Basepaws Cat DNA Test Kit 2 Pack- Comprehensive Breed, Health and Dental Analysis Across 114 Traits for Accurate and Easy-to-Use Genetic Insights

On February 10 we had to let one of our cats peacefully move on due to a saddle thrombus. She had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which apparently is almost impossible to detect until the saddle thrombus forms. And once there's a saddle thrombus, there's almost no chance of survival. Hypertropic cardiomyopathy is caused by a genetic defect that Basepaws checks for. Completely broken hearted, my husband and I never wanted to go through the experience of losing a cat due to an undetected disease again. This is where Basepaws comes in. We ordered 2 Basepaw kits and 2 Wisdom Panel kits. We have received the results of one of the Wisdom Panel kits (still waiting on the second), and we received the results of both Basepaw kits today. I am confident the results are reliable for a few reasons. The first is that the results of the Basepaws test was the same as the results from the one Wisdom Panel test we've received. The second reason why I think Basepaws is reliable is because my cats went to their regular vet for their annual exam and we discovered one of them really needs a teeth cleaning, and then other one has good teeth. Their Basepaws results reflected this as well. I didn't care so much about the ancestry part. While both of my cats are siamese cats, the only indication of that was their results said their coat is likely a siamese pattern. The rest of the ancestry was very non-specific. I'm not sure this is the right product if you're looking to learn about your cat's breed. I 100% recommend if you want to know if your kitty is at risk for health problems. I appreciate Basepaws for giving me some peace of mind.

I ordered a 2 pack of tests since I have 2 cats. I sent both tests in at the same time. According to USPS, both were delivered Monday morning. One of the cat's tests showed received on Wednesday the same week. When the second test didn't show received by Saturday, I sent an email. I received a quick response with in 24 hours, which i didn't expect due to it being the weekend, and was advised to give it another week. The following Saturday it still wasn't showing received so I sent a follow up email. This time there wasn't a response until later in Monday, conveniently after the test suddenly showed received. The next couple steps moved at a similar pace for both tests, just a week apart, until the final step, getting results. For the first test, I got an email the cats DNA was being sequences and then the next day, the results were available. For the second cat, I received the email about the DNA being sequenced 2 weeks ago and am still waiting for the results. I haven't emailed for follow up because it's still in the windrow for when they said to expect results but it's been extremely frustrating to have 2 such vastly different experiences. The first results were interesting (the cat only had markers for bad breath but everything else was normal), but I'm not sure if recommend this based on not being able to provide consistent service.

EDIT: I had originally given this a 1-star review due to the company ignoring my multiple pleas for help getting into my account. Their PW reset functionality on their site was not working and they did not return multiple emails and phone calls over the course of a week. However, they have since reached out to me and are working to resolve their issues. I am still dinging 1 star off an otherwise perfect review due to their initial lack of response. The product itself was easy to use. One cat didn't mind, another cat protested a little bit. The communication of receipt, processing, and results were timely. The DNA reports themselves were rather interesting. Our smallest cat (9 years old, runt of his litter) we thought for years to be close to a Norwegian Forest Cat but didn't rule out some Maine Coon or Siberian. Well his DNA report said his mix is closest to that of a Siberian. Interestingly NFC was a lot farther down the list. Health markers, where available, are interesting as well. It's all grain-of-salt stuff that is interesting but of course doesn't rule out any actual health problems that may occur in the future. All in all this was a bit of an impulse / curiosity purchase and I'm not disappointed that I grabbed it. We've had our DNA results for a while, it's nice to have our furry kids done too.

I normally never write reviews, especially any negative reviews, and have been sitting on this for a couple of months to calm down but I decided to share my experience so that no one else wastes so much money. I have two cats from the same litter who look absolutely identical - even I struggle to tell them apart. I bought two kits because I was interested to test their health background so that I am aware of they have any high-risk genes, because I love them to bits and always worry something might happen to them. The tests showed a completely different result for each cat in terms of their breed mix, not just in terms of % of different breed types but also the breeds themselves - one cat is allegedly a Savannah x Arabian Mau x Thai Siamese x Polycat and the other one is Siberian x Peterbald x Ragdoll x Polycat. Such nonsense! So I emailed them, sending them photos of my cats together where they look like identical twins (even their tiny markings like their tiny white spots behind their ears are identical), thinking they might have mixed up the results with some other cat for one of them (although I sent both tests on the same day in June, one result arrived mid July and another one end of August). They claimed that both tests are accurate and that they “don’t yet have enough data on different breeds” to give 100% accurate results, and couldn’t explain the differences in my cat’s results at all. And this was an email from the owner herself, Anna. She didn’t even apologize, which is really bad. So, I wasted nearly $200 and got absolutely nothing. I had to conclude that this is a scam. They just come up with some wild lies, and because people don’t know, they believe them. I even checked with our vet if the results could be different, and he confirmed that even if they had different fathers and the same mother (which is not the case) their results should overlap by at least 45%, which is not the case.

I use embark for my dogs which I love. I do have a wisdom test for one of my dogs so when I wanted to test my cats I already knew that wisdom was not what I wanted to use. This looks to be closer to what embark offers, reviews and ratings across online sources are all positive. My cats are all rescues. I recently found a 6 week old kitten that was from a ferel colony so it was important for me to see his genetics and possible health concerns. I took their samples today and I gotta say the "swabs" are awful! Way, way to big for a feline mouth. It kept falling out because it wouldn't fit inside the mouth pouch. So I struggled to get the samples while seemingly gaging my guys. The swabs should be the size of qtips but they are monsters! Two or three times that. Excellent for canine mouths but traumatic for felines. I'm stumped at how I'm going to get samples from my younger, smaller cats. Once the results are back I guess I'll see if it was worth it.