The 'ordinary' shelter cat with no pedigree is, on average, the genetically healthiest cat you can get — a large insurance-data study found purebred cats carry higher risk for heart disease, reproductive problems and several other serious conditions than mixed-breed cats do — and you can adopt one for a fraction of what a pedigree kitten costs.
11.89years, life expectancy at birth
About the same as the all-cat life expectancy at birth of 11.74 years.
Measured, not estimated: worked out from 7,936 UK cats that died in 2019 under veterinary care. Based on 7,117 deaths of this breed (listed in the study as "Crossbred"). 95% confidence interval 11.75 to 12.03 years. Life expectancy at birth is the average a kitten of this breed could expect; a cat that is already an adult has a longer expected total, because it has got past the risky early years. UK cats, so treat it as the best available figure rather than a promise about yours.
Teng et al. 2024, Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery 26(5) — open access · figures cited with attributionAdopt a Domestic Shorthair near you
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Living with a Domestic Shorthair
This is, in the most literal sense, just a cat — coat length, size, energy and personality all vary from one individual to the next because there's no breed standard shaping any of it. In exchange for that unpredictability, you typically get a cat that costs $50 to $250 to adopt already vaccinated and altered, carries less inherited-disease risk than most pedigree breeds, and is available right now, in every age and personality type, at nearly every shelter in the country.
Health you should know about
- No breed-specific inherited-disease burden — because there's no closed pedigree gene pool, there's no single line of ancestry concentrating a hereditary condition the way there is in, for example, Persians (PKD) or Manx (spinal defects).
- A study of roughly 550,000 cats using Swedish veterinary-insurance data found purebred cats carried higher relative risk for heart disease, female reproductive problems, surgical complications, and respiratory and immunological disease than mixed-breed cats; mixed-breed cats showed somewhat higher rates of endocrine, skin and mobility issues, plausibly linked to greater outdoor access rather than genetics.
- Obesity remains the single biggest health risk for this cat, exactly as it is for every other cat — a mixed pedigree doesn't protect against overfeeding.
Read the full Cat Care Guide first — costs, daily time, and everything a cat needs before you choose a breed.
Sources — 4 references
Last reviewed October 2026. 4 sources listed below. Written and maintained by Petdeals.io. General care information, not veterinary advice — for a sick animal, call a vet.