American Ringtail

The American Ringtail named for its curled over tail. The coat is short.

Health and welfare of cats with curled tails or unusual tail carriage

Some breeds of cat have been developed from genetic defects that have resulted in a curled tail or a tail with a strange angle (and one that lacks the normal range of motions for a cat). While no specific health issues have been reported in these breeds, the ethics of depriving a cat of a normal tail, which is important for balance and also for communication between cats, is highly questionable.

International Cat Care’s position is that although no specific detrimental health issues have been reported, we would not support the deliberate breeding of cats with abnormal tail carriage.

Important

We have limited the information about inherited disorders to those conditions that are known and proven to exist within a breed. For many breeders and many conditions, insufficient information may be available at this time to know whether any particular breed is necessarily free of any particular condition.

In general, pedigree breeds use a much smaller gene pool for breeding than domestic cats and therefore have a higher risk of developing inherited disorders. In addition, a number of ‘newer’ pedigree breeds are derived from matings between one or more ‘older’ breeds, and in these situations, the perpetuation of inherited problems that were seen in older breeds is likely within the newer breeds.