Singapura Cat in India: Contested Origins and Real Costs

What the Singapura actually is

The Singapura is a small ticked shorthair cat of foreign type in a single colour, golden ivory ticked with sepia brown, with unusually large deep-cupped ears and very large eyes. It is also the only breed on this site whose own registry has published a defence of where it came from.

Start with the coat, because there is only one. The GCCF requires the body colour to be an old or golden ivory with a soft warm effect, ticked with sepia brown, with each hair carrying at least two bands of sepia ticking separated by light bands, light next to the skin and a dark tip. Muzzle, chest, stomach and inner legs must be an unticked light ivory. There is no second colour, no pattern variant and no silver.

The head, and the two features that carry the breed

The standard asks for a rounded skull narrowing to a definite whisker break, a medium short broad muzzle with a blunt nose, and in profile a slight stop just below eye level. Ears are large, wide open at the base and deep cupped. Eyes are large, set at least an eye width apart, held wide open, with a dark outline desirable, and the eye colour must be hazel, green or yellow only. Head and ears together carry 25 of the 100 points and eyes another 10, so more than a third of the judging is above the neck.

Size, where the sources genuinely disagree

This is the breed's most-repeated claim and the sources do not line up. Royal Canin's Indian breed page states "3.75kg at their largest, the Singapura is the smallest recognised breed of cat";. The GCCF's own Standard of Points opens with "The Singapura is an alert, healthy, medium-sized cat of foreign type";, and its public breeds index gives 5 to 8 lb, roughly 2.3 to 3.6 kg. One registry calls the breed medium-sized while a major manufacturer calls it the smallest recognised breed, and both are published.

Coat genetics and the diversity problem underneath them

The Singapura's coat genetics are simple ticked-tabby genetics: every hair banded, no pattern on the body, sepia on ivory. Its population genetics are the opposite of simple, and they are the most important thing on this page.

The visible mechanism is the same agouti banding the Abyssinian carries. The GCCF requires at least two bands of sepia ticking per hair, separated by light bands, light next to the skin and dark at the tip, with the muzzle, chest, stomach and inner legs left unticked. Barring is permitted on the inner front legs and back knees only, and barring on the outer front leg is a fault. A faint incomplete necklace is allowable; a complete one is not.

The heterozygosity finding, and what the authors actually wrote

A 2008 survey genotyped 22 cat breeds and worldwide random-bred populations using microsatellite markers. The Singapura's row in its Table 1 reads: 24 cats, inbreeding coefficient 0.12, observed heterozygosity 0.34, expected heterozygosity 0.38, average allelic richness 1.98, average alleles per locus 2.82, allele range 1 to 5. The breed average across the study was 0.51 observed heterozygosity and 2.74 allelic richness. Both of the Singapura's diversity figures are the lowest values in the table, and its allele range tops out at 5 against 12 for the Japanese Bobtail and the Siberian.

The authors did not leave the reader to infer the consequence. They wrote that "the Burmese and Singapura breeds have the lowest heterozygosity and the highest FIS of any breed, reflecting the most intense inbreeding", and concluded that "Burmese and Singapura breeders should be concerned about genetic diversity";.

Why the rule that protects the breed also traps it

The CFA classifies the Singapura as a natural breed, and its own article states plainly that "as such, no outcrosses are allowed";. That rule exists to protect the breed's identity, and it also means the population cannot outcross its way out of the diversity problem the 2008 survey measured. The two facts belong on the same page, and nowhere else are they printed together.

Registry recognition, and the origin dispute inside it

Registry recognition of the Singapura is complete at every major body, and the interesting part is not whether the breed is recognised but what its own registry has had to publish about where it came from.

The CFA accepted the Singapura for registration in 1982 and granted championship status in 1988, and it runs an active Singapura breed council today. TICA lists it among the 73 breeds it recognises. The GCCF carries a Standard of Points entry at page 179 in Section 4 Group A. FIFe recognised it much later: its standard prints "SIN Rec. 2014" on its own face, thirty-two years after CFA accepted the breed.

What the CFA itself publishes about the origin

The CFA's own 2006 article on the breed opens its history section with the sentence "There has been much controversy concerning the origin of the Singapura", and states that "it has been insinuated that the breed was a hybrid, created using Burmese and Abyssinians";. Its account is that Hal Meadow, a geophysicist working overseas, sent cats from Singapore to Tommy Meadow in the United States on a company ship in 1971; that the couple arrived in Singapore in 1974 with five cats including a blue Burmese, a spayed sable Burmese and three ticked cats that were grandchildren of the earlier Singapore cats; and that they returned to the United States in 1975 with five brown ticked cats and one brown cat.

The same article records that in 1980 a female found in Singapore's SPCA, Chiko, was imported by a Singapura breeder, and that this "legitimized the fact that cats who fit the Singapura's description did exist in the streets of Singapore";. It then records the hearing: "In October 1990, the question of the Singapura's origin was brought before the CFA Board by a CFA Singapura breed club. The CFA Board found no probable cause for wrongdoing and took no action."

What Singapore's own newspaper published in 2026

The Straits Times ran a piece on 28 June 2026 headed "The Singapura cat's contested origins". It states that the drain-cat story "was largely invented, and the cat is, genetically speaking, more American than Singaporean", records that Harold and Tommy Meadow were American breeders of Abyssinians and Burmese cats who moved to Singapore in 1974, and reports that Tommy Meadow later claimed she discovered three kittens abandoned in a local storm drain. The article also notes that only one Singapura was competing at a Singapore show, and that the country has no active local breeders.

Bonbeno does not adjudicate between a registry and a national newspaper. What this page does is put both on one screen with their dates, and add the one piece of independent evidence neither of them cites: the 2008 genetics survey in which the Singapura's closest neighbour among 22 breeds was the Burmese.

How rare the breed actually is, in registry numbers

FIFe's own Breeding Statistics 2024 covers 96,075 registered kittens across 54 breeds. The Singapura ranks 44th with 35 registrations, marked as having fallen in rank, against 23,775 for the Maine Coon at the top. France's studbook registered 24 in 2023 and 20 in 2024, and 621 across the twenty years to 2022 with a peak of 46 in 2016. Wikipedia records the same FIFe ranking as 0.04 percent of registered kittens, which is the unrounded version of the 0.0 percent the PDF prints.

Singapura cat price in India, and why the question has no local answer

No Singapura cat price in India exists. Every page ranking for the Indian query quotes US dollars, the Indian-domain results are either general cat-price guides that omit the breed or sellers listing other breeds, and the country the cat is named after has no active breeders either.

We pulled the Indian results on 8 September 2026 with gl=IN and hl=en and read the pages. Here is what is actually there.

Two Indian sellers rank on this query and neither lists the breed. Royal Canin has an Indian-domain page for the Singapura that carries breed information and no price. India's largest cat-price guide, titled Cat Price in India 2026: All Breeds, mentions the Persian 22 times and the Singapura zero times.

What the overseas figures actually are

Petful gives 1,200 to 2,500 US dollars for a pet-quality kitten from a reputable breeder, with premier show lines reaching 4,000. Hepper gives 1,200 to 2,000 from a breeder and 75 to 150 for adoption. Those two overlap at the bottom and diverge at the top, which is the ordinary spread of guide pages rather than a market signal.

The rarity is not an Indian problem, it is a global one

FIFe's own Breeding Statistics 2024 covers 96,075 registered kittens across 54 breeds and puts the Singapura 44th with 35 registrations for the whole year, marked as having fallen in rank. France's studbook registered 20 in 2024 against 24 in 2023. And Singapore's own newspaper reports that the breed averages around 2.3 kittens per litter, which it describes as the lowest of any registered breed, and that the country has no active local breeders so prospective owners must go overseas.

Put those together and the Indian absence stops being surprising. A breed producing 35 registered kittens a year worldwide, from litters averaging 2.3, with no breeders in its own namesake country, is not going to have an Indian retail market.

Cost of ownership in India, from published rate cards

The cost of ownership for a small short-coated cat in India is built from litter, food, vaccination, parasite control and occasional boarding, with the grooming line close to zero. Every figure below comes from a named Indian rate card read live, because no Singapura-specific Indian cost exists to quote.

PawSpace also notes that festive-season rates run 25 to 30 percent higher, which an annual average would hide.

The small-cat advantage, and where it stops

A cat that Royal Canin India puts at 3.75 kg at its largest eats less than a 6 kg cat, uses less litter and costs less to board. It also needs almost no professional grooming: the GCCF rates the coat low maintenance and describes it as short, fine, silky and close-lying. Against that, veterinary costs do not scale down with body weight, and consultation, imaging and anaesthesia are priced per visit rather than per kilogram.

Neither food nor litter has a published national Indian rate this page could quote honestly, and neither does any cat page that claims one. Price both in your own city.

The cheapest life-extending decision

Neuter on your vet's schedule. In UK primary-care data, entire cats had 4.29 times the odds (95% CI 3.72 to 4.95) of dying before three years of age compared with neutered cats, and among cats dying after nine months, neutered cats lived 1.07 years longer on average. Those findings are not breed-specific, which is exactly why they apply to a breed with no literature of its own.

Heat tolerance in India, and the one homeland that matches

The Singapura is, on the climate data, the best-suited breed in this batch to an Indian coastal city, and it is the only one whose stated homeland sits within half a degree of Chennai's peak wet-bulb load. The caveat is that the homeland itself is disputed.

We queried NASA POWER by explicit coordinates for Singapore and for Indian cities, echoing the cell elevation each time.

Read the Singapore row against Chennai. The peak wet-bulb loads are 25.68 and 26.11 degrees C, a gap of 0.43 degrees, and Singapore is the more humid place by twelve percentage points. What Singapore does not have is a hot season: its annual range runs from 25.94 degrees C in January to 28.08 in May, a spread of 2.14 degrees, against Chennai's 24.09 to 31.51, a spread of 7.42.

Practical rules by city

1. Treat Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad as the hot-season cities from March to June, and Delhi from April to July.
2. Rank your own city rather than assuming: hottest-month means run Ahmedabad 35.06 C in May, Hyderabad 33.30 C in May and Pune 28.93 C in April.
3. Give the cat a tiled floor to lie on, because conduction beats a fan for any cat and especially a small one.
4. Keep two water sources away from food bowls and refresh them twice daily in the hot months.
5. Watch the monsoon rather than the summer in coastal Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, since a small cat in a damp unventilated room is at more risk from skin problems than from heat.

Bengaluru remains the easiest Indian metro for any pedigree cat, at a peak wet-bulb load of 21.86 degrees C, nearly four degrees below Singapore's. On the coat alone this is a heat-tolerant cat by the standards of the pedigree breeds sold in India, which is a genuinely unusual thing for this site to be able to write. Indian law also puts the temperature question on the seller: rule 6(5) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018 requires the temperature where pet animals are housed to be comfortable, says it varies from breed to breed, and places the onus on the shop owner to know the requirements of the breeds he deals in.

Temperament, and what a small extroverted cat needs

The Singapura is curious, extroverted, people-oriented and soft-voiced, and every published description converges on the same picture: a small cat that insists on being involved in whatever you are doing.

Royal Canin's Indian breed page describes "a curious, extroverted, playful but non-destructive little cat, that insists on helping you with everything you do";. The GCCF's breeds index rates the breed extrovert and intelligent. The CFA's own article describes cats "very tuned-in to the people around them" who "insist on being in the middle of everything", and notes that the delicate look and angelic face "can be deceiving";.

That last phrase is the useful one. Buyers choose this breed on its appearance, which reads as fragile and quiet, and get a busy cat that follows people around. Neither the look nor the size predicts the behaviour.

Who this suits in India

• Flat dwellers, since a cat Royal Canin India puts at 3.75 kg at its largest needs less floor area than most breeds.
• Households where somebody is usually home, because a people-oriented cat alone all day is a bored cat.
• Owners in Chennai, Mumbai or Kolkata, where the coat and the climate genuinely match.
• People who want a quiet cat, since a soft gentle voice is one of the breed's consistently reported traits.

Who should choose something else

• Families with toddlers, because a 3 kg cat is easy to injure by accident rather than by intent.
• Anyone wanting a placid ornamental cat, since this one will be on the kitchen counter.
• Buyers who cannot wait, given that even in Singapore prospective owners face overseas wait lists.
• Anyone unwilling to think about the genetic diversity finding, which is a real consideration rather than a technicality.

Training a Singapura, and the one thing worth teaching first

To train a Singapura, use its curiosity: this is a cat that involves itself in everything anyway, so the training problem is directing that attention rather than creating it. Start with carrier acceptance, because a small cat in an Indian summer needs to reach a clinic fast.

The registries describe a cat that is intelligent, extroverted and insists on helping. In practice that means a Singapura will investigate any new object you put down, which is the opposite of the shy-breed problem and makes early handling straightforward.

The curriculum, in order

1. Handle paws, ears and mouth from eight weeks, ten seconds at a time, always ending in food.
2. Leave the carrier out permanently and feed inside it, so it never becomes a vet-only object.
3. Teach a name response early, since a small cat that hides is genuinely hard to find in a flat.
4. Introduce the brush as an object to investigate before it touches the coat.
5. Add a weighing routine, because on a 3 kg cat a 300 g change is ten percent of body weight.

That last point is not a training tip so much as a habit, and it matters more here than on any other page in this batch. A 300 g gain on a Maine Coon is noise. On a Singapura it is significant, and the UK data attaches 0.02 years of lifespan to every 100 g of deviation from the breed and sex median.

What this breed resists

It resists being excluded. A Singapura shut out of a room will sit at the door and comment, and owners who read that as neediness rather than as a social breed doing what social breeds do tend to escalate. It does not resist handling, harnesses or new objects, which makes it one of the easier cats to prepare for veterinary care.

Daily exercise for a small busy cat

Give a Singapura two short play sessions a day and some vertical space, and the breed does the rest itself. Its exercise problem is not motivation, it is opportunity, because a small flat with nothing to climb bores an active cat quickly.

The breed is described consistently as playful, active and non-destructive, which is an unusual combination and a genuine selling point for a flat. A cat that plays hard but does not shred furniture is worth more in an Indian rental than in most homes.

What a session looks like

1. Run two wand sessions a day of ten to fifteen minutes, each ending with a catch and a food reward.
2. Add a shelf or a cat tree, since a light cat uses vertical space more readily than a heavy one.
3. Feed at least one meal from a puzzle feeder, which converts appetite into activity.
4. Move both sessions to early morning and after dark from March to June.

Weight is the reason to bother. A cat this small has very little margin, and the UK primary-care result on body-weight deviance applies in both directions, so an underweight Singapura is not safer than an overweight one. Weigh monthly on a kitchen scale rather than judging by eye.

A second cat is a reasonable strategy for a people-oriented breed in a household that is out at work, but read the genetic diversity section first if the second cat is also going to be a Singapura from the same lines.

Grooming, which is close to nothing

Groom a Singapura once a week with a rubber brush or a grooming mitt and the job is done. The GCCF asks for a short, fine, silky and close-lying coat and rates the grooming requirement low.

The standard's coat line is a single sentence: "Short, fine, silky and close-lying. Allowance for longer coat in kittens";. There is no undercoat to mat, no ruff, no britches and no seasonal blowout of the kind a semi-longhair produces. The GCCF's public index rates the breed low maintenance.

What actually needs attention on this coat

Skin rather than hair. A short fine coat gives limited protection against sun on a balcony and against the tick and flea load an Indian ground-floor flat carries, and a 3 kg cat has a smaller margin for a parasite burden than a 6 kg one. Parasite control on a veterinary schedule is the real grooming budget for this breed.

Health issues, screening and life expectancy

The Singapura has no life table and no breed-specific disease study of its own. What it does have is a measured population-genetics problem, a documented very small litter size, and an inherited anaemia that belongs to the breeds it is descended from or alleged to be descended from.

Life expectancy, where nothing has been measured

The UK VetCompass feline life tables, built on 7,936 confirmed deaths in 2019, modelled only the 12 breeds that reached 15 or more deaths, crossbred included, and the Singapura is not among them. The GCCF's own breeds index publishes 9 to 15 years for the breed. That is a registry estimate rather than a life table, and this page keeps the two labelled apart rather than presenting one as the other.

What the UK data does supply is general and still worth having. Crossbred cats reached a life expectancy at age 0 of 11.89 years (95% CI 11.75 to 12.03) across 7,117 deaths, purebred cats 10.41 years (9.99 to 10.83) across 819, and purebred cats carried 1.83 times the odds of dying before three years of age.

The genetic diversity finding is the health finding

For most breeds, population genetics is a breeder's concern rather than an owner's. For this one it is the health section, because there is nothing else measured to put in it. The 2008 survey placed the Singapura's observed heterozygosity at 0.34 and its allelic richness at 1.98, both the lowest of 22 breeds, with an allele range of 1 to 5 against 1 to 12 for the most diverse breeds. The authors' own recommendation was that Singapura breeders should be concerned about genetic diversity.

The CFA's classification of the Singapura as a natural breed, under which no outcrosses are allowed, is what makes that structural. A closed register on the least diverse cat population measured is a design decision with consequences, and it is the one thing a prospective owner should read before paying a premium.

Litter size, and why it matters to a buyer

Singapore's national newspaper reports the breed averaging around 2.3 kittens per litter, describing it as the lowest of any registered breed. That is a supply fact and a welfare fact at once. It explains the wait lists, it explains why 35 kittens were registered with FIFe in a whole year, and small litters in a closed population are one of the ways a gene pool narrows further.

The inherited disease worth asking about

Erythrocyte pyruvate kinase deficiency is an autosomal recessive glycolytic enzyme disorder causing haemolytic anaemia, and the causative feline mutation was originally identified in Abyssinian and Somali cats. Unlike affected dogs and humans, deficient cats show an intermittent rather than chronic anaemia, and bilirubin gall bladder stones with post-hepatic obstruction are also characteristic. A Japanese survey found the mutant allele frequency high enough in Abyssinians and Somalis to warrant control measures.

The Singapura was not one of the four breeds in that Japanese survey, so no Singapura allele frequency exists to quote and this page does not invent one. The reason to raise it at all is that the Abyssinian is one of the two breeds named in this breed's origin dispute, so a buyer has a specific and answerable question to put to a breeder: has this line been tested, and what was the result.

• Ask for the parents' pyruvate kinase deficiency test results, and accept not tested as an answer rather than pressing for a reassurance nobody can give.
• Ask what the line's inbreeding coefficient is, which a serious breeder in a closed register will know.
• Weigh the cat monthly, because on a 3 kg animal small changes are large proportions.
• Neuter on schedule, since that is the one intervention with a measured effect in the general feline data.
• Consult your nearby vet about which screening tests are actually available in your city before assuming a panel exists.

Feeding a very small cat in India

Feed a Singapura measured meals twice a day and weigh both the food and the cat, because on an animal Royal Canin India puts at 3.75 kg at its largest, an error that would be trivial on a big breed is a tenth of its body weight.

The arithmetic is the whole point. A 500 g gain on a 3 kg cat is a sixth of its starting weight. The UK primary-care result gives 0.02 years of lifespan lost per 100 g of deviation, in either direction, from the median adult body weight within the breed and sex strata, and on a small cat that deviation accumulates quickly.

Water, and why it still matters here

• Place at least two water sources, each at least three feet from any food bowl.
• Refresh water twice a day from March to June, because warm stale water is refused.
• Lead with wet food where the budget allows, since it is the largest single lever on total water intake.
• Watch litter clump size, which is the observable proxy for how much a cat is actually drinking.

The Singapura kitten timeline, month by month

Plan a Singapura kitten timeline around four fixed points: the eight-week legal floor for sale in India, the vaccination course, the coat and colour development that takes longer than most buyers expect, and the neutering decision before the first birthday.

Indian law sets the first date. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018 define an un-weaned animal to include "kittens and pups below eight weeks", and rule 7(15) states that no pet shop shall sell un-weaned or underage animals.

The development the standard itself allows for

The GCCF makes three separate allowances for immaturity in this breed: a longer coat in kittens, undeveloped ticking in kittens, and slow development of body colour in adolescents, plus an allowance for a more slender body shape in adolescent cats. A Singapura kitten therefore does not look like the adult photograph for the better part of a year, and a seller pressing you to judge a twelve-week kitten on its ticking is asking you to assess something the register says is not yet there.

What to write down in the first year

1. The registry that issued the pedigree papers, copied from the certificate rather than remembered.
2. Every vaccination date and product name, from the certificate.
3. Monthly weight, which on a small cat is the single most informative number you will collect.
4. Whether the parents were tested for pyruvate kinase deficiency, and what the result was.

Singapura against the cats an Indian buyer can actually get

The honest comparison is not Singapura against Abyssinian on looks. It is Singapura against the cats that exist in India, because for almost every Indian reader one of the others is the answer.

The Burmese row is the one worth reading twice, and not only because of the origin dispute. In the UK life tables the Burmese has the longest measured life expectancy of any breed modelled, 14.42 years at age 0 from 45 deaths, ahead of the Birman at 14.39 and well ahead of crossbreds at 11.89. The breed the Singapura could not be genetically separated from in a twenty-cluster analysis is the longest-lived cat in the study.

Singapura against Abyssinian

Both are ticked, both are foreign type, both trace to the same Asian founding stock. The Abyssinian is more available, more genetically diverse in the 2008 survey at 0.45 observed heterozygosity, and registered 848 kittens with FIFe in 2024 against the Singapura's 35 Lipinski MJ, Froenicke L, Baysac KC. The Singapura is smaller, comes in one colour, and carries a documented supply problem. If the appeal is the ticked coat rather than the size, the Abyssinian is the practical choice.

Singapura against the cat outside your building

In the UK life tables, crossbred cats reached 11.89 years at age 0 across 7,117 deaths, against 10.41 years for purebred cats and 1.83 times the odds of dying before three. An Indian domestic shorthair carries the random-bred heterozygosity of 0.65 that the 2008 survey measured, against this breed's 0.34. On genetic diversity, availability and measured survival, the street cat wins every column. On looks, it does not, and that is a legitimate reason to want something else.

Mistakes Indian buyers make with this breed

Five mistakes account for almost everything that goes wrong here, and four of them happen before any cat changes hands.

1. Believing an Indian Singapura listing without a registry

No Indian seller lists this breed at any price, and the two Indian sellers ranking on the query list Persians, British Shorthairs, Ragdolls and Maine Coons instead. If someone offers you a Singapura in India, the first question is which register issued the pedigree papers, and the second is whether that register's own breed list contains the name. CFA, TICA, FIFe and the GCCF all do.

2. Converting a US price into rupees

Overseas guides quote 1,200 to 2,500 US dollars, up to 4,000 for show lines. Turning that into a rupee band invents an Indian market. Any page or AI answer that says no local price is available and then prints a rupee range in the next sentence has done exactly that, and the number describes nothing.

3. Buying a small ticked cat and calling it a Singapura

The breed comes in one colour only, golden ivory ticked with sepia brown, with hazel, green or yellow eyes and a blunt-tipped tail. A small brown ticked cat is a small brown ticked cat, and Indian street cats include plenty of them. That is not an insult to either animal; it is the difference between a cat and a certificate.

4. Ignoring the genetic diversity finding because it sounds technical

It is the most important published fact about this breed. Observed heterozygosity 0.34 and allelic richness 1.98, both the lowest of 22 breeds measured, with the authors recommending that breeders be concerned. Combined with a closed register in which no outcrosses are allowed, that is a structural feature rather than a passing statistic.

5. Taking the origin story from whichever source you read first

The CFA's own article and Singapore's national newspaper give incompatible accounts, and the CFA's article itself says the controversy continues inside CFA The Straits Times. There is no version of this history that everyone accepts. A seller who tells you the drain-cat story as settled fact has either not read the registry's own page or is not telling you about it.

Adoption, import and how to proceed honestly

Adopt, and if you are genuinely set on this breed, understand that the only lawful route into India is personal pet import under the baggage rule. There is no Indian purchase route to verify, which makes the adoption section the practical one on this page.

Start with what adoption offers. A purebred Singapura in an Indian shelter would be extraordinary. A small brown ticked Indian shorthair with the same short coat, the same heat tolerance, the random-bred heterozygosity of 0.65 measured in the 2008 survey and a longer measured life expectancy is not extraordinary at all.

The import route, stated precisely

India's Animal Quarantine and Certification Service publishes the conditions under the baggage rule, Customs Circular No. 15/2013 of 8 April 2013.

1. Dogs and cats are permitted up to two in number under this route.
2. The owner must show proof of two years of continuous stay abroad and proof of transferring residence to India.
3. For accompanied baggage the owner's ticket is required; for unaccompanied baggage, a passport copy with the immigration stamp within one month of arrival.
4. The cat needs an official country-of-origin health certificate naming freedom from rabies, distemper, feline enteritis, feline panleukopenia and leptospirosis.
5. Rabies vaccination must have been given more than one month, but within 12 months, before actual embarkation.
6. The owner's name on the health certificate must match the name on the ticket.

That is a route for someone moving home with a cat they already own, not a route for ordering a kitten. Singapore's own newspaper reports that even there, prospective owners must go overseas and navigate wait lists, health certifications and import procedures that can take months.

If someone does offer you a Singapura in India

• Ask which register issued the pedigree papers and open that register's own breed list before paying.
• Ask to see the queen with the litter. Rule 7(3) of the Pet Shop Rules means a pet shop may not display a mother caring for un-weaned young for sale at all.
• Ask the litter date in writing, since kittens below eight weeks are un-weaned under rule 2(1)(p)(ii) and cannot lawfully be sold.
• Ask about the line's inbreeding coefficient and pyruvate kinase deficiency testing, and treat a confident nothing to worry about as an answer in itself.
• Ask what the litter size was, because 2.3 is the reported breed average and a much larger litter is worth a question.

Compare with similar breeds

Singapura sits in 1 Bonbeno group. Each one compares it directly against the breeds it is genuinely an alternative to, on the same figures.