My cats are ragdolls!?

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LittlePenBigHeart
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My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by LittlePenBigHeart »

Today I was talking to a customer at work about her ragdoll and she told me her cat flops to one side often when she's giving her attention. I laughed and said my boy does the same thing and she asked if he's a ragdoll. I said we don't know what he is because he's an RSPCA rescue and she told me it's a very typical trait for the breed so maybe he is.

Well, this evening, I looked up black ragdoll cats and I found this picture:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=black ... -aDqSJsd7M:

It isn't Dylan but it looks so much like him I couldn't tell them apart if they were side by side! :lol:

So...assuming now that they are ragdolls...is there anything I need to be aware of??
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Antonio »

Lucky you if you have a Ragdoll cat from a rescue :D

Common cats can behave like ragdolls. One of my cats would do the same things ragdolls do when was held in my arms. She looked like "boneless", soft and relaxed.
I also fostered four kittens recently, and one of them, a common tabby cat, would do the same ;)
LittlePenBigHeart
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by LittlePenBigHeart »

Oh, I know. But her comment made me look at pictures of black ragdolls and Dylan and Pepsi looks so exactly like the pictures of them that it does make me think there's a good chance they could be. They don't both go limp when you pick them up (Dylan does but Pepsi isn't big on being held and tends to wriggle a lot) so I suspect they might be a ragdoll mix rather than purebred but it did make me chuckle! Only thing is, I don't know much about the breed so it would be nice to know if they need anything special.
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Ruth B
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Ruth B »

We got Blue from a rescue when he was three years old. We were told he was a Ragdoll and had paperwork, which the previous owner said he would bring later as he forgot it when he handed Blue over, it never did turn up, and we never cared, we wanted a pet cat, not a show cat. We were also told that Blue had always lived in a flat and never been allowed out, which is normal for Ragdolls.

We decided straight off that he would be treated the same as any of our other cats and we would play it by ear as to his particular needs. The only exception I made was that I would not spoil his beautiful ruff by putting a collar on him, so he was the first cat we had microchipped. After he had time to settle in we started to let him out, well supervised to start with to make sure he didn't have any problems. He loved it. The only problem he had was one time he had gone wandering a few gardens over and when he came back one of the other cats in the area had decided to sun itself on our shed roof. Blue wasn't going to risk upsetting it so settled down in next doors garden to wait. We could see the whole thing from our upstairs window and decided not to intervene unless it got too late or there seemed to be trouble brewing. Two hours later, the other cat moved on and Blue wandered back in, fairly unfazed by the whole episode.

The one thing we did notice was his body language, it wasn't that of a normal well socialised cat, but more like human body language. He automatically seemed to assume that everyone, cat or human would be his friend and walk confidently up to them, staring straight at them. For cats this is incredibly aggressive behaviour, he was already an adult and a large cat, his fur made him seem bigger, particularly the effect of a dark face surrounded by the white ruff, and he still had the instinct to puff himself up if he felt at all threatened, he could look about 3 times the size of the other cats in the area, no one challenged him (the episode with the shed roof happened within days of him being let out so the other cats didn't know him at that time). He ruled the area without raising a paw, and probably not even realising he did.

He loved to be groomed and he did need it, not a massive amount, but 5 minutes or so everyday, the big problem was I wanted to do his back and flanks, he wanted me to do his belly, he would happily flop over for his belly to be rubbed at the slightest opportunity.

He was perhaps slightly too friendly with other people, always happy for someone to fuss him. After our other cat, Patch, died, we contacted Cats Protection looking for another to keep him company, Ragdolls are renowned for suffering from loneliness, it was why he was rehomed to start with. The poor woman who came to do the home check had him sat beside her throughout and she was desperately trying to ask the questions and take notes while he was constantly headbutting her for attention. I do think his friendliness might have put him at risk if we had lived in a less cat friendly area, as it is everyone knows who most cats belong to and if anything untoward happened someone would be like to notice, and hopefully intervene.

Personally I think that a lot of what is said about Ragdolls and their inability to cope with things like outside and other cats is due to nurture rather than nature. You do have to cater for the cats individual temperament but any cat lover would do that for any cat, pedigree or moggy, underneath all that fluff they are still a cat. I do also wonder if the cat we had when we first got Blue, taught him a lot about being a 'real cat', she was a typical torti madam.

Sorry for the long post, but as you can guess, Blue was one of those special cats, not because he was a pedigree, but because he was Blue and i could talk about him for hours. One of my regrets is that most of the photos I had of him were on one of my older laptops that died, so I have very few left, but this is one.
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LittlePenBigHeart
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by LittlePenBigHeart »

Oh my goodness, what a beautiful boy!! That fur really was something. Absolutely incredible!

I had no idea that ragdolls are supposed to be so unable to cope with the outside world. It's very interesting. Pepsi and Dylan are brother and sister. Dylan is generally super confident. He'll do the same thing as your boy did - staring straight into your eyes while he approaches - but weirdly, he also waggles his tail like a dog when he's excited! :lol: Pepsi, on the other hand, is more timid. She does go outside but after a year of trying to get her to understand how to work the catflap, she will still only use it to come back in. She can't seem to work out how to exit the house through it! She's also only left the garden a few times in the last year. She much prefers to stay at home. Both of them are confident inside the house but flip out completely at sudden movements or sound! If Dylan is walking near us in the lounge, and one of us moves a foot suddenly, he leaps into the air in fright!!! Perhaps unusually though, they don't seem capable of fluffing their fur up like your Blue did. They are both VERY fluffy, but they don't fluff up.

Ultimately, I think you're right - in general all cats probably are much the same, subject to nurture, though I think there are going to be certain proclivities that are given by nature; Abyssinian cats and Bengals will generally be louder and more active than most, and so on. But maybe if I'd suspected that Pepsi and Dylan were anything other than moggies, I might have been tempted to treat them differently and they wouldn't be the lovely, mostly confident, adorable fluffballs they are.

Only thing that worries me is I looked up ragdolls last night and see they suffer from a higher risk of HCM. That's what we lost our last cat too and it was deeply traumatic. I won't dwell on it for now but we already know Dylan has a heart murmur and the prospect of going through all that again isn't one I relish. :cry:

Blue sounds like he was a really special cat. Thank you so much for telling me about him. :)
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by alanc »

Ruth - loved that bit about Blue only wanting his tummy brushed, I have much the same problem with Tilly!
Curious that your local cats treated him with respect because of his size. Our local cats treated Badger like that when he first started going out. Took them all about a year to discover he was really a big softie and an absolute pushover. They also all realised very quickly that Tilly (second biggest cat at that tine) was not a softie and that they had better not mess with her!
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Ruth B »

I think Blue's size and overconfident aire certainly helped him with his intercat relationships to start with, later on he never seemed to have problems, whether it was a continuation of the now set pecking order, or that they learnt he was so docile really that they didn't need to challenge him I'll never really know, I just know they left him alone. It might also have something to do with the fact that he shared the house with our slightly psycho torti madam who would happily dispatch, with prejudice, any interloper she found in her garden.

I do think breed does influence a cat's temperament, but isn't necessarily the final factor in the cat's behaviour, I wouldn't for example expect a Ragdoll and a Siamese to act and react exactly the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if a particular Ragdoll could act like a Siamese or visa versa. Fortunately cat breeding hasn't gone as far as dog breeding has, and in the end most cat breeds are very much still a cat.

I've mentioned my Mother's diabetic cat on other threads a few times, now sadly also over the rainbow bridge. She was a beautiful cat, long haired, ginger and white. Due to the diabetes she was a more regular visitor to the vets than most cats. During the years my Mother has had so many people approach her there to say what a beautiful, Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest or Abyssinian to name the main contenders, she has. Several absolutely refused to believe she was just a moggy. She might have had something in her past, but my Mother knew full well that Tufty's mother was a long haired grey tabby stray that arrived at the rescue she help with, one of Tufty's sisters was short haired grey tabby and the other a short haired ginger tabby, so even amongst moggies one can appear that can fool a lot of people into thinking it is a pedigree. As a family we always reckoned if there was anything unusual in Tufty's ancestry it was possibly red squirrel, her tail would not have looked out of place on one.
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by booktigger »

Ruth B wrote:I think Blue's size and overconfident aire certainly helped him with his intercat relationships to start with, later on he never seemed to have problems, whether it was a continuation of the now set pecking order, or that they learnt he was so docile really that they didn't need to challenge him I'll never really know, I just know they left him alone. It might also have something to do with the fact that he shared the house with our slightly psycho torti madam who would happily dispatch, with prejudice, any interloper she found in her garden.

I do think breed does influence a cat's temperament, but isn't necessarily the final factor in the cat's behaviour, I wouldn't for example expect a Ragdoll and a Siamese to act and react exactly the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if a particular Ragdoll could act like a Siamese or visa versa. Fortunately cat breeding hasn't gone as far as dog breeding has, and in the end most cat breeds are very much still a cat.

I've mentioned my Mother's diabetic cat on other threads a few times, now sadly also over the rainbow bridge. She was a beautiful cat, long haired, ginger and white. Due to the diabetes she was a more regular visitor to the vets than most cats. During the years my Mother has had so many people approach her there to say what a beautiful, Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest or Abyssinian to name the main contenders, she has. Several absolutely refused to believe she was just a moggy. She might have had something in her past, but my Mother knew full well that Tufty's mother was a long haired grey tabby stray that arrived at the rescue she help with, one of Tufty's sisters was short haired grey tabby and the other a short haired ginger tabby, so even amongst moggies one can appear that can fool a lot of people into thinking it is a pedigree. As a family we always reckoned if there was anything unusual in Tufty's ancestry it was possibly red squirrel, her tail would not have looked out of place on one.
Interestingly, a high percentage (I forget what exactly) of greys have pedigree in their background, as it isn't a standard 'cat' colour. My neighbour was convinced her semi-feral kittens had Bengal in them, despite mum being black and white, so had one of them DNA tested - no breed came out, but she carries the colourpoint gene, despite being tabby and white. I'm surprised at people breeding black ragdolls, surely most of their appeal is the colour point?
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Kay
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Kay »

my Tosker was described as a Russian Blue cross on the rescue website because he is 99% grey, but as someone who has had two Russians, nothing could be further away from a long boned elegant sleek aristocratic RB than my scruffy short-legged little mog

if he has any pedigree blood in him it must be many many many generations back :D
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by alanc »

Until I got Badger and Tilly, all my cats had the only pedigree ever required - a tom cat (unknown) and a queen cat (unknown). Even though Badger and Tilly behaved slightly differently to many cats (they never minded getting wet, for instance), they were still fundamentally cats, just cats that you have a reasonable chance of telling how big they are going to be from kittenhood!
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Lilith »

Lol this does remind me of my own life as a moggie, or a bitser - bitser this, bitser that. People have asked me, is my ancestry - African, Asian, Jewish, Cypriot, Maltese ... at the age of 65 and not quite as muscular as I was, I'd add Wonkinese ... :lol:

I remember when the first ragdolls came on the scene ... they were colourpointed, they were fluffy and floppy - and they mustn't be let out to roam, ever, because they were so sweet and dopey that they'd bask in the middle of the road and never be aware of a car bearing down on them ... they were 'ideal pets' for children ... :twisted: grrrr! Myself I'd ask, is the child an ideal pet for the cat?

I'm not into longhaired cats myself but I do appreciate their beauty - if Dylan resembles that imposing ruffed black cat, and as for Blue, well, WOW! :D

Many moggies have a touch of 'pedigree' ... maybe even me, scruffy old mog that I am :D

But, a cat is a cat is a cat

And you can't say more than that

- and all power to them :lol:
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Re: My cats are ragdolls!?

Post by Ruth B »

I'm not sure if it's something on the Ragdoll gene but Blue never minded getting wet, he would come in with his fur plastered down his sides and a centre parting along his back. I still think that if I had upgraded to the bigger pond while he was still alive I would have found him swimming in it one day.

I always say that one day I will have another Ragdoll, or maybe a Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest, but all my cats up to now, including Blue, have been of that most special of breeds, rescue or rehomed.

As for the ideal pet for children, the first cat my family had, when i was 6 years old is what I would consider the idea pet for a child. There was no messing about with Rusty, if he didn't want fuss he would bat you with his paw, if he had to bat you a second time the claws came out. if I got scratched it was my own fault for not obeying his first warning. he was also a cat who did his own thing no matter what his humans might want, so I learnt that everything was done on his whim not mine.
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