Scottish Fold

🌍 Overview

The Scottish Fold began in 1961 when a shepherd found a folded-ear cat named Susie on a farm in the Tayside region of Scotland. Susie produced only one litter, so her daughter Snooks became the foundation queen, and the breed was built out through crosses with British Shorthairs and domestic cats. The fold comes from a dominant variant in TRPV4, a gene encoding an ion channel whose correct activation is crucial for normal development of cartilage and bone cells, and that is the central problem with the breed: the mutation does not act only on ear cartilage. It affects cartilage throughout the body, producing a progressive degenerative osteochondrodysplasia, and while early work suggested only cats with two copies were affected, recent evidence indicates any cat carrying at least one copy of the ear-folding variant can develop it. FIFe deleted the breed's registration codes with effect from 1 January 2012 and its rules state they cannot be re-created, which makes this one of the very few cases of a registry de-recognizing a breed outright on health grounds. The British Veterinary Association states that there is no excuse not to condemn breeding of the Scottish Fold, because the same disorder that folds the ears means these cats develop painful arthritis for much, if not all, of their lives. The CFA recognizes the breed, granting championship status to shorthairs in 1978, longhairs in 1992 and straight-eared cats in 2022, but FIFe will not register cats with osteochondrodysplasia or any cat with such a cat in its ancestry, the UK's Governing Council of the Cat Fancy does not recognize the breed on welfare grounds, and since 1 January 2026 it has been prohibited to keep a folded-ear cat in the Netherlands, with the decree naming the TRPV4 variant directly and presuming any cat with forward-drooping ears to carry it.

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