The British Shorthair is a stocky, round-faced cat with a dense coat, developed from Britain's domestic cats in the nineteenth century and best known in blue.
Calm and undemanding, it accounts for more than a third of pedigree kittens registered in Britain.
The British Shorthair is Britain's native pedigree cat: a stocky, round-faced breed with a dense, plush coat. It is by a wide margin the most popular pedigree cat in the country.
The breed was developed in the nineteenth century from the best of the ordinary domestic cats of Britain. Harrison Weir, who organised the first cat show at the Crystal Palace in London in 1871, championed them, and they dominated the early shows. Numbers collapsed during the two world wars, and the breed was rebuilt afterwards with the help of crosses to Persians and other breeds.
The body is compact and powerful, described as cobby, with a broad chest, short strong legs and a thick tail. The head is large and round with full cheeks, small wide-set ears and large round eyes. The coat is short, very dense and crisp to the touch.
The best-known colour is blue, a solid grey with copper or orange eyes, long called the British Blue. Many others are recognised, including black, white, cream, lilac, tabby, tortoiseshell, colourpoint and bicolour. A long-haired variety, the British Longhair, is recognised as well. Males are considerably larger than females, and the cats take three to five years to mature fully.
British Shorthairs are calm, steady and undemanding. They are affectionate in a reserved way, preferring to sit beside a person than to be carried about, and they tolerate being alone during the day better than most breeds. They are quiet and not especially athletic.
A weekly brush is enough, more often during the moult. The breed gains weight easily, and portions need watching, particularly after neutering. The main inherited concerns are hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, and polycystic kidney disease, which entered the breed through Persian crosses and for which a DNA test exists.
The breed is recognised by every major registry. In 2023 the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy registered more than 8,000 British Shorthair kittens, over a third of all the pedigree cats it registered that year.