The Scottish Fold, as also the longhair variant the Highland Fold, is medium in size and comes in longhair and shorthair. The main characteristics are the folded ears, which are folded forward and downward and framing the head like a cap.
The head is well rounded with prominent and well rounded cheeks, which give the males a jowly appearance. The muzzle has well rounded whisker pads. The nose is short and broad with a gentle curve (neither with a stop nor with a break), thus giving a moderate profile. The head is carried on a strong and short neck.
The ears, the characteristics of the breed, are folded forward and downward, lying closer to the head and framing the head like a cap. The ears are medium in size. Note, that there are several degrees of folding, loose folding (single fold), a more tighter folding (double fold) up to close to the head lying ears (triple fold). Nevertheless, the folding is flexible, and the edges do not have any rigid cartilage, the ears can be straightened like in any other cat.
The eyes are large and round, emphasizing that sweet look of the breed.

The body is medium, not too cobby and not too short, but firm and well padded, with firm shoulders and hips. The body is carried on firm, medium-long legs, which must be flexible in any aspect and must not be short and coarse or bent.
The tail is medium-long and shall not be too short (also not as short as in British Shorthair, which are used in the breeding program). It must be flexible through its entire length and must not be stiff or too thick, it tapers slightly to a rounded tip.

The coat may be longhaired or shorthaired.
The Shorthair Scottish Fold has a medium-short coat (please notice the word "medium"), which is dense and plushy, standing away from the body and not close lying.
The Longhair Scottish Fold - also referred as Highland Fold - has a medium-long to long coat, which is dense but not cottony or woolly. The hind legs show britches, and a ruff is desirable, the coat might be shorter at the face. The tail is fully coated like a plume. Ear tufts and toe tufts shall be clearly visible.

History

Susie, the first Scottish Fold, a white shorthaired female.

A couple, named William and Mary Ross, in 1963 got a white female kitten from Susie, named Snooks, born July 1963, which became the foundation cat of this new breed.

Family Mary & William Ross, early 1970th

In the first litter of Snooks, sired by an unnamed red tabby male, a white male, called Snowball, with folded ears was born August 17th, 1964. Snowball was bred to the white British Shorthair, Lady May, which produced a litter of five fold-eared kittens, born May 15th 1966.

Picturing Denisla Panda and Denisla Snowdrift (see below).	Denisla Snowdrift

Snooks' second litter was with the blue British Shorthair female, Ryelands Regal Gent, born June 25th, 1969, amongst them were the fold-eared kittens Denisla Hector, blue-white male, and Denisla Hester of Mini, blue tabby-white female.
The Rosses' cattery name, registered with GCCF in 1966, Denisla was chosen after the two rivers Den and Isla near their home. They called this new breed Lops after the lop-eared rabbits. But 1966 the breed was renamed to Scottish Fold. In 1967 the Rosses also contacted Pat Turner (see the chapter 'Genetics' below).
Amongst the early litters, already longhaired Scottish Folds were born, because many British Shorthairs used in the breeding program carried longhair.

In the picture on the left is Denisla Morag, but notice the longhaired Fold in the middle.

In 1971 GCCF banned the Scottish Fold from registration, because they erroneously thought that the Scottish Fold might be more capable for ear diseases and ear mites. In reality Scottish Folds are not more prone to ear diseases than any other cat breed.
In 1970, when the Scottish Fold began to face problems in England, which might have been enforced by British Shorthair breeders thinking that their breed might be spoiled when used in the Fold breeding program, three Scottish Folds, Denisla Joey, Denisla Judy and Denisla Hester of Mini were sent to Neil Todd, Ph.D. at the Carnivore Genetics Research Center (CGRC) in Newtonville in Massachusetts for further genetic research. But he soon lost the interest, and one of the cats, Denisla Hester of Mini was given in 1971 to Sally Wolfe Peters, a Manx breeder in southeastern Pennsylvania, who was an enthusiastic friend of the Scottish Fold after she read an article about the breed in the 1971 Cat Fanciers' Association Yearbook. Peters bred Denisla Hester to the black Exotic SH male, CH Leprechaun's Hurricane of Wyola. This mating produced Wyola Jed Callant, a blue Scottish Fold shorthaired male born 1972 and marked the begin for the Scottish Fold in the US.

Denisla Hester of Mini, blue tabby-white shorthaired female

The Scottish Fold was accepted for registration 1973 by ACA and ACFA, and in 1974 by CFA. In 1978 the Scottish Fold Shorthair was recognized for championship by CFA.
In 1986 the Scottish Fold Longhair was accepted by TICA for championship. Some years later, in 1993 the Longhair Fold was accepted by CFA for championship.

Genetics and breeding

The gene, causing the ears to fold forward, is a dominant gene, which means that the mating between a Scottish Fold and a straight-eared cat will produce kittens with folded ears.
The very first Scottish Fold was the result of a spontaneous mutation.
Today's Scottish Fold are heterozygous, because mating Scottish Fold x Scottish Fold is not done by responsible and serious breeders, one parent is either a British Shorthair or a Scottish Fold Straight, and still also American Shorthairs are used in the breeding program.
By the way, studying the very first pedigrees, one can see that from the very beginning already British Shorthairs and domestic cats were used in the breeding program.
All kittens are born with straight ears, and the development of the folded ears takes between 3-4 weeks, where a breeders knows, if he got kittens with folded ears or straight ears. The type of folding still might range from 1st degree to 3rd degree and it takes up to 5-7 months to see, which type of folding the cat may have.

It was Pat Turner, English geneticist, and Peter Dyte, also an English geneticist, who found out that the folded ears are inherited by a dominant gene, and who started in 1967 with Snowdrift to breed 76 kittens within the next three years, from which 42 kittens had folded ears and 34 had straight ears.

The breed is still under dispute, because of the study from Oliphant F. Jackson, Ph. D, M.R.C.V.S. at Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London, 1974: 'A heritable osteodystrophy of the extremities of the cat',  Proceedings of the Netherlands Small Animal Veterinary Association: 21., and the report of Richard Malik from the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, University of Sydney, New South Wales, February 1999: 'Osteochondrodysplasia in Scottish Fold cats'.
Due to those studies it was assumed,  that the folded ears are connected with bone problems in the legs and the tail (stiffness, lameness, etc.).

The problem with those studies is that this assumption could not be proved up to now, and that the sample of studied cats, having those problems, was very small, R. Malik studied only 9 cats.

It is also questionable and disputable that some cat organizations, only based on those two reports, do not register the Scottish Fold (like GCCF since 1974) or have banned the breed from their shows (like FIFe in May 2003).

Also the breeding program, which I had developed together with the Estonian FIFe-member, was removed from the web site. That shows, how some organizations care for special breeds.

See the section "Literature", provided in the left box.

Temperament

The character of the Scottish Fold is very sweet and friendly with an extremely sweet expression in their face (what Dr. Konrad Lorenz called the baby scheme). The cat has a tiny voice and is not very vocal. The breed adapts very easily to almost any home, is gently,  undemanding and makes very pleasant companion. When Scottish Folds talk, they mostly have a certain reason, greeting you, complaining about something or wanting food.

Grooming