Ragdoll Cats | History. The Ragdoll, a large blue-eyed breed dressed in long, silky fur and sporting the color point pattern, is well-loved by an ever-growing group of fanciers addicted to the breed’s charms. Despite a bewildering past, the breed’s sweet nature, non-matting fur, and lovely colors and patterns have helped the Ragdoll overcome myth and mystery to claw its way up to become one of the most popular longhairs, topped only by the Persian and the Maine Coon. The Ragdoll’s history is as confusing as it is controversial. Instead of facts, we have colorful narrations, speculations, hypotheses and flat-out fiction.
The Ragdoll was developed in the 1960s by the late Ann Baker of Riverside, California, a former Persian breeder. In fact, who, where and when are just about the only details involving the breed’s origins that are not subject to debate. Now that Baker has passed on, the facts probably never will be known.
According to Baker, in the early 1960s the Ragdoll’s cat, a longhaired white Angora look-alike named Josephine, was taken to a laboratory after being hit by a car, where she was genetically altered as part of a secret government experiment. All subsequent offspring possessed the same characteristics: non-matting fur, docile nature, larger size, imperviousness to pain and the tendency to go limp like a child’s rag doll—thus the breed's name. However, this couldn’t be confirmed, Baker claimed, since the government suppressed all the evidence.
While most well-balanced people scoff at this conspiracy theory, and genetics experts say that this kind of genetic engineering wasn’t even possible in the 1960s, this story and other Twilight Zone tales uttered by Baker have plagued Ragdoll breeders for years, since cat associations found it hard to take the breed seriously. According to the Ragdoll Connection Network, a group committed to promoting the breed, Baker’s claims became even more strange and hard to believe as time went on. For example, they say she claimed Ragdolls were crossbred with skunks to improve the cats’ tails and also represented a link between humans and extraterrestrials
It’s more likely that Josephine simply possessed a pleasing combination of recessive genetic traits. When bred to males who added aesthetic traits of their own, Josephine produced eye-catching offspring. These attention-getting progeny, however they were produced, became the foundation of the Ragdoll breed. In particular, three of Josephine’s progeny were noteworthy—Buckwheat, Fugianna and Daddy War Bucks—and evidently all subsequent Ragdoll generations can be traced back to them. Apparently, none of these cats or their parents were purebreds, although that can’t be proven since Baker didn’t document the trysts and in fact didn’t own Josephine—she was a semi-feral cat who lived on the property of Mr. and Mrs. Pennels, Baker’s neighbors.
Josephine and a Birman look-alike owned by the Pennels produced Daddy War Bucks, who also resembled a Birman. Baker referred to him as the father of the Ragdoll look. Daddy War Bucks mated with Josephine and produced Fugianna. Buckwheat was the daughter of Josephine and an unknown male. She acquired all the three offspring from the Pennels. At this point, according to some sources, Josephine was euthanized, along with many of her offspring who were living on the Pennels’ property. Baker bred Buckwheat to Daddy War Bucks and produced two solid colored cats and two colorpoint cats. These two colorpoints, Kyoto (a seal mitted colorpoint) and Tiki (a seal colorpoint), were registered as Ragdolls with NCFA on December 30, 1966.
Over the next few years Baker increased her breeding stock and band of breeders.In 1971, Baker founded her own registry called the International Ragdoll Cat Association (IRCA), and, in an attempt to protect her proprietary interests and keep control of the breed, she trademarked the Ragdoll name. The trademark was valid until 2005, and allowed only IRCA breeders to use the Ragdoll name.
She sold breeder franchises, which meant IRCA breeders had to pay licensing fees, breed according to Baker’s carefully controlled guidelines and get her approval for all Ragdoll matings. In addition, breeders had to pay a 10 percent royalty for each kitten they sold. IRCA Ragdolls could only be registered with IRCA, and were not allowed to be shown or registered with the mainstream cat associations unless approved by Baker.
Many breeders were not pleased with this arrangement, and also wanted to distance themselves from the questionable claims being made about their beloved breed. These breeders split from Baker and IRCA and in 1975 formed the Ragdoll Society, later changing it to the Ragdoll Fanciers’ Club International (RFCI). Founded by Denny and Laura Dayton, the first breeders to buy Ragdolls from Baker, this group was dedicated to developing the breed and achieving recognition with the mainstream cat associations. The Daytons and the other breakaway breeders felt the Ragdoll’s trademark didn’t apply to them, since they had purchased their cats before the breed name was registered. Baker didn’t agree, and years of bitter litigation followed.
Later, other breed groups affiliated with the mainstream cat associations formed to promote the Ragdoll, such as the CFA-affiliated Ragdolls of America Group (RAG) in 1993. It took many years to overcome the past controversy, but the RFCI breeders and other breeders not affiliated with IRCA finally advanced the Ragdoll to championship status in every major North American cat association—even CFA, which belatedly granted championship in 2000. The Ragdoll has earned its place in the spotlight, just as it has earned its place in the laps and hearts of fanciers everywhere. Misinformation still creates occasional confusion, but Ragdoll fanciers are striving to move past all that, and look toward a bright future with one of the cat fancy’s rising stars.
Ragdoll Cats | History
