Brazilian Shorthair Cat

Cats reached South America together with the Europeans. On board they were not kept for their looks: cargo and ships’ stores had to be protected from rodents, and a cat was part of the ship’s equipment just as much as a water barrel. Once landed in the ports, these animals did not disappear — they spread through the cities and began to live on their own, breeding without any human selection at all. Over a few centuries a large free-living population thus formed in Brazil, very uniform in appearance: short-haired, medium-sized, with a wedge-shaped head and a long body.

It was this uniformity that the Brazilian engineer Paulo Samuel Ruschi noticed in the 1980s. The idea was untypical for felinology: not to create a new breed by crossing, but to describe an already existing natural type and fix it in documents — exactly as the British had once done with the street cat of the British Isles, and the Americans with their own. Ruschi set about it in 1985 and founded the country’s first feline federation and the first cat club in Rio de Janeiro; it is from this structure that the history of the breed as a registered breed begins.

The decisive stage came in 1998: the World Cat Federation — an international felinological organization headquartered in Germany — granted the Brazilian Shorthair the status of a recognized breed. That made it the first Brazilian cat breed with international recognition. The standard version the WCF publishes on its own site is dated 1 January 2010 and carries the code BSH.

It is worth grasping the exact scale of that recognition. The breed is in the WCF register — and there the international list ends: it is not in the breed list of the FIFe (37 breeds), not in that of TICA (over 80 entries), and not in that of the CFA. In other words, when you see an advertisement for a “Brazilian Shorthair kitten with papers”, the only system in which those papers can be genuine breed papers is the WCF and the clubs that work with it. In Brazil itself, two organizations are full members of the WCF: CFB — Confederação de Felinos do Brasil (Magé, Rio de Janeiro state) and Tropicats — Federação Felina Sul-Americana (Rio de Janeiro).

One more detail worth keeping in mind when reading documents. The letters BSH in the WCF system mean Brazilian Shorthair, while the WCF codes the British Shorthair as BRI. At the FIFe it is the other way round: there BSH is precisely the British Shorthair. Three identical letters in a pedigree can mean two different breeds depending on whose form you are holding, so what you should look at is the name of the organization in the header, not the code alone.

The phrase “the breed descends from street cats” is written about many breeds, and usually it means nothing. Here it means something, because for the Brazilian population there are measured numbers and not merely a pretty legend.

In 2008 an international team of geneticists published a large study in Genomics, “The ascent of cat breeds” (Lipinski et al.): over 1,100 cats, seventeen free-living populations from five continents and twenty-two breeds, all genotyped with microsatellite markers. The Brazilian free-living population entered that sample as a separate line. Here are its figures alongside the breed averages:

This is how it reads. Brazilian street cats are in no way an exception among the world’s free-living populations: in terms of diversity they sit exactly in the middle, next to the Italian, Singaporean or Texan ones. From pedigree cats, however, they differ markedly: mean heterozygosity in the free-living populations was 0.65 ± 0.03, in pedigree cats 0.51 ± 0.09. The authors summed it up simply: pure breeding is accompanied by a loss of genetic diversity, and the loss depends neither on the popularity of the breed nor on its age. Another slice of the same study — the analysis of molecular variance: in free-living populations 86% of all variability lies within the population, in breeds only 61%.

So when people write of the Brazilian Shorthair that it has “a broad gene pool”, the statement has a foundation — but it applies to the founding population, not automatically to every kitten with a pedigree. As soon as breeding closes within a handful of lines, diversity begins to fall by the same laws as in any other breed. The difference lies in whether the breeder has a mechanism to replenish it.

The most interesting line in the WCF standard is not about the eyes or the tail. It sits in the “Special provisions” section and consists of a single sentence: the novice class is not permitted for this breed outside Brazil. This is not a formality but a direct description of how the breed’s gene pool is arranged.

The novice class (Novice class, class 17 under the WCF show rules) is the procedure by which a cat without a pedigree is entered into the register on its appearance. The rules are as follows:

• a cat without a registered pedigree may be shown in this class once, from the age of 6 months;
• the show must take place within the owner’s own organization and under the supervision of the club’s breeding commission;
• the club is obliged to give the judge a written explanation of why this particular cat is being shown in this class;
• to have the cat registered it must receive the grade “excellent” — at least 88 points — with the signatures of two judges;
• no placings are awarded in this class and no title certificate is issued.

The cat does not then go straight into the main studbook. The WCF breeding and registration rules advise clubs to keep two books: the full one, LO (Livre d’Origine), and the supplementary, experimental one, RIEX (Registre Initial et Expérimental). The supplementary book records “all other” cats: outcrosses, novices and unrecognized breeds. To get into the full book a cat must belong to a breed, pattern and color officially entered in the WCF standards, and have at least three generations of the same or related breeds — that is, the kitten itself (generation 0), the parents, the grandparents and the great-grandparents.

Portuguese-language sources describe the same mechanism in everyday words: the Brazilian federation issues an initial registration (RI) to animals that fit the breed type, and a final one (LO) to those that have gained the required show results or descend from generations obtained under the established rules. To get the initial registration, it is enough to bring the cat for assessment.

Put it together and you get a rare construction. The breed’s studbook is formally not closed: fresh blood can be added to it straight from the street, from that same population whose figures are given above. But this can only be done in the homeland and only through a procedure with two judges and a threshold of 88 points. A European or American breeder has no such option: outside Brazil their breeding is closed, like that of any other breed, with all the usual consequences — and that is exactly why the question “where were the breeding animals taken from?” weighs more for the “Brazilian” abroad than for a breed with thousands of catteries.

For completeness: the current WCF procedure for recognizing new breeds provides for a preliminary show of 6–10 cats, then a recognition show at which the club must present to two appointed judges at least 15 cats with full four-generation pedigrees, of which no fewer than seven pedigrees must contain three generations of pure breeding. Then come the judges’ written reports, approval of the standard by the commission, and a decision of the General Assembly. That is the level of proof standing behind the word “recognized”.

What follows is a rendering of the WCF standard in force (version of 1 January 2010). It is a short, one-page document, and almost every line of it can be checked on a living cat.

Body, Limbs, Neck

The body is medium-sized and muscular — but slim and elegant. That pair of words matters: the standard deliberately keeps the breed halfway between the massive and the elongated types, so neither the cobbiness of the British nor the fine bone of the Oriental is the aim here. The legs are of medium length, the paw pads slightly rounded. The neck is firm but without pronounced musculature — the standard states this in a separate sentence. Another handsome short-haired breed you might be interested in is the Bombay cat.

Tail

Medium to long, not broad at the base, tapering slightly towards the tip. This is worth noting, because popular descriptions of the breed often say the opposite — “thick at the base”. The standard itself says otherwise.

Head and Ears

The head is small to medium, of a moderate wedge shape, longer than it is wide. The profile is slightly curved — not straight and without a sharp stop. The chin and lower jaw are firm. The ears are large: their height exceeds the width of the base, they are set high, and they carry tufts. Ear tufts on a short-haired breed are a detail most descriptions simply omit, although the standard spells it out in plain words.

Eyes

Here lies the commonest error in descriptions of the breed. The standard requires eyes that are large and round, set wide apart: the space between them should hold one and a half eye widths. The almond shape often attributed to the “Brazilian” does not match the standard. Eye color must harmonize with coat color. If you prefer a cat with a less intense gaze, the Australian Mist may be a suitable alternative.

Coat

Short, glossy, close-lying, silky to the touch, with no undercoat. The absence of an undercoat is not a cosmetic detail: it is precisely what determines both the minimal grooming and the fact that such a cat holds heat less well than a double-coated breed.

Colors

Recognized are all colors and patterns except the pointed ones. White is allowed in any amount — from a single spot to an almost entirely white cat. So the only genuine restriction is the Siamese type of coloring with a dark mask and points; chocolate, lilac, cinnamon and other variants fall under no prohibition of the standard and are described by the general WCF list of colors. If you come across a text saying the opposite — that point is allowed but cinnamon is not — that is a rendering with an error in it, not the standard.

The Point Scale

Judges distribute 100 points as follows: body — 30, head and tail together — 35, eyes — 5, coat texture — 10, color and pattern — 15, condition — 5. The greatest weight falls on the head-and-tail pair and on the body, that is, on proportions; color and pattern, for all the breed’s variety, count for half as much as the body.

A word apart about body mass. Reference works usually give a guide of 4–7 kg for an adult cat, and in everyday terms that is a reasonable range. It is worth knowing, however, that the WCF standard itself names no kilograms at all: it describes size in words. So a “breed weight norm” does not exist in the documentary sense — there is the norm of a particular animal, which the vet determines from its body condition.

The head of this breed has even made it into the anatomical literature: in 2016 a group from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro published a comparative craniometry of the “Pelo Curto Brasileiro” and Siamese cats (Rocha et al., Revista Brasileira de Medicina Veterinária, 38, supplement 2). Thirty skulls were measured, fifteen in each group. Of the sex differences, the one that proved statistically significant was in the Siamese: there the males had a greater skull length and muzzle width than the females.

This is the subtlest point of the subject, and online it is blurred. The phrase “Brazilian Shorthair” is used in two different senses: as the name of a registered breed — and as an everyday label for an ordinary Brazilian cat without papers. The confusion is not accidental: the type really is the same, because the breed was made from that type.

Formally the border is simple, and it runs through documents, not appearance:

• The breed is a cat entered in the studbook of a WCF club: either the full one (LO) or the supplementary one (RIEX), with a registration number, the cattery name, the breed, pattern and color, the date of birth and the sex.
• Not the breed — a cat of the same appearance without that entry. At WCF shows there is a separate class 19, “household pets”: these are neutered cats that do not match a recognized breed by phenotype. They are judged, but they do not compete in the breed ring.

The practical consequence for the buyer is this. The label “Brazilian Shorthair” means nothing in itself — it may be a cat with a CFB registration, or a kitten from the yard given a pretty name. The questions that remove the uncertainty are: in which organization the cattery is registered, in which of the two books this particular kitten is entered (LO or RIEX), and whether the registration number can be seen. The WCF breeder’s code of ethics, incidentally, expressly requires that every kitten born to a member of the federation be registered and not handed to a new owner without a pedigree.

And a separate remark that should be said out loud: “without a pedigree” does not mean “a bad cat”. A Brazilian yard cat and a registered Brazilian Shorthair are, by origin, the same animal; the difference is that the second one has a written history of its descent. If you are looking for a companion rather than a show career and a breeding program, the choice between them is a question of your plans, not of the animal’s quality.

Breeds that grew out of street populations usually do not produce sharp characters: in a city, natural selection washes out the extremes in both directions — excessive timidity and excessive aggression alike. The “Brazilian” is a typical case of this logic. Descriptions of the breed agree on several traits: it is active, agile, very people-oriented and learns easily; while keeping the self-reliance of a street cat and choosing the moment for affection itself.

• Sociability: high. It attaches itself not to one person but to everyone it lives with; it usually gets on fine with children and dogs.
• Need for attention: high — and this is the main caveat. Portuguese-language descriptions of the breed warn plainly: if these needs are not met, the cat becomes irritable or withdrawn.
• Hunting instinct: retained and pronounced. This is the descendant of a cat that was “hired” for centuries to deal with rodents.
• Adaptability: the breed is described as suited to both apartment living and outdoor keeping. On the second option see the health section: there are numbers there worth seeing before you open the door to the yard.

Important! Long spells alone come hard to this cat. If you are out of the house for most of the day, the plan has to be thought out in advance: a second animal, vertical space, puzzle toys and compulsory joint play in the morning and the evening. “It’s a cat, it will entertain itself” is a poor strategy for this breed.

Coat

Since there is no undercoat, brushing here is a five-minute job: once a week with a natural bristle brush or a rubber grooming glove. In the shedding season (in an apartment that is usually spring and autumn) — twice a week. Bathing as needed, not on a schedule: if the cat has got dirty or you are preparing it for a show. Frequent washing of a coat without undercoat improves nothing.

Eyes, Ears, Claws, Teeth

• Eyes: wipe with a separate lint-free cloth for each eye, moistened with saline. Constant discharge is a reason to see the vet, not to wipe more often.
• Ears: inspect every two weeks. Large ears with tufts ventilate well but also collect more dust and grass seeds during outings. A dark, adhesive deposit with an odour is not “wax” but a reason to check for ear mites.
• Claws: an active cat with a proper scratching post often needs no trimming at all — provide the post first. If you do trim, take off only the transparent tip without touching the pink quick.
• Teeth: dental and gum disease is one of the commonest reasons for veterinary visits in cats generally, and in a Brazilian study oral lesions even turned out to be associated with FIV carriage. Brushing several times a week and an annual mouth examination are the basic minimum.

Space and Activity

Every day, 30–40 minutes of interactive “hunting” — a wand toy, balls, a paper ball — plus verticality: shelves, a cat tree, a windowsill with a view. This is not a whim: in a cat whose hunting instinct is unspent, the energy will find an outlet either in play or in your curtains and plant pots. Hunting games are best ended with “prey”: caught the toy, got a piece of food. Then the sequence “search — chase — catch — eat” closes, and the cat settles instead of staying wound up.

Descriptions of the breed in all sources agree on one thing: this cat is clever and learns fast. That is no reason to expect a circus routine from it — it is a reason to use training where it genuinely makes life easier for both of you.

• The carrier. The most useful skill of all. The carrier stands open in the room permanently, with something pleasant inside, and a treat “accidentally” falls into it now and then. A few weeks later the trip to the vet stops being a catastrophe.
• The harness. Accustom the cat gradually and from an early age: first putting it on without going out, then a few minutes indoors, then a quiet yard. The outdoors is safe only for a vaccinated cat treated against parasites, and only where there are no busy roads.
• The clicker. The cat works well for a marker and a treat. “Sit”, “come here”, “go to your place”, a calm attitude to having paws and ears examined — all of this is learned in short two- or three-minute sessions.
• What not to do. Punishment and shouting do not work with a cat in principle: they do not extinguish the behavior, they teach fear of the human. Unwanted behavior is removed by changing the conditions — take away the temptation, give a permitted alternative, reinforce it.

Socializing a kitten is a window, not a permanent option. The WCF code requires kittens to be given up no earlier than 12 weeks, and that is not bureaucracy: the first months beside the mother and littermates shape how the cat will behave with people and animals for the rest of its life.

• Pros:
  • Minimal coat care — a short coat with no undercoat, brushing once a week.
  • No extreme features. The standard encourages neither a shortened muzzle, nor folds, nor deformed ears or tail — that is, whole classes of problems typical of breeds with “accentuated” anatomy are absent.
  • Sociability and trainability — fits easily into a family with children and other animals.
  • The founding population is genetically diverse — this is measured, not proclaimed.
• Cons:
  • Needs daily attention and long play sessions; tolerates solitude badly.
  • Holds heat poorly — without an undercoat a cold room is uncomfortable for it.
  • A strong hunting instinct — not the best neighbor for small rodents and birds.
  • There are no breed medical data, and there are few catteries outside Brazil — so checking documents and tests falls to the buyer.

1. In this breed’s standard the WCF wrote in a geographical restriction on procedure: the novice class for it is permitted only in Brazil. In effect this means the breed’s studbook can be topped up from the street — but only in the homeland.
2. At the WCF the code BSH belongs to the Brazilian Shorthair, while the British is coded BRI. At the FIFe, BSH is on the contrary the British Shorthair. One code, two breeds, two organizations.
3. The Brazilian free-living cat population entered a large genetic study as far back as 2008 — as a separate line, next to the cats of Istanbul, Cairo and Singapore. Its observed heterozygosity (0.66) turned out to be higher than the average across the twenty-two breeds (0.51).
4. A 2022 study that included Brazilian samples confirmed the genetic side of the legend: the cats of the Americas are close derivatives of western European ones, and they simply have not had the time to diverge from them genetically. Domestic cats appeared on the continent only with the Europeans.
5. In the Brazilian anatomical literature the breed is denoted by the abbreviation “PCB”, from Pelo Curto Brasileiro. It is under that abbreviation that it appears in the comparative craniometry of 2016.
6. On the WCF point scale, color and pattern — even though the breed permits almost any coloring — are worth 15 points out of a hundred, that is, half as much as the body.

Is the Brazilian Shorthair cat suitable for first-time cat owners?

Yes, on one condition: you must have time for daily play. Coat care is minimal, the character friendly and predictable, and there are no extreme anatomical features. The difficulty is not in the keeping but in the fact that this is a cat that gets bored alone.

How does the Brazilian Shorthair differ from an ordinary non-pedigree cat?

By documents, not by appearance. The breed was made from exactly those ordinary Brazilian cats, so the type is shared. The breed is a cat entered in the studbook of a WCF club (the full LO or the supplementary RIEX) with a registration number. A cat of the same appearance without such an entry goes at WCF shows into the separate “household pets” class.

Is the breed hypoallergenic?

There are no hypoallergenic cats. The main feline allergen Fel d 1 is produced by every cat without exception: it is formed in the salivary and sebaceous glands, so it is in the saliva, on the skin and on the coat. The amount of allergen differs far more between individual animals than between breeds. The absence of an undercoat makes no difference to this.

Can a “Brazilian” be walked on a lead?

Yes, if you accustom it to a harness from kittenhood. The outdoors is safe for a cat only when it is vaccinated, treated against parasites and has no access to busy roads. Recall that in the largest available veterinary sample, trauma was the commonest cause of death of cats of all ages.

What should I ask the breeder?

About four things. In which organization the cattery is registered and whether it has a registered name. In which book the particular kitten is entered — the full one (LO) or the supplementary one (RIEX). Whether the parents were tested — in particular for the PKD1 mutation, for which an ordinary DNA test exists, and for FIV/FeLV. And whether the kittens’ mother can be seen on the premises. A responsible breeder will first ask about your conditions and way of life — that is a good sign, not a nuisance.

Can such a cat be brought from Brazil and registered at home?

A cat with a current registration, yes: the WCF rules provide for the transfer of registered cats between clubs when the original documents are present, with the original registration number and original name to be preserved. But “making a breed” out of a cat without documents will not work outside Brazil: the novice class for this breed is not permitted there.

The Brazilian Shorthair is not the only breed made from a “common” cat: the British Isles and the USA went down exactly the same road in their time. A comparison with them shows what makes the Brazilian case different.

• This is the first Brazilian cat breed with international recognition — from the WCF, 1998, code BSH. It is not in the lists of the FIFe, TICA or CFA.
• The standard requires round eyes (not almond-shaped), ears with tufts, a tail not broad at the base, and admits all colors except the pointed ones.
• The breed’s studbook can be topped up with cats from the street — but only in Brazil and only through the novice class, with a threshold of 88 points and two judges.
• The broad gene pool of the founding population rests on measured numbers: heterozygosity of 0.66 against 0.51 on average across breeds.
• There are no breed medical studies — and that is a gap in the data, not a certificate of health. What has been measured in the Brazilian population (PKD1, blood types, FIV/FeLV) is worth taking into account when choosing a kitten.

• World Cat Federation. Brazilian Shorthair (BSH) breed standard, version of 01.01.2010.
• World Cat Federation. Show classes (class 17 “novice”, class 19 “household pets”); breeding and registration rules (the LO and RIEX registers); breeder’s code of ethics; rules for the recognition of new breeds; list of full members.
• Fédération Internationale Féline; The International Cat Association; Cat Fanciers’ Association — official lists of recognized breeds.
• Lipinski M.J. et al. The ascent of cat breeds: genetic evaluations of breeds and worldwide random-bred populations. Genomics, 2008.
• Nilson S.M. et al. Genetics of randomly bred cats support the cradle of cat domestication being in the Near East. Heredity, 2022.
• Medeiros M.A. et al. Frequencies of feline blood types in the Rio de Janeiro area of Brazil. Veterinary Clinical Pathology, 2008.
• Scalon M.C. et al. Touchdown PCR detection of polycystic kidney disease and laboratory findings in different cat populations. Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation, 2014.
• Mendes-de-Almeida F. et al. Follow-up of the health conditions of an urban colony of free-roaming cats in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Veterinary Parasitology, 2007.
• Bastos B.F. et al. Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii and retroviral status of client-owned pet cats in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo, 2014.
• O’Neill D.G. et al. Longevity and mortality of cats attending primary care veterinary practices in England. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 2015.
• Rocha P.S. et al. Craniometria comparada em gatos Pelo Curto Brasileiro e Siamês. Revista Brasileira de Medicina Veterinária, 2016.