Round 1: easy cat trivia questions and answers
Start here whoever is in the room. These are the questions everybody has an opinion about, because everybody who has ever lived with a cat has built a private theory about why it does what it does. A fair number of those theories turn out to be wrong, which is the whole point of reading the note after the reveal.
Nothing in this round needs a picture, a breed name or a pedigree. If you are running a family quiz or a classroom round, this is the only section you need.
Q1.What is the collective noun for a group of cats?Tap to reveal
Answer: A clowder
A group of kittens is a kindle, a male cat is a tom and a breeding female is a queen. 'Glaring' is the older alternative for a group of cats that do not know each other.
Q2.True or false: a kitten's eyes are blue when they first open.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The blue is not pigment at all, it is light scattering in an iris that has no melanin yet. Real eye colour arrives somewhere between six weeks and three months, which is why no honest breeder promises eye colour on a newborn.
Q3.How many toes does a typical cat have on its front paws, and how many on the back?Tap to reveal
Answer: Five in front, four behind - eighteen in total
Cats with extras are called polydactyls. They cluster around New England ports and around Hemingway's house in Key West, where the descendants of his six-toed cats still live on the grounds.
Q4.Does a purring cat always mean a happy cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: No
Cats also purr while injured, while giving birth and on the examination table at the vet. The best explanation is self-soothing: the purr sits in a low frequency band that some researchers think helps healing, though that evidence is still thin.
Q5.Which coat pattern is found almost exclusively on female cats?Tap to reveal
Answer: Calico, and tortoiseshell with it
The orange and the non-orange genes both sit on the X chromosome, so showing both colours at once normally takes two X chromosomes. The rare male calico usually carries an extra X - XXY - and is almost always sterile.
Q6.Which part of a cat is as individual as a human fingerprint?Tap to reveal
Answer: Its nose
The nose leather is ridged in a pattern no two cats share, and nose printing has been proposed more than once as a way of identifying cats. The microchip won because it does not require a cooperative cat.
Q7.How fast can a healthy domestic cat sprint?Tap to reveal
Answer: About 30 mph, roughly 48 km/h
That is faster than Usain Bolt at full stretch, but only for a few seconds. A house cat is built for the ambush and the pounce, not for the chase.
Q8.Whose hearing reaches higher notes - a cat's or a dog's?Tap to reveal
Answer: The cat's
Cats hear up to roughly 60 kHz, dogs to about 45 kHz and humans to about 20 kHz. The extra range covers the ultrasonic squeaking that mice use to talk to one another, which is not a coincidence.
Q9.Do cats walk on the soles of their feet, the way people do?Tap to reveal
Answer: No - they walk on their toes
Cats are digitigrade. The joint halfway up the back leg that looks like a backwards knee is actually the heel, carried permanently off the ground. It lengthens the stride and it is what makes the step silent.
Q10.Which lives longer on average, an indoor cat or a cat that roams outdoors?Tap to reveal
Answer: The indoor cat, by a wide margin
Indoor cats routinely reach their mid to late teens. Traffic, infectious disease and fights with other cats account for most of the difference, not hunger or weather.
Q11.What is a cat doing when it presses its forehead into yours?Tap to reveal
Answer: Head bunting - a greeting and a claim
Scent glands run along the cheeks, chin and forehead, so the cat is saying hello and leaving its smell on you in the same movement. Cats mostly save it for members of a group they have accepted, which is why a bunt from somebody else's cat counts as a compliment.
Q12.Why does a cat wind around your legs the moment you get home?Tap to reveal
Answer: To mark you with its own scent
The behaviour has a name, allorubbing, and cats do it to each other as well as to furniture and doorframes. Affection and bookkeeping in one pass.
Q13.Why do cats bury their waste?Tap to reveal
Answer: To hide the scent from predators and rivals
The instinct comes from ancestors who were prey as well as hunters. A confident cat on territory it considers its own will sometimes leave a deposit uncovered on purpose - that is a statement, not a lapse in manners.
Q14.Why does a sleeping cat hunt down the one patch of sun in the room?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because body temperature falls during sleep, and the sun is free heat
A cat is comfortable at temperatures most people find too warm, so dozing in the sun costs it fewer calories than dozing on a cold floor. Watch one over an afternoon and it will move with the patch across the carpet.
Q15.What is the sudden pointless gallop through the house at midnight called?Tap to reveal
Answer: The zoomies - more formally, frenetic random activity periods
Cats are crepuscular, at their most active around dawn and dusk, so an indoor cat's hunting drive surfaces exactly as the household is winding down. A proper play session before bed usually shortens the race.
Q16.A cat's tail tip is twitching fast while you stroke it. What is it telling you?Tap to reveal
Answer: That it is irritated and close to done with you
The slower the movement, the more curious the cat; the harder the thrash, the shorter the fuse. A tail carried straight up as the cat walks towards you is the opposite signal - that one is a greeting.
Q17.At a party, why does the cat head straight for the one person who does not like cats?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because that person is the only one ignoring it
Everyone else is staring, leaning over, calling and waving. In cat terms that is a room full of giants making eye contact. The person reading their phone is quite simply the safest seat in the house.
Round 2: popular cat breed trivia
These are the twelve breeds most people can picture without help: the flat-faced Persian, the loud Siamese, the floppy Ragdoll, the naked Sphynx. If your round is going to have a gettable middle, this is it.
The notes are where the round earns its keep. Several of the things everybody knows about these breeds are either recent inventions or quietly untrue, and the Scottish Fold question in particular tends to stop a room.
Q1.Which long-haired breed takes its name from a country in the Middle East, wears a famously flat face, and was Queen Victoria's cat of choice?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Persian
Victoria kept blue Persians, which made the breed fashionable across Victorian Britain. The name is a presumption rather than a pedigree - the CFA says only that the cat is named for its presumed country of origin - and the modern breed was built up in Europe, partly on Turkish Angora stock. The extreme flat 'peke-face' is modern too: photographs of Persians from a century ago show an ordinary muzzle, and the squashed version brings breathing and tear-duct problems with it.
Q2.Which slender, blue-eyed, pointed breed from Thailand is famous for never shutting up?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Siamese
Its dark points are temperature-controlled. The pigment enzyme only works in the cooler parts of the body, which is why Siamese kittens are born almost white and darken first at the ears, mask, paws and tail.
Q3.Which large, blue-eyed, semi-longhaired breed developed by Ann Baker in 1960s California goes limp when you pick it up?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Ragdoll
The flop gave the breed its name. Baker's own account of how she created it was extravagant enough to split her breeders, but the cat is real, and it has topped American pedigree registration lists in recent years.
Q4.Which breed has a dense plush coat, a round face and chubby cheeks, and is Britain's favourite pedigree cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The British Shorthair
The blue-grey version is common enough to have its own name, the British Blue. The breed was the backbone of the world's first proper cat show, held at London's Crystal Palace in 1871.
Q5.Which breed looks hairless, feels like warm suede, and usually meets visitors at the door?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Sphynx
It is not truly bald - there is a fine down, like a peach. The modern breed traces to a hairless kitten born in Toronto in 1966, and because there is no coat to absorb skin oils, a Sphynx needs regular bathing.
Q6.Which slim, ticked-coat breed is born dark, lightens as it grows, and is forever compared to the cats in Egyptian tomb paintings?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Abyssinian
Each individual hair carries bands of colour, which is what makes the coat shimmer when the cat moves. The Egyptian story is decoration: the breed was developed in Victorian Britain, and DNA points to the coast of the Indian Ocean rather than the Nile.
Q7.Which breed's ears fold forward and down, giving it an owl-like face?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Scottish Fold
Every Fold descends from Susie, a barn cat found in Perthshire in 1961. Kittens are born straight-eared and fold at about three weeks - and the same gene affects cartilage throughout the body, which is why Britain's GCCF lists the breed as ineligible for registration, citing osteochondrodysplasia, and several countries now restrict breeding it.
Q8.Which breed comes in a single colour, a blue coat with silver tipping, and appears to be permanently smiling?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Russian Blue
The faint smile is the upturned mouth line under wide-set green eyes. The breed reached Britain through the port of Arkhangelsk, which is why Victorian fanciers called them Archangel cats, and it was rebuilt after the Second World War from very few survivors.
Q9.Which spotted breed was created by crossing a domestic cat with the Asian leopard cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Bengal
The name comes from the wild parent's scientific name, Prionailurus bengalensis, not from the tiger. Early-generation hybrids are restricted or banned in several US states and cities; the later generations sold as pets are ordinary domestic cats in temperament.
Q10.Which silky white natural breed from Turkey was preserved by a government breeding programme at Ankara Zoo?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Turkish Angora
Many are odd-eyed, one blue and one amber. The gene that produces a white coat with blue eyes carries a risk of deafness, and in an odd-eyed cat it is usually the ear on the blue side that is affected.
Q11.Which breed has the Siamese body and enormous ears, but comes in hundreds of colours and patterns instead of points?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Oriental Shorthair
Breeders count something in the region of 300 colour and pattern combinations. Underneath it is the same cat as the Siamese, and it is every bit as talkative.
Q12.Which breed was made by crossing the Persian with the American Shorthair, and is nicknamed 'the lazy man's Persian'?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Exotic Shorthair
It carries the Persian's round flat face on a short plush coat, so the daily grooming session disappears. The CFA recognised it in the late 1960s - and it inherits the flat-faced breathing problems along with the look.
Round 3: cat breeds and where they came from
Breed names are a geography quiz in disguise. Some are honest - the Norwegian Forest Cat is from Norway, the Turkish Van is from the shore of Lake Van - and some are pure marketing, which is where this round gets its best questions.
Two of these breeds shaped themselves in hard climates long before anyone wrote a standard for them, and one is named after a city it may never have come from. Read the notes out; the Singapura in particular has a story.
Q1.Which silver-blue breed from Thailand comes in only one colour and is traditionally given to Thai couples in pairs as a wedding gift?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Korat
Thais call it si-sawat and treat it as a luck-bringer, which is why it travels in pairs rather than singly. It takes its name from the province it comes from, and the coat is a single colour, blue tipped with silver.
Q2.Which blue-grey French breed has copper eyes, a woolly water-resistant coat and often barely meows at all?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Chartreux
Some Chartreux are effectively mute and many chirp rather than meow. The novelist Colette kept one and wrote a book around her, which did the breed's standing in France no harm at all.
Q3.Which big long-haired breed is known at home as the skogkatt?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Norwegian Forest Cat
Skogkatt simply means forest cat. The double coat sheds water on top and traps heat underneath, built for a Norwegian winter rather than a show bench. Norway treats it as a national cat, and Norwegians have long linked it to the cats that pull Freyja's chariot in Norse myth.
Q4.Which Russian breed carries a triple coat, takes about five years to reach full size, and jumps like it has springs?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Siberian
It is a landrace - a cat that shaped itself in a hard climate before breeders got involved. Siberians are often sold as the allergy-friendly breed on the grounds that they produce less Fel d 1 protein, but the studies behind that claim are small and no cat is genuinely hypoallergenic.
Q5.Which semi-longhaired Turkish breed is chalk white except for colour on the head and tail, and is nicknamed the swimming cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Turkish Van
That head-and-tail-only marking is now called van pattern after the breed, whatever cat it turns up on. The name comes from Lake Van in eastern Turkey, and the swimming reputation is real enough that owners report cats climbing into baths.
Q6.Which tiny ticked breed is named after the city it is said to come from?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Singapura
The city's name means Lion City, and the cat is usually called the smallest breed of domestic cat, with adults often between four and eight pounds. Singapore adopted it as a tourism mascot, the Kucinta, although the origin story has been disputed since fanciers turned up shipping paperwork showing the founding cats travelled from America first.
Q7.Which rich chocolate-brown breed with green eyes has a name that has nothing to do with Cuba?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Havana Brown
It was developed in 1950s England by crossing Siamese with black domestic cats. The name is thought to come either from the tobacco shade or from a rabbit of the same colour, and the breed remains one of the rarest pedigree cats in the world.
Q8.Which Japanese breed has a short pom-pom tail whose kinks are different on every single cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Japanese Bobtail
The tail is a natural mutation rather than anything done by hand, and no two are alike. The tricolour version, the mi-ke, is the cat behind the maneki-neko beckoning figurine in shop windows.
Q9.Which bobtailed breed comes from a chain of islands between Russia and Japan and has hind legs longer than its front ones?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Kurilian Bobtail
It carries a different mutation from the Japanese Bobtail and developed separately on the Kuril Islands. Its reputation there is as a fisher - it will work a shoreline rather than wait to be fed.
Q10.Which brown ticked breed with a broken-stripe pattern is China's best-known native cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Dragon Li, also called the Li Hua
Like the Siberian it is a landrace, a farm cat that shaped itself rather than a cat designed to a standard, and it is still rare outside China. Its Chinese name, li hua mao, describes the patterned coat.
Round 4: curls, bobtails and breeds that began with one kitten
Most of the breeds in this round exist because a single kitten was born looking wrong and somebody decided to keep it. Trace a curly or hairless cat back far enough and you usually reach one animal with a name: Miss DePesto, Curly, Kallibunker. Two here are exceptions, and they are the ones worth reading out: the Ukrainian Levkoy was built deliberately by crossing two breeds, and the Ragamuffin exists because of an argument over a name.
This is also the round where the biology is worth saying out loud. A dominant mutation shows up in one copy and gives you mixed litters; a recessive one needs two copies, so every kitten looks the same. That single difference tells the Selkirk Rex and the Cornish Rex apart.
Q1.Which curly-coated breed produces straight-haired and curly kittens in the same litter, and is nicknamed 'the cat in sheep's clothing'?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Selkirk Rex
Its curl gene is dominant, so one copy is enough and litters come out mixed. That makes it the odd one out among rex breeds, since the Cornish and Devon curls are both recessive. The whole breed traces to a Montana shelter kitten named Miss DePesto in 1987.
Q2.Which curly breed began with a bald kitten born on an Oregon cherry orchard in 1982?Tap to reveal
Answer: The LaPerm
The kitten, called Curly, grew a soft wavy coat within months and passed it on. In many LaPerms the coat parts along the spine, and the breed sheds very little - which is not at all the same thing as being hypoallergenic.
Q3.Which breed has only the soft undercoat, no guard hairs at all, and is called the greyhound of cats?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Cornish Rex
Down alone, laid in tight marcel waves, is why it feels like crushed velvet and why the cat spends its life hunting laps and radiators. It started with a kitten called Kallibunker on a Cornish farm in 1950.
Q4.Which hairless breed was found in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, in 1987?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Donskoy, also sold as the Don Sphynx
Its hairlessness comes from a dominant gene, unlike the Sphynx's recessive one, so the two bald coats are separate mutations that happen to look alike. Crossing the Donskoy with Oriental cats produced a third hairless breed, the Peterbald.
Q5.Which breed is hairless and has ears that fold inward, giving it an oddly dog-like face?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Ukrainian Levkoy
It was created in Kyiv in the early 2000s by crossing Donskoy hairless cats with fold-eared cats, and it is named after a garden flower whose leaf shape the ears recall. It inherits the health questions of both parents, and remains rare and controversial.
Q6.Which American breed has a short, expressive tail and a wild lynx-like look, with no two tails the same?Tap to reveal
Answer: The American Bobtail
It traces to a short-tailed tabby kitten found in Arizona in the 1960s, and its mutation is unrelated to the Manx's. The tail is meant to be long enough to be visible above the back: a completely tailless cat is a fault in this breed, not the goal.
Q7.Which long-haired breed is essentially an Abyssinian in a fox's coat, bushy tail included?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Somali
The long hair was a recessive gene hiding inside Abyssinian lines that breeders chose to keep rather than cull. The name was picked because Somalia borders Ethiopia, the old Abyssinia - a family joke that stuck to the paperwork.
Q8.Which large, rabbit-soft breed matures at around four years old and carries a fatty pad on the lower belly?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Ragamuffin
It split from the Ragdoll in 1994, when breeders outside Ann Baker's organisation found they could not use the Ragdoll name and had to invent one. Same shape and temperament, far wider range of colours and patterns.
Round 5: hard cat trivia - hybrids, crosses and rare breeds
Finish here. Two of these cats carry wild ancestry, two more only look as though they do, and one is a Persian wearing Siamese markings. Expect two or three correct answers per team rather than six.
If a player insists that a spotted cat must be part wildcat, the Ocicat question settles it: there is no wild blood in that breed at all. The last question is the one to end on, because the winner of that show was a Maine Coon.
Q1.Which tall, long-legged spotted breed comes from crossing a domestic cat with an African serval?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Savannah
The first was bred in the United States in the mid-1980s - the serval parent is African, but the breed is not. Early generations are among the tallest domestic cats alive, will walk on a lead, and are restricted by law in a number of states.
Q2.Which large hybrid breed descends from a cross between a domestic cat and the jungle cat, Felis chaus?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Chausie
Males can approach 25 pounds and the cat needs space to run rather than a flat with a view. Its wild ancestor ranges from Egypt to Southeast Asia, and jungle cats are among the species found mummified in ancient Egyptian tombs.
Q3.Which spotted breed looks wild but has no wild ancestry at all, and is named for its resemblance to another animal?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Ocicat
It came out of an attempt to put Abyssinian ticking into a Siamese. The first spotted kitten, in 1964, was an accident, and the breeder's daughter said it looked like an ocelot. The bloodlines behind it are entirely domestic: Abyssinian, Siamese and American Shorthair.
Q4.Which breed is a deliberate cross of Siamese and Burmese, and comes in mink, pointed and solid coats?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Tonkinese
The mink version's aquamarine eyes are the breed's signature, and that colour is what drew its first breeders to the cross. Its name has nothing to do with Tonkin in Vietnam - it was borrowed from the South Pacific musical, whose story suited a cat that is half of each parent.
Q5.Which long-haired breed, a near twin of the Russian Blue, was founded in the 1980s on two cats named Siegfried and Brunhilde?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Nebelung
The cats were named for Wagner's Ring cycle, and so was the breed: Nebelung means roughly 'creature of the mist' in German, which suits a blue coat that seems to blur at the edges. Mature Nebelungs have green eyes.
Q6.Which breed was created by crossing the Persian with the Siamese, to put Siamese points on a long-haired cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Himalayan
Britain calls it the Colourpoint Longhair, and the CFA treats it as a division of the Persian rather than a breed in its own right. The name is borrowed from the Himalayan rabbit, which carries the same temperature-driven colouring.
Q7.Which spotted breed takes its name from an ancient Egyptian word for cat?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Egyptian Mau
Its spots are in the skin as well as in the coat, so they show on a shaved cat. The modern breed was rebuilt in the 1950s from a handful of cats taken out of Egypt by an exiled Russian princess - the mummified cats of the pharaohs belong to Egypt's cats in general, not to this breed.
Q8.The first modern cat show was held at London's Crystal Palace in 1871. Where did America hold its first big one, in 1895?Tap to reveal
Answer: Madison Square Garden, in New York
Harrison Weir organised the London show and wrote the first breed standards to go with it. The New York show was won by a brown tabby Maine Coon called Cosey, whose silver collar is now held by the Cat Fanciers' Association.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the largest cat breed?
The Maine Coon, by length and usually by weight - a big male runs 15 to 25 pounds and can measure over three feet from nose to tail tip. First-generation Savannahs stand taller but weigh less, and after the Maine Coon the Ragdoll and the Ragamuffin are the heaviest of the gentle semi-longhairs.
Which cat breeds are best for people with allergies?
None of them are truly hypoallergenic. The allergen is Fel d 1, a protein in saliva and skin rather than in hair, so even a hairless Sphynx produces it. Siberians, Balinese and Devon Rex are the ones usually recommended, on the grounds that less of it ends up spread around the house, but the evidence is thin - spend an hour with the individual cat before you commit.
How many cat breeds are there?
It depends who is counting. The Cat Fanciers' Association recognises around 45, TICA closer to 70, and Britain's GCCF keeps a different list again. Most pet cats belong to no breed at all: they are domestic shorthairs and longhairs, which is what 'moggie' means.
Why does catnip send some cats loopy and leave others cold?
Nepetalactone, the oil in the leaves, binds to receptors in the nose and sets off a short euphoric response. The reaction is inherited - roughly a third of cats do not have it, and kittens under about three months never respond. Silver vine works on many of the cats that ignore catnip.
How do I run a cat trivia round at a party?
Ten to fifteen questions makes a round. Open with round one, because everyone with a cat has an opinion about behaviour, then move to breeds, and read the note after each answer - that is where the arguments get settled. Trivio.NET has an Animals category if you want to build longer rounds.
