--- title: "Ragdoll cats all descend from Josephine, a white longhair Ann Baker bred in Riverside, California, in 1963" url: https://badiyaa.com/ragdoll-cats-ann-baker-josephine-riverside/ published: 2026-11-11T14:30:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-11T14:30:00+00:00 section: Pets & Animals publisher: Badiyaa --- # Ragdoll cats all descend from Josephine, a white longhair Ann Baker bred in Riverside, California, in 1963 Ragdoll cats descend from Josephine, a non-pedigreed white longhair in Riverside, California, whose 1960s kittens Ann Baker turned into a breed. Every Ragdoll cat alive today, from show-hall champions to household lap cats, descends from a single ordinary white longhair named Josephine. She lived in Riverside, California, she belonged to no breed at all, and breeder Ann Baker built a new one from her kittens in the 1960s. What Baker did next was just as unusual: she trademarked the name and tried to keep the whole breed under her own control. ## From “alley cats” to a breed Josephine was a non-pedigreed domestic longhair, and the toms who sired her first litters were not purebreds either. Baker herself described the founding stock as “alley cats,” according to the [reference history of the Ragdoll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragdoll). Starting in 1963, Josephine’s later kittens showed the traits Baker wanted: a calm, placid temperament, an affectionate streak and a habit of going limp when lifted, the floppiness that gave the breed its name. Two of those early sons anchored the line. Blackie was solid black; Daddy Warbucks was a seal point with white feet. Daddy Warbucks fathered Fugianna, the founding bicolor female, and Blackie fathered Buckwheat, a dark, Burmese-like female. Both daughters were Josephine’s. Every registered Ragdoll traces to Baker’s pairings of Daddy Warbucks with Fugianna and with Buckwheat. ## A breed with a trademark Most new breeds go to the big cat registries for recognition. Baker went the other way. She trademarked “Ragdoll,” set up her own registry, the International Ragdoll Cat Association, around 1971, and laid down strict rules for anyone who wanted to breed or sell cats under the name. Her cats could not be registered with other associations. That control did not last. Here is how the split played out: - **1963:** Josephine’s litters in Riverside give Baker her foundation cats. - **Around 1971:** Baker trademarks the name and founds the International Ragdoll Cat Association. - **1975:** Denny and Laura Dayton, a husband-and-wife team, break away with a breeding pair of Baker’s cats to win mainstream recognition. - **Later years:** the Daytons’ group develops the standard now accepted by the Cat Fanciers’ Association and the European federation FIFe; a pair exported to Britain, followed by eight more cats, founds the UK line recognized by the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy. - **1997:** Baker dies. Her association still exists but is small. So the cats most owners know today come largely from the breakaway branch, while the name that started it all was born as a piece of intellectual property. ## What a Ragdoll looks like now The breed is one of the largest among domestic cats. Adult females weigh roughly 8 to 15 pounds (3.6 to 6.8 kg), while males are heavier at 12 to 20 pounds, about 5.4 to 9 kg, and sometimes beyond, and a Ragdoll can take up to four years to reach full size. Kittens are born white and show good color at 8 to 10 weeks, but the full coat and color take three to four years. The coat comes in seal, chocolate, red and their dilutes, blue, lilac and cream, laid out as colorpoint, mitted or bicolor, with lynx and tortie variations. Owners often call them puppy cats for the way they trail people from room to room, and some learn to fetch. One persistent myth deserves retiring: the limp, docile temperament led some people to believe Ragdolls do not feel pain, which is not true. Some British breeders have even tried to breed away from extreme limpness. For more on cat behavior and personality, read Badiyaa’s stories on [what a cat’s raised tail means](https://badiyaa.com/cat-raised-tail-meaning-body-language/), [adopted cats that fluffed up into puffballs](https://badiyaa.com/adopted-cats-fluff-up-reddit-puffball/) and [shelter cats Flamme and Méné](https://badiyaa.com/flamme-mene-shelter-cats-couple/). The breed is particularly popular in the United States and the United Kingdom, more than six decades after Josephine’s first litters in Riverside. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Ragdoll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragdoll) *Image: Cássia Afini, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*