Anyone who follows the British cat world will have noticed it: over the last twenty years the Ragdoll has gone from a niche breed to a familiar presence in UK homes. It is not just an impression. It is told by a scientific paper published in 2025 by the VetCompass group at the Royal Veterinary College, which analysed the clinical records of over a million cats seen by British first-opinion vets in 2019. It is a valuable vantage point, because it looks not at social media trends but at the animals that actually walk into the surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the study by Dan O’Neill and colleagues, in 2019 Ragdolls accounted for 1.70%<\/strong> of all cats under care at the vets in the sample. The more interesting figure, though, is another: the share of Ragdolls among the cats born each year rose from 0.70% of those born in 2005 to 3.72% of those born in 2019<\/strong>. In fifteen years, then, the breed’s presence among new cats grew by more than five times.<\/p>\n\n\n