are more common and truly long haired cats are sort of rare.

Gummers

· #5 · Mar 18, 2012

Isn't long-hair in cats a recessive gene?

doodlebug

· #6 · Mar 19, 2012

Yes...long hair is recessive. Although it seems that it's a not a black or white situation as there is no "medium" gene. I'm not sure whether medium haired cats are the result of a short and long combo or whether they're two long haired that for some reason are shorter (or two short haired that grow longer).

Mimosa

· #7 · Mar 19, 2012

"Medium hair" is an artificial name. It is true that some longhaired cats have shorter hair than other longhaired cats, but in a healthy adult cat you can always spot the difference between a longhaired or shorthaired cat.

Short hair is dominant. Long hair is recessive. When a cat has two alleles for short hair it has short hair. When a cat has two alleles for long hair it has long hair. When a cat has one allele for long hair and one for short hair it has short hair, because short hair is completely dominant.
There are genes for other traits that are not completely dominant to each other and produce a mixed, inbetween form (intermediate phenotype), but that is not the case with cat coat length.

There are several different alleles for long hair, all recessive. When combined with each other they all give long hair. It might be that longhair1 gives longer coats than longhair4 or vice versa, I haven't seen data on that yet but it might be an explanation.

Another explanation for differences in coat length between longhaired cats might lie in "polygenes". There might be multiple (poly) as yet unknown genes that influence the main harilength gene.

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yingying

· #8 · Mar 19, 2012

Long hair gene is recessive, so in randomly bred moggies, you will see few long haired cats for sure. Black is dominate, that's why a large number of moggies are black or black ("brown" in US term) tabby shorthaired.

Krista2882

· #9 · Mar 19, 2012 (Edited)

All the cats I've ever had were short haired. And we used to have more cats in my neighborhood, all of which were short haired.
Now there are no cats in my neighborhood, but there is an old broken-down factory a few miles from where I live that houses a bunch of stray cats. I like to drive by there once in a while, and I've seen 7 different cats so far. Both long and short haired. there are two orange/cream colored short hairs, a gray short hair, and then I've seen a black & white tuxedo long hair, a gray and white tuxedo long hair, and a couple of tabby long hairs.
The neighbors must feed them because they all look healthy. I posted pictures of one of the orange ones and the short haired gray one in the Cat Tails forum a while back when I first discovered the cat colony (and I don't think I realized it was a cat colony at the time. I just saw 4 cats that one day and thought they belonged to people in the neighborhood)

Cats&Plants

· #10 · Mar 19, 2012

Three of my four current ones are long. Two of them are sisters. They had a short hair mom and two littermates that were short haired so mom obviously had a long hair allelle to pass along.

Of all my other cats in the past, they were all short hair. In fact until I got Logan, Jordan and MacKenzie I had seen very few longhaired cats that weren't pure-breds.

Glad I found them, even though they shed and matt and require so much grooming, I love the long hair!

GhostTown

· #11 · Mar 19, 2012

My Oscar was a longer haired tuxedo among a sea of short haired tuxedos.

Carmel

· #12 · Mar 19, 2012

This thread is pretty interesting! So is Blacky a longer haired short hair or a shorter haired long hair? Haha. I guess maybe it depends on the different types of alleles? I can't find anything on this despite trying.

PS: Mimosa, you have a beautiful Somali!

catloverami

· #13 · Mar 19, 2012

Blacky looks like a longhair to me...I can see his fluffy tail. Some longhairs do have a medium length coat. Most longhairs in northern latitudes have a longer thicker coat in winter than they do in the summer.

furryfriends251

· #14 · Mar 19, 2012

For mine

Black - 9
Black and White - 8
Tabby - 6
Tabby & White -2
Siamese cross - 2
Calico - 1
White - 1
Grey & White - 2
Grey - 1

Of those then there are 3 long hair, 5 medium hair, and 24 short hair.

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Alpaca

· #15 · Mar 20, 2012

Yes I've been told too that there's no 'medium' hair tabbies. I'm a bit confused to what Miu is since she's definitely not short haired, but then it's too short to be a long-hair. This is esp true of her tail which is bushy and long haired.

You tell me? I don't have a good pick of how long the fur is on her tail but this one shows how bushy it is.

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yingying

· #16 · Mar 20, 2012

Your Miu is a cross-breed between a cat and a squirrel. Can I have her?

Dicesmom

· #17 · Mar 21, 2012

Short-haired here. I have two hoarders living right beside me(thats how I got thunder and fat Albert) and they mostly have short-haired cats. I was suprised when I saw Thunder and Fat Albert and they were long-haired kitties since they came from one of the hoarders.

dweamgoil

· #18 · Mar 21, 2012

In my neighborhood, all the strays I have seen are short-haired and either Tuxedo or all black.

My own cats: 2 are short-haired (one blue and one black), Azalia is medium hair...yeah, yeah, I read the rest of the post

, but her fur is not long enough to describe as long hair and her tail is that of a short-haired cat *shrugz* Two of my cats I got from a shelter and the other from a lady on Craigslist, who had kittens in her backyard.

Lacey is a Balinese and I got her from a breeder so she's the exception.

catloverami

· #19 · Mar 23, 2012

Alpaca, I would describe Miu as a medium longhair (MLH). Looove her fluffy tail! Sometimes when I was breeding Manx (especially longhair Manx) if one of the parents was SHorthair (or both were SH but carried LH recessively), a MLH would result---a very plushy coat but longer than a SH but without neck ruff or lynx cheeks in adult coat. It was tricky for breeders who would get a LH out of two SHs because of the taillessness---no fluffy tail to give a clue.

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