Of the 56 cat breeds rated for vocalisation here, 24 sit at the quietest end and 16 at the loudest. What is striking is the shape between them: 15 breeds in the middle, and exactly one anywhere near the top without reaching it. The source is not describing a gradient. It is describing two kinds of cat.
Who is in the quiet camp
The large placid breeds, mostly. The Ragdoll, Maine coon, British Shorthair, Norwegian Forest Cat and Siberian are all at the bottom of the scale, and so are the Russian Blue, Chartreux and Nebelung.
Quiet does not mean silent, and it does not mean undemanding. A cat that rarely vocalises still asks for things; it asks by standing somewhere inconvenient instead of by telling you.
The gap in the middle is the interesting part
A rating scale with almost nothing in its upper-middle is a scale where the rater made a categorical judgement rather than a fine one. That is a limit worth knowing before you use the number: it can tell you which camp a breed is in, and it cannot rank breeds within a camp.
If noise is the deciding factor
It is one of the few breed traits recorded here that genuinely separates the catalogue, which makes it more useful than most. Compare it with affection, where 51 of the 56 carry the identical top rating and the column tells you nothing at all. The breeds page lets you filter on this one because it actually divides the field.
What is the quietest cat breed?
Twenty-four breeds share the lowest vocalisation rating here rather than one leading it — among them the Ragdoll, Maine coon, British Shorthair, Russian Blue and Siberian.
Are quiet cats less affectionate?
Nothing in this data suggests it. The affection column rates 51 of the 56 rated breeds identically, so it cannot support a comparison in either direction.
Can a breed rating predict my cat?
No. It describes what a reference work recorded about the breed. Individual cats vary widely, and a quiet breed can produce a talkative animal.