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All the cats I have ever had were rescued.
Though most were not rescued from shelters they were brought in from the outside.
My first cat my mom rescued before I was born.
That cat was saved after being thrown out the window of a moving car. The nerve of some people. She is also what the "p" in my username stands for and the "6". She died a week before the last week of fourth grade at the age of 18. I miss her and sometimes I feel she is still around.

All of my kitties have been rescue kitties as well. I've never gotten one from a pound or anything like that. They have been strays. In the case of my two boys right now, their mother had kittens in my yard, and I took all of them in and tried to find homes for them. My sister ended up with one of that litter too. biggrin

Funny story about that. Around Christmas, I started feeding this russian blue cat that was a stray in the neighborhood here. She was one of the sweetest wild kitties I had ever met. It made me think she had probably had an owner and been abandoned. In any case, I felt so bad because I couldn't take her in my apartment because there is a limit to how many cats an apartment can hold. I fed her and sat outside on my patio with her quite often.

One of my friends then came by for New Years. She absolutely fell in love with my outside cat. She adopted her right on the spot when I told her I was relatively certain the cat had no owner since I had seen her running around for months, and I knew where she spent her nights. She was so happy to finally have somewhere to live. blaugh

Most of our accquired cats have been strays who wandered up, or were given to us by people with too many cats themselves. Our two big fat babies were rescues, dumped at my dad's office.

The vast majority of cats that I've owned were born at my house though. We used to be bad people who didn't spay/neuter kitties and just had loads of kittens. At one point we had a cat colony of about 30 living in the barn. sweatdrop The mice feared for their lives though XD.

sqooky: I saw a Maine Coon at the Humane Society in Winnipeg once, and I know someone who got a colour point Siamese from the Thunder Bay Humane Society, but other than that I haven't seen/heard of other purebreds at the shelters I go to.

I know a lot of cats with oriental features and builds get listed as "Siamese" for their breed, but they're usually solid black and lack the colour pointing. So I'm pretty sure their breed listing is based solely on body type and not any actual pedigree.

I know there are some breed-specific rescues out there - I was looking at a website for a Rex (I think it was Cornish and Devon) rescue a while back.

Part of me find it surprising that people would abandon something as expensive as a purebred cat, if only because of their financial investment. But then, considering some of the things people do to cats, nothing should shock me. sad

Honestly, none of my cats are purebred or rescue cats. Are all domestic short-hairs.

My first one I got from a pet shop, which I would never get one from there again after hearing some things about it.

The second one we were going to get from the shelter around here until we found out that a lot of animals from that shelter come home with sickness and disease. We sat down and talked it out, finally coming to the decision that we didn't want to risk bringing home a sickness that could be passed on to the our first cat. We went to a small pet shop instead to get the second one.

The third one we got from a friend of my fathers. He had found a pregnant cat on their deck in the middle of winter and took her in. She has four kittens and they gave everyone away.

The one we're babysitting/might be owning, I have no idea where it's from.

i'd love to have a purebred maine coon or himalayan, but they are quite pricey. perhaps i will get one someday.

both my cats came from a no-cage, no-kill shelter. the adoption fees at that shelter were higher compared to regular types of shelters and it was an hour away from where i lived, but i figured that the more i support that shelter, the more cats it can take in and care for. that shelter has several medium-haired cats, which i think are very beautiful. both my cats are medium-hairs, and i wouldn't trade them for any pedigreed cat. they shed an awful lot, though, and i have to vacuum and do my laundry regularly because of it.

i have a cat encyclopedia, and mitts looks just like one of the norwegian forest cats shown there. he also matches the norwegian forest cat's personality.

grumbles is simply a pretty little girl. everybody fawns over her--the vet, the people at the pet hotel, etc.

My current two kittens are European Short Hair (ie. stray kitties that were born in Europe instead of North America where they'd be Domestic Short Hairs). We adopted them as kittens from the animal association on my husband's military base here in Italy.

Italy has a huge stray cat problem (but not much of a mouse/rat problem, even in the big cities). We had to sign agreements to neuter our boys, and the woman that runs the associated held on to our vaccination booklets until they were neutered (which was last week.. I'm enjoying the less stinky boy kitties already). The shelters here will hold some cats but they're not as nice as the ones in the US, as well as aggressively capture, spay/neuter, and release (if you're in Italy and you see a cat with the tip of it's left ear docked, it's been spayed/neutered). There are also very strict laws regarding stray cats.. if you own land you are required to feed any strays, and intentionally harming a stray cat has serious repercussions.

My parents and my sister have adopted five cats from area shelters. Four are your standard mixed breeds, and one is a purebred red-point Birman. She was adopted when we were looking for a 2-3 year old cat.. the shelter thought she was a 2 year old Persian mix but once we got her home we decided that between the lack of teeth and the rate at which she inhaled food that she had to be an older kitten (her name is Phoebe but my mom and I would call her FeedMe and Baby Hoover when my sister wasn't around rofl ) and I'd recognized the big eyes as being common to a certain breed. We adopted her spayed and declawed, and she holds her own against three of my parents four wild things (the fourth one is a shy calico that taught Phoebe how to hunt bugs and they'll do gentle tackles and chases together).

As far as purebreds at shelters - with cats it's semi-common, but someone I used to work with owns four purebred dogs, all of which were adopted from local shelters, so purebred dogs seem to be more common (which makes sense, as cat breeders are much more willing to take back a kitten that's not working well for a family than a dog breeder is).