The 1st Big Survey

Introduction

For those of you who did not take part earlier on, The first ever 'Big Survey' was carried out here at abyworld.com for several weeks in January/February 2004. Members of AbyWorld were invited to enter some simple details of the cats they had living with them on 31st December 2003. 66 users entered the details of their 338 cats (on average, 5 cats each).

Cats Surveyed

The cats recorded in the survey were found to be of the following breeds:-

Abyssinians appear to be most likely to share their home with a non-pedigree cat, but, where the cat is a pedigree it is quite likely to be of a short-haired variety (Bengals, Ocicats, ...).

Abyssinian Colours

Of the 265 Abyssinians entered into the survey, the distribution of colours was as follows:-

Unsurprisingly, the usual (ruddy, tawny, ...) was by far the most popular (44%), with sorrels (red, cinnamon, ...) and blues at equal pegging at about 18% each. To my surprise, though, the silver series cats came up at a creditable 10%, ahead of the fawns. Lilacs and fawns between them occupied about 4% of the total.

Abyssinians By Region

The distribution of Abyssinians (by region of origin) is shown below:-

The distribution mirrors, I believe, the active user base of abyworld.com - as I am based in the UK, most people here are aware of AbyWorld. Whilst Australia and New Zealand are well represented, the USA and Canada are poorly represented in the survey; I am well aware that the profile of AbyWorld needs to be boosted over there, but word of mouth is not enough. I am thinking about how to raise awareness of AbyWorld globally, without resorting to SPAM!! Europe makes a strong showing, and I have noticed that continental Europe is getting more and more memberships at AbyWorld - active ones at that.

Cat Colonies

The number of cats living together in a household threw up some interesting numbers:-

Being honest, I expected to find a much stronger peak around the two-cat mark, and thought that at a twelve-cat household I would be really out on a limb! With one household sitting at the eighteen mark, I ask myself if I could maybe have just one more ...? Maybe not! Anyway, half of the cats in our survey could expect to be sharing with 0-7 others, whilst the other half could expect 8+ companions. This is not exactly what I would call normal, so I inferred that the respondents may well nearly all be breeders.

The question 'are you a cat breeder?' was not asked by the survey, but I did ask if each cat had been used, or would be used for breeding. I looked at the results and found that 191 out of the 265 were breeding cats (72%), so this would explain the relatively high cat counts!

Age Profiles

The age of each cat on 31st December 2003 was computed, and is displayed below (each cat is placed in a group, with their age in years at their next birthday, so 1 represents cats aged 0-1 yrs):-

My whole desire in carrying out the survey was to find out, albeit indirectly, whether the Abyssinian has any longevity issues in comparison to other breeds, or non-pedigree cats. It seems to me that the data show that no obvious differences can be seen.

Now this was a survey of live cats, not a mortality survey, but I think one can see that a smooth fall-off in the number of older cats occurs in both populations. My eldest Aby is tottering towards his 17th birthday, and it would appear that there are plenty more oldsters around apart from him.

1/4 of the Abys in this survey were aged 0-2 yrs, 1/2 were under 4 yrs, 3/4 were under 7 and just 1/4 were aged 7+. One cat was approaching his 18th birthday, with a steady tail behind of cats in their teens. All in all, I am encouraged by the result of this survey. I would like to know more though - what are the causes of death amongst our Abys, and which are preventable to let our beloved cats live even longer? This would require a new survey, if people were willing to take part.