To any devoted Taylor Swift fan, the musician’s cats are almost as well known as she is, frequently appearing in her TikTok postings and with hundreds of millions of posts devoted to them across social media.

But as Swift’s planet-conquering Eras tour prepares to land in the UK next month, animal welfare experts have urged her fans not to copy Swift’s cats, saying the same characteristics that make the breed cute also condemn them to a life of constant pain.

Swift has three cats, two of which, Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey, are Scottish folds, a breed distinguished by a genetic mutation that makes their ears fold flat and gives them an “owl-like” appearance. But the same gene that causes floppy cartilage in their ears also causes osteochondrodysplasia, which leads to abnormal bone growth, arthritis and severe pain.

Ironically, in Scotland, where the breed originated and where Swift plays her first UK date in Edinburgh on 7 June, the breeding of Scottish folds is in effect banned, while other countries, including the Netherlands, Australia and Norway, have also placed restrictions on them on animal welfare grounds.

That has not stopped their numbers surging in recent years, according to Cats Protection, a UK cat welfare charity. Its most recent large-scale survey of cat owners suggests 1% of the UK’s 10.6 million cats may now be Scottish Folds, or about 100,000 in total, and that 3% of cats acquired last year were from the breed.