this is correct! there are very, very few traits that can be used to definitively say that a cat almost certainly has purebred ancestry, because everything else originated in the randombred population. people liked it, took a few of those cats with those interesting traits and developed them into “breeds”…. and the rest were left behind and continued produce those traits without any relation to the breed at all. and thats only for the traits that were exclusive to a single area in the first place, like the colorpoint patterns. the rest— large size, ear tufts, spotted tabby pattern, long fur, a completely pitch black pelt— have occurred in populations independently across the world, with no relation to other populations that the traits occurred in, let alone any breeds.

there are a few patterns that are exceptions— it is impossible for a cat to have rosettes without some bengal ancestry, because the pattern comes from being hybrids with the asian leopard cat, and the high expression of silver and golden that occur in the shaded patterns wont occur without targeted breeding, sunshine and phoenix and amber are all but exclusive to their particular breeds— but overall, a cat generally has to look like a breed to even have suspicions of being a mix. and by “look like”, i mean that the eye shape, where theyre placed on the head, the quality of they eye and coat color, the quality of the fur itself (whether its texture matches the breeds texture), the cheekbones and ears and muzzle shape, where the tail attaches to the body and how the body is put together… many of these, which often arent apparent to the untrained eye, are needed to make a cat actually resemble a breed, and not just one or two traits that happen to appear in a population. color on its own will almost never indicate breed ancestry, and one or two traits by themselves pretty much the same.

sorry if that was long winded. ops kitten is blue with high white spotting ^{.^}