How Long Do Cats Live? Life Expectancy by Breed and Sex

Most published cat lifespans come from two kinds of study: life tables built from veterinary records, and breed comparisons. This page uses one large example of each: a US study of Banfield Pet Hospital records for about 2.4 million cats, and a UK study of 7,936 cats that died while under the care of VetCompass member clinics.

Life expectancy in the US

Montoya and colleagues (2023) calculated a life expectancy at birth of 11.18 years for cats in the US data.

Cats (US)	All	Female	Male
All cats	11.2	11.7	10.7
Purebred	11.5	12.0	11.1
Mixed breed	11.1	11.6	10.7

Years, rounded to one decimal. Almost all cats in the data were spayed or neutered (about 96%).

The study doesn’t report individual breeds and didn’t record whether cats lived indoors.

Life expectancy by breed (UK)

Teng and colleagues (2024) built life tables from UK veterinary records of cats that died in 2019–2021. Life expectancy at birth was 11.74 years overall: 12.51 for females and 11.18 for males.

Breed (UK)	Life expectancy (years)	95% CI	Deaths in data
Burmese	14.42	12.91–15.93	45
Birman	14.39	12.87–15.91	38
Crossbred	11.89	11.75–12.03	7,117
Siamese	11.69	10.56–12.82	88
Persian	10.93	9.63–12.23	80
Ragdoll	10.31	8.86–11.76	69
Norwegian Forest Cat	9.95	7.55–12.35	15
Maine Coon	9.71	8.42–11.00	69
Russian (Russian Blue and Russian)	9.65	7.20–12.10	19
British (British Blue and British Longhair)	9.58	8.73–10.43	194
Bengal	8.51	7.12–9.90	73
Sphynx	6.68	4.53–8.83	18

Breeds with at least 15 deaths in the study. Wide 95% confidence intervals mean the true figure could be well above or below the one shown.

In the UK data purebred cats as a group lived shorter lives than crossbreds, while in the US data they lived slightly longer. The UK authors point out this difference themselves: breed mix and outdoor access differ between countries.

Worked examples

Example 1: a female mixed-breed cat in the US. US life expectancy for mixed-breed females: 11.6 years.

Example 2: a male purebred cat of a breed not in the UK table. US life expectancy for purebred males: 11.1 years.

Example 3: a Maine Coon. UK life expectancy: 9.71 years (95% CI 8.42–11.00; 69 deaths). The interval is wide because only 69 Maine Coons were in the data.

What the numbers can’t tell you

• They are averages for groups. Life expectancy at birth is pulled down by the cats that die young. A healthy adult cat can expect to live past the figure shown, and many cats reach their late teens.
• Most lives end with euthanasia. In the UK study 83.7% of deaths were euthanasia, so the figures reflect decisions made about sick, elderly cats as well as their natural lifespan.
• Cats that never see a vet are missing. Both studies use clinic records, so kittens that died before their first visit, and cats that are never taken to a vet, aren’t counted.
• The studies use different methods and countries. Compare figures within one table rather than across the two.

To see how your cat’s age compares with a person’s, and which life stage it’s in, try the cat age calculator.