What 200K Cat Listings Reveal About Breeds, Prices, and Market Trends

Introduction

After noticing many friends keeping cats, the author explored a dedicated cat‑trading website (http://www.maomijiaoyi.com/) and scraped 200,000 transaction records together with detailed breed information to study the cat market.

Data Acquisition

The scraper first retrieved the list of cat breeds, which displayed only breed names and reference prices. By visiting each breed’s detail page, additional fields such as Chinese scientific name, basic info, temperament, habits, pros/cons, and feeding methods were collected.

Transaction data were then harvested from the buy‑sell pages, capturing price, title, number of listings, cat age, vaccination status, shipping cost, purity, and video availability. A progress bar was added to the crawler, and multi‑process techniques limited the final dataset to 200,000 entries.

Exploratory Analysis

The following dimensions were examined:

Breed word cloud

Origin countries (world map)

Size proportion (donut chart)

Appearance description word cloud

Transaction distribution map

Breed proportion tree diagram

Average price ranking (bar chart)

Views vs. price (scatter plot)

Age distribution (histogram)

Price vs. age (box plot)

Price vs. vaccination count (box plot)

Price vs. shipping cost (box plot)

Price vs. purity (box plot)

Price vs. video availability (box plot)

Key Findings

Breed analysis showed many varieties beyond common ones like Ragdoll and orange cats. Most breeds originated from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, ancient Egypt, Thailand, and Afghanistan.

Size distribution revealed only one large breed (Ragdoll); the rest were medium or small.

Color descriptors most frequently used were blue, black, and red; temperament was often described as friendly, and side or rear views were preferred.

Transaction heatmap highlighted Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangdong as the top provinces for cat sales.

Breed popularity in transactions ranked orange cats first, followed by coffee cats, Ragdoll, and British Shorthair.

Average price analysis showed Maine Coon as the most expensive, with Ragdoll close behind.

Age distribution concentrated between 1–9 months, indicating most cats sold were under one year old.

Statistical tests indicated that price correlated with age, vaccination count, shipping cost, purity, and video availability, while view count showed no clear relationship.

Conclusion

Age, vaccination frequency, shipping fees, breed purity, and video availability are the primary factors influencing cat prices in the online market.