Breed Profiles

Has someone told you the Siberian is the cat allergic people are allowed to have? It is the single most repeated claim about the breed, it is the reason a lot of Siberian kittens change hands for serious money, and it is only about a third true. Worth unpicking properly, because getting it wrong means an allergic person and a cat who both end up somewhere they should not be. And first, since the name causes endless confusion online: this is the cat. Large, semi-longhaired, Russian. Nothing to do with the sled dog.

What the Fel d 1 story actually says

Almost all human cat allergy comes down to one protein, Fel d 1. Cats produce it mainly in their saliva and in the sebaceous glands of the skin, they groom it into the coat, it dries, it flakes off on tiny particles of dander and it drifts around your house for months. Notice what is missing from that description: hair length. Long-haired cats are not more allergenic than short-haired ones, and no cat is hairless enough to be safe.

The honest version of the Siberian claim is that testing has found some individual Siberians produce lower levels of Fel d 1 than the average cat. Not all of them. Not most of them by any guaranteed margin. The variation between one Siberian and the next is wide, and it is also wide between individuals of every other breed. There is no breed-wide switch that turns the protein off, there is no hypoallergenic cat, and any breeder who says otherwise is selling you something. Intact males generally produce the most; neutering brings levels down.

If you are allergic and set on this breed, do it in the right order. Get your allergy properly diagnosed first, since plenty of people who assume they react to cats actually react to dust mites and pollen carried on the coat. Then spend a couple of hours in the breeder's home, more than once, with the actual parent cats. Some breeders will pay for saliva testing on their breeding stock and share the numbers — that is a good sign about the breeder even though a single test is not a promise. And accept the possibility that the answer is no. A cat returned or shut in a spare room because someone gambled is a miserable outcome for everybody.

Built for a Russian winter

Set the allergy question aside and there is a superb cat underneath it. Siberians are the native forest and village cat of Russia, mentioned in Russian writing and folklore for centuries, though the organised breeding programme is recent — it began in Leningrad and Moscow in the late 1980s, the first cats reached the United States in 1990, and international registries recognised the breed through the 1990s and 2000s.

The coat is the headline feature: semi-longhaired and triple-layered, with coarse guard hairs, a middle layer of awn hairs and a dense down undercoat beneath. Water runs off the top of it. There is a full ruff, a plumed tail and britches on the back legs, and in spring the whole undercoat comes out at once in a way that has to be seen to be believed. Outside that moult it is a surprisingly forgiving coat — twice a week with a comb keeps it honest, and it mats far less readily than a Persian's.

They are big and they take their time. Males commonly run 5.5 to 9 kg, females 3.5 to 6 kg, and a Siberian is not fully grown until somewhere between three and five years old, which means the gangly adolescent stage lasts ages. Expect twelve to fifteen years.

The cat that answers the door

Dog-like gets used a lot for this breed and it fits. Siberians tend to come to the door when someone knocks, follow you between rooms, sit in on whatever you are doing and put a paw in it. Many will fetch a screwed-up ball of paper for as long as you are willing to throw it. They talk in chirps and trills rather than the flat yowl of an Oriental breed. They are usually relaxed about being picked up, generally fine with children who have been taught some manners, and often the easiest cat in a house that already has a dog.

They are also powerful jumpers with real forest-cat athleticism. The top of the kitchen cupboards is not out of reach, and a bored Siberian will prove it. Give them height, sturdy shelves and a tall scratching post, because a cat this heavy will flatten a flimsy one in a fortnight. Many of them are oddly keen on water, which explains a lot of interfered-with washing up.

Health-wise the breed is robust, with one thing to take seriously: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. HCM thickens the heart muscle, it is the most common heart disease in cats, and it occurs in Siberians. The DNA tests that exist for Maine Coons and Ragdolls do not apply here, so the only meaningful screening is an echocardiogram performed by a veterinary cardiologist on the breeding cats, repeated periodically rather than done once and forgotten. Ask to see recent scan results with dates on them. Polycystic kidney disease crops up occasionally and is easy to test for.

Buy on the health screening and the temperament of the parents. If the allergy angle turns out to work for you as well, treat it as a bonus rather than the reason.