Meet the Ragamuffin

We Ragamuffins are a pretty new breed and the history of the Ragamuffin is short but pawsitively fascinating. My breed was originally part of the Ragdoll breed, which was created in 1963 by a human named Ann Baker in Riverside, California. Ann Baker found a beautiful longhaired white Turkish Angora-like cat named Josephine in her neighborhood and bred her with several other male cats she either found or owned. Some of my early ancestors included Burmese, Birman, and Persian cats. She named my cousins Ragdolls because of their tendency to flop into their humans’ arms.

As Ann Baker continued to develop my cousin, the Ragdoll cat, she formed the International Ragdoll Cat Association (IRCA) in 1971 and trademarked the breed name. In addition to Ragdolls, which had a very specific breed standard that required them to be colorpoint only, Ragdoll breeders at the IRCA started to introduce other breeds (such as the Himalayan and Domestic Longhair) to increase the variety of colors and patterns. These cats were named Cherubim, and they are my closest ancestors – in fact, the Cherubim cats are the exact same as my breed, only they have a different name!

In 1992, a group of Ragdoll breeders broke from the IRCA and wanted to get official recognition from the major cat registries. Because Ann Baker had trademarked the Cherubim name, the group chose the name Ragamuffin (also spelled RagaMuffin) to honor Ann Baker’s contributions to my breed. We were first accepted as a new breed by the American Cat Fanciers Association in 1994 and granted championship status in 2001. Other cat registries soon followed, and today we are as beloved as our Ragdoll cousins.