Tinker Toy

Tinker Toy holds the Guinness World Record as the smallest domestic cat ever recorded. A male blue-point Himalayan-Persian, he measured a mere 7 cm (2.75 in) tall and 19 cm (7.5 in) long when fully grown, and weighed only about 1 lb 8 oz (roughly 680 g) — a fraction of the size expected of his breed. Born on Christmas Day 1990 in Taylorville, Illinois, as the runt of a litter of six, Tinker Toy belonged to Katrina and Scott Forbes, who quickly realised their kitten was extraordinarily tiny even after he stopped growing. His minuscule stature was the result of a combination of genetic factors rather than any single condition, and despite his size he lived as a normal, affectionate house cat until his death in November 1997. Decades on, Tinker Toy's record still stands — no smaller cat has since been verified — making this little Illinois Himalayan a permanent fixture of feline record books and a favourite piece of cat trivia around the world.