The pedigree is probably the most overrated document in the whole process of buying a cat. Far too often we treat it as a certificate of quality or a guarantee: if there is an official form, the cat must be healthy, beautifully reared and from a decent place. In reality a pedigree is neither a medical guarantee of health nor a certificate of perfect socialisation.

It certifies only the animal's origin and the breeder's membership — it says who registered this kitten, and in which particular organisation. That is a great deal, but it is something entirely different from a promise of no behavioural problems or no disease.

This is worth understanding properly before we even set off to visit any cattery, because the pedigree is the one thing in the whole process that can be checked one hundred percent objectively. Everything else — a good impression from the visit, how much we like the breeder, how adorable the kittens look — is soft and can mislead. The document has specific contents and specific requirements, and those are set down rigorously and published openly.

The felinological landscape in Poland, or who is who

Before we get to reading the document itself, we have to settle one absolutely crucial thing: felinological organisations in Poland divide into those recognised worldwide and those that came into being largely in order to circumvent the law.

Internationally there is the World Cat Congress (WCC), an agreement bringing together the largest, historic federations. In Poland the main player belonging to the WCC (through the international federation FIFe) is the Polish Felinological Federation Felis Polonia (FPL). Besides it, there are also legitimate international clubs under other large associations, such as the WCF (World Cat Federation) or the American TICA. Pedigrees issued within these systems give you certainty that the cat has documented origins in global, interconnected databases, and that the breeder is subject to strict rules — covering, for instance, the minimum age of kittens being homed, the welfare of queens, and limits on litters. Under FIFe a queen may not have more than two litters in twelve months, and no more than three in twenty-four.

On the other side there is the grey zone. The Act of 16 September 2011, in force since 1 January 2012, banned the breeding of dogs and cats for commercial purposes — with an exception for catteries registered in nationwide organisations — as well as trade in dogs and cats away from their place of keeping or breeding. In response to that law, local private animal-lovers' associations began appearing en masse. They operate entirely outside the international system. They club together for a rubber stamp, write their own, often very lax rules, and print their own pedigrees.

A genuine pedigree (FIFe, WCF, TICA) does not in itself contain health test results, but it does give you real, traceable data on the ancestors. With those you can go into independent international databases (PawPeds, for example) and check the history of a given line for genetic diseases. A document issued by a private, fictitious entity gives invented or unverifiable ancestor data, which cuts you off completely from any knowledge of the cat's genetic and health history. That is why the organisation named at the top of the document is the foundation on which everything else rests.

What has to appear on a pedigree

Let us start with the basics: a pedigree is issued by a felinological organisation, not by the breeder. The breeder merely belongs to it and applies for the document; they certainly do not print it at home. The rule here is in fact very strict: a club affiliated with, say, the international federation FIFe may issue pedigrees only for cats belonging to its own members — it may not issue one to an outsider.

A pedigree issued by a FIFe member must carry the federation logo and the full name of the issuing club on the same page as the details of the cat and its ancestors. It must also be signed and authorised. If even one of those elements is missing, it is not a FIFe pedigree — however beautiful and colourful it looks.

About the kitten itself, the document must contain the following:

  • The full name with the cattery prefix and any titles, if the cat has had time to earn them. On a kitten the titles field is simply empty — the shows are still ahead of it, so in practice you will see titles in the fields of the parents and further ancestors.
  • Date of birth and sex.
  • The current registration number — that is, the unique number of the pedigree itself in that organisation's register. The number has a set structure: country code, club abbreviation, register designation and a figure. So “PL FPL LO 1234” means: Poland, Felis Polonia, main register. I will come back to this shortly, because the number alone tells you more than you would think.
  • A separate identification number — simply the string of digits from the subcutaneous microchip. This matters: the pedigree number and the microchip number are two completely different things.
  • The EMS code, meaning the letter abbreviation for the breed and the numeric notation of colour and pattern.
  • The breeder's first name and surname.
  • A family tree showing four full generations of ancestors.
  • The inbreeding coefficient (IC). Poland's Felis Polonia prints the percentage inbreeding coefficient — the degree of relatedness — directly on the document, usually in the top right corner. It is a wonderful tool, and it saves us calculating it ourselves.

An annotation that may appear: breeding restriction

The rules provide for an entry that hardly anyone mentions to buyers. A cat with a congenital defect — a limb deformity or an abnormal number of toes, for instance — may not be sold as a breeding cat, and the breeder is obliged to ask their club to place an annotation on the pedigree recording a breeding restriction.

So if you see such an entry, it does not mean the cat is ill or inferior as a companion. It means the cat must not be bred from — and that the breeder behaved honestly by reporting it to the club. It is worse when the annotation is missing where it ought to be.

Four generations means parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. The range of required data shrinks with each generation, but it never disappears entirely. For the parents there must be names and show titles, full original registration numbers (including, crucially, the organisation that issued their pedigree), the EMS code and their microchip numbers. For grandparents and great-grandparents, names, titles, numbers with the organisation and the EMS code are required. For great-great-grandparents, names, any titles and the EMS code are enough.

Why is the registration number with the organisation named so important for the ancestors? It is the detail easiest to overlook in the excitement, and the one that says the most. An ancestor's pedigree number on its own, without knowing who issued it, is just an empty string of characters. Only with the organisation's name can we verify anything at all — and only then can you see whether all the ancestors come from an internationally recognised registration system, or whether somebody along the way entered a cat of unknown origin into their own system.

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The main register (LO) and the initial register (RIEX)

A cat enters the main studbook (LO — Livre d'Origine) when it meets four conditions at once: it belongs to a breed fully recognised by FIFe, it has a fully recognised colour variety, it has at least three generations of pure breeding behind it, and it has the full set of data required on a pedigree. It is worth keeping those numbers apart, because they are easily confused: four generations is the printing requirement for a pedigree, while three generations of pure breeding is the condition for entry into the main register.

Sometimes, though, a pedigree carries a note about the RIEX register (Registre Initial et Experimental). And here the registration number comes back: the number then carries “RX” instead of “LO”. So you do not have to hunt for an annotation or ask — you read the register straight from the cat's number and from the numbers of its ancestors.

When does a cat end up in RIEX? Missing data on some great-grandparent is only one reason — the rules state plainly that if the required minimum of information about any ancestor is missing, the cat must be entered into RIEX. That register also takes cats from official, deliberate cross-breed matings (outcross, for instance to enrich the breed's gene pool), cats of a new colour not yet fully recognised in the breed, and cats brought in from the so-called novice class.

Entry in RIEX absolutely does not mean the cat is inferior, ill or not purebred. It does tell us, however, that work on this particular line is still going on — hence the word “experimental”. It is simply worth asking the breeder why their cats are in one register rather than the other.

Two things from the rules are worth knowing at this point, because both protect the buyer. First: a cat may not be moved to RIEX or declared unsuitable for breeding merely because it has not won titles at shows. An absence of shows is not a reason for anything. Second, and this matters for imported cats: a cat brought in with a pedigree from an organisation outside FIFe that does not meet the main register's requirements goes into RIEX and cannot be transferred to LO. Whether a foreign organisation is credible at all is decided by the receiving club. In other words, a document from a dubious source cannot be laundered into a full pedigree along the way.

The EMS code, a cipher that is nothing of the sort

Pedigrees often carry an entry such as NEM n 09 21, which at first glance looks like a part number in a catalogue. In reality it is a very simple notation arranged around a fixed, logical key. FIFe calls it EMS — the Easy Mind System. It is not a genetic system but a purely descriptive one, and with a little practice it reads as fluently as your mother tongue.

The key runs as follows: capital letters are always the breed abbreviation, the small letter denotes the base colour, and the numbers that follow give the amount of white, the coat pattern and the eye colour.

The breeds closest to me, from my own days as a breeder, are SIB (the Siberian cat) and NEM (neva masquerade — the Siberian with the point gene, which gives the mask and darker paws).

The base colours include, among others:

  • n — black (though in masked cats such as the neva this colour is described in English as seal, that is dark brown, while the letter code stays the same)
  • a — blue
  • d — red
  • e — cream
  • f — black tortoiseshell
  • w — entirely white

To these are added modifying letters, such as s (silver) or y (golden).

The numbers are read in groups. The first group gives the amount of white: 03 is bicolour, while 09 is any other, unspecified amount of white — in practice usually a small one, such as white toes or a little bib. The second gives the tabby pattern: 21 is unspecified tabby, 22 classic, 23 mackerel and 24 spotted.

The final number concerns eye colour (61 is deep blue, 64 green). It is worth knowing, however, that this number is omitted if the breed has an eye colour assigned to it by virtue of its coat. All neva masquerade cats have blue eyes by definition, so the number 61 is no longer written on their pedigrees. The eye code must appear, on the other hand, in entirely white Siberians, among others, whose eyes may be odd-eyed, blue or green.

So let us return to our example, NEM n 09 21. We read it without stumbling: neva masquerade, dark brown (seal), a small amount of white, tabby pattern, and blue eyes as a matter of course. Fifteen seconds, and you know exactly what cat is in front of you.

One more thing that can take you by surprise: the brackets. An entry like SIB nu (n) or BSH du 22 (d 22) is not a typographical error. If a cat's appearance differs from what it carries in its genes, the rules require both to be written down — the genotype normally, and the phenotype, meaning what you can see, in brackets. A cat with such an entry is described twice over: how it looks and what it carries. At shows it is always judged on appearance, that is, on what stands in the brackets.

A recent change worth knowing about: corin

FIFe assigned the code u, denoting the colour corin, at the end of 2024 — initially for an unrecognised variety. From 1 June 2025 corin was a preliminarily recognised variety in Siberian and neva masquerade cats, and since 1 July 2026 it has been a fully recognised one; at that point a separate paragraph, 5.1.2.4, devoted to this code appeared in the breeding rules.

It is exactly the colour breeders have for years called sunshine: a warm, sunny gold with a characteristic pink nose free of any dark outline. The name comes from the CORIN gene, whose variant in Siberian cats was described by French geneticists in 2021. Before the code u was introduced, these cats were for years assigned to other categories — most often as golden (ny) — which caused enormous confusion in breeding.

The key point for a buyer: the code u is not granted by eye. FIFe requires the cat to be genetically confirmed by a DNA test, and the code is used only with agouti varieties (11, 12, 21–25); in Siberians and Nevas, corin has been recognised only for black and blue. The entry NEM nu 09 21 therefore denotes a neva masquerade seal corin — and at the same time tells you that this cat was tested.

What you will not find on a pedigree (unfortunately)

This is the part I wrote this text for. What will the official document not tell us?

It says nothing directly about health. A pedigree contains absolutely no medical, imaging or genetic test results. Tests for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a dangerous heart disease), polycystic kidney disease or viral carrier status are separate documents. You have to ask for them separately — ideally asking to see the results for both parents, with clinic stamps, dates and the name of the laboratory. A conscientious breeder will show them proudly and without hesitation.

There is one exception worth knowing about. If the federation has imposed a mandatory genetic test on a given breed, its result must be recorded on the pedigree itself or in an annex to it. This applies, for instance, to Devon Rexes (the test for congenital myasthenic syndrome) or blue-eyed Maine Coons (the PAX3 gene test). For Siberians and neva masquerades FIFe imposes no such obligation — which is precisely why, with those breeds, you have to ask for the results separately.

It says nothing about character. Even the finest-sounding four generations of titled names will not guarantee whether the little one will be a purring cuddler or a withdrawn cat who hides under the bed in fear of visitors.

And above all — a pedigree says absolutely nothing about rearing and socialisation. A stamped form cannot tell apart a kitten that spent the first, crucial weeks of life with the family in the kitchen, getting used to the noise of the vacuum cleaner, conversation and household traffic, from a kitten kept in isolation behind the closed doors of a pen. And believe me, that is a difference you will see, painfully, in your own home for many months to come.

A pedigree says where a cat comes from. It does not say who it will become.

The myth: I will take one without a pedigree, it will be cheaper

Buyers often say: “I only want a cat to love, I am not going to shows, so a pedigree is of no use to me, I will take one without papers so it costs less.” This is one of the biggest and most damaging myths legitimate breeders deal with day in, day out.

What does issuing a pedigree actually cost? At a legitimate Polish club under the FPL umbrella, issuing a pedigree for one kitten costs in the region of 40–50 złoty. Set against the total price of a pedigree cat, that is a fraction of one percent.

So if someone offers to sell you a pedigree cat more cheaply without papers, they are not saving on a piece of paper and printer ink. They are saving on the fact that the litter is illegal from the club's point of view. The queen is giving birth too often, the parents do not have the appropriate breeding rights, the costly genetic and imaging tests are missing, veterinary care is missing, or the cats were kept in dreadful conditions. A backyard breeder simply has no right to apply for the document, which is why they sell you the illusion that “the paperwork is so expensive”.

How to check a breeder's club in a few minutes

Since we now know that the paper is worth exactly as much as the organisation that issued it, we need to be able to see through that organisation. Fortunately this takes only a few minutes:

  1. Read the full name of the organisation off the pedigree. Not the abbreviation, not a blurred logo — the full, official name.
  2. Check whether that organisation appears on the official membership list of the world federation it claims to belong to. The large federations publish open lists of their clubs on their websites.
  3. Check the organisation's number in the National Court Register (KRS). A legitimate, properly run association has an entry there, with a visible date of establishment, an address and the names of its board members.
  4. Ask the breeder straight out which club and federation they belong to. A fluent, proud answer and a willingness to explain the rules is a very good sign. Avoiding the subject is a powerful warning signal.

What does Polish law say?

A caveat: by training I am a chemist, not a lawyer. What I give here, though, is exactly what the Act says literally, with no interpretations of my own added.

The Animal Protection Act (article 10a paragraph 2) states very briefly: “The breeding of dogs and cats for commercial purposes is prohibited.” A moment later, in paragraph 6 of the same article, comes the sole exception: the ban does not apply to animals bred in catteries registered with nationwide social organisations whose statutory purpose is activity connected with the breeding of pedigree dogs and cats.

That is the crucial provision. Notice that the Act names no particular organisation — it merely sets out a criterion from above. That is why asking a breeder exactly which nationwide organisation they are registered with is not nit-picking at all. It is a check on whether the activity you are about to support with your own wallet is legal in Poland.

The Act (article 10a paragraph 1 point 3) also prohibits placing dogs and cats on the market away from their places of keeping or breeding. Article 10b echoes it by prohibiting the acquisition of animals in that way. In plain language: you are to view and collect the cat in the home where it was born, not from a car boot at a petrol station halfway there.

The penalty applies to both sides, not only the seller

It is often repeated online that the criminal sanction applies only to the breeder. That misunderstanding comes from reading one provision instead of two. The penal provision in article 37 paragraph 1 lists breaches of article 10a paragraphs 1–3 and indeed does not mention article 10b. But the buyer has a provision of their own: article 37e states that whoever breaches the prohibitions in article 10b paragraph 1 is liable to a fine. Acquiring a cat away from its place of keeping or breeding is therefore an offence — on both sides of the transaction.

Three numbers you must take away from this text

FOURTEEN WEEKS. Under the current FIFe breeding rules (paragraph 2.3.3) no kitten may leave the breeder's home before it has completed a full 14 weeks of life. It must also be fully vaccinated against panleukopenia, calicivirus and herpesvirus — in practice two doses of the primary course, unless a veterinary surgeon advises otherwise. If a breeder offers you an adorable eight-week-old and promises a FIFe pedigree at the same time, those two things simply rule each other out.

ONE MICROCHIP. Every pedigree kitten must be permanently identified with a microchip before being homed, and its number must without exception be written or pasted into the pedigree. The number on the document and the number your vet reads with a scanner at the first appointment must match exactly. That is the simplest, most basic test of the cat's identity.

FOUR GENERATIONS. A genuine pedigree shows four full generations back. Not two, not three, and not a prettily drawn tree with a few invented names.

In summary

A pedigree is a powerful tool and it really is worth being able to read one, because it is the only part of the buying process that can be checked coolly, without emotion, against registers. It serves, however, purely to verify the cat's genetic origin and its membership of a particular system.

What conditions the cat actually grew up in, you will not learn from any official certificate. You will learn it only from what we see for ourselves in the breeder's home, from the condition the mother cat is in, and — above all — from how searching and how genuinely caring the questions are that the breeder asks you.

References

  1. Fédération Internationale Féline (2026). FIFe Breeding & Registration Rules (01.07.2026), § 2.3.3, § 3.3, § 3.4, § 4.2, § 4.3, § 4.5, § 5.1.2.4↗
  2. Fédération Internationale Féline (2026). FIFe EMS System (Easy Mind System), fifeweb.org, 01.07.2026↗
  3. Fédération Internationale Féline (2025). CORIN u — registration rules for SIB/NEM and BLH/BSH, FIFe registration document; SIB/NEM from 01.06.2025↗
  4. Beauvois, H., Dufaure de Citres, C., Gache, V. & Abitbol, M. (2021). Siberian cats help in solving part of the mystery surrounding golden cats, Animal Genetics, 52(4), 482–491doi:10.1111/age.13076
  5. Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (2026). Ustawa z dnia 21 sierpnia 1997 r. o ochronie zwierząt (Polish Animal Protection Act), art. 10a, 10b, 37, 37e↗
  6. Felis Polonia (2026). Polska Federacja Felinologiczna Felis Polonia, felispolonia.eu

Frequently asked

Does a cat's pedigree guarantee that the animal is healthy?

No. A pedigree contains no veterinary, imaging or genetic test results whatsoever. Tests for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, polycystic kidney disease or viral carrier status are entirely separate documents that have to be asked for separately — ideally results for both parents, with dates, the clinic's stamp and the name of the laboratory. A pedigree certifies the cat's origin and which organisation the breeder is registered with. That is a great deal, but it is something other than a guarantee of health.

What does an EMS code on a pedigree mean, for example NEM n 09 21?

EMS stands for Easy Mind System, the descriptive notation used by FIFe. Capital letters abbreviate the breed, the small letter is the base colour, and the numbers that follow give the amount of white, the coat pattern and the eye colour. NEM n 09 21 therefore reads: neva masquerade, seal colour (code n), an unspecified amount of white, tabby pattern. Eye colour is not added, because all neva masquerades have blue eyes by definition.

How much does it cost to issue a pedigree for a kitten?

At a legitimate Polish club affiliated with Felis Polonia it costs in the region of 40–50 złoty per kitten, a fraction of the price of a pedigree cat. That is why an offer of “cheaper, but without papers” is not a saving on the document. It usually means the litter is illegal from the club's point of view: the queen is giving birth too often, the parents have no breeding rights, or the required tests were skipped.

From what age can a kitten with a FIFe pedigree go to its new home?

The FIFe breeding rules (paragraph 2.3.3) are unambiguous: a kitten may not go to its new home before it is 14 weeks old and must be fully vaccinated against panleukopenia, calicivirus and herpesvirus, unless a veterinary surgeon advises otherwise. It must also be identified with a microchip whose number is entered in the pedigree. An offer to collect an eight-week-old kitten together with a promise of a FIFe pedigree is a contradiction in itself.