Best in show: knit your own cat

Here's the cover, featuring a sassy siamese batting around a ball of wool
Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

The living room leopard, the bengal is the result of a ‘mowgli complex’, the desire to have a small scale version of a wild cat in your own home – but you have to pay for it. One of the most expensive cats in the world, a bengal was bought for £25,320 in 1998. Reportedly, these show-stopping cats are sometimes seen out and about on leads or on the shoulders of their famous owners, who include Kevin Bacon, Lord Archer and Paris Hilton Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

Big, beautiful and indolent, the ragdoll is famed for its placid temperament and tendency to go limp when picked up. A ragdoll cat lives in the Algonquin Hotel in New York: there have been resident cats in the Algonquin since the 1930s and all the males are called Hamlet and all the females Matilda. The television programme Blue Peter was at the centre of a notorious voting scandal over the naming of their ragdoll. The viewers’ chosen name of Cookie was ignored in favour of Socks. To make amends they later got themselves another cat and called it Cookie Photograph: Holly Jollliffe

The superstars’ choice, Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable, and James Dean all owned siamese, as did Frank Zappa, Harold Wilson and Snoop Dogg. Chatty and friendly, siamese cats are highly intelligent and trainable. Sometimes they have crossed eyes and a kink in their tails, and though these traits have mostly been bred out, ours do have crossed eyes Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

The Turkish van: the swimming cat, they are the only known cat who gets into the bath with its owner and likes to help with the washing up. Highly intelligent and commanding, they are also the David Bowie of the cat world – odd-eyed. Van, where they come from in Turkey, is a few miles from Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark was said to have ended up Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

Pure ginger cats are generally male. Winston Churchill was so devoted to his cat, Jock, that his will stipulated that there should always be a ginger cat in residence at Chartwell. Orlando was the ponymous hero of Katherine Hale’s beautifully illustrated children’s books, while Audrey Hepburn’s cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was called Orangey. Jones, a ginger cat, has a small but vital role in the Alien films Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

One of the numerous erroneous beliefs regarding tabbies is that the word ‘tabby’ means female; in fact the name probably derives from the markings on watered silk originally made at Attabiy, in Baghdad. Tabbies are over-achievers, holders of numerous world records including: heaviest cat, Himmy weighing in at 21kg. Longest lived, Ma at 34 years. Most kittens, Dusty had 420. Most toes, Larry had 28 Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

The freerunner of the feline world, Devon rex cats are agile, prone to showing off and keen on heights; they are able to shin up walls and curtains effortlessly. The Devon rex is a highly unusual looking creature, sometimes described as a ‘monkey in a cat suit’ and also known as the pixie or alien cat. They also wag their tails when happy, which has led to them being called poodle cats Photograph: Holly Jolliffe

A slightly Hitchkockian group shot. We think they want feeding Photograph: Holly Jolliffe