This isn’t necessarily the case - they have a wild variety of coat colours and markings, ear floppiness is variable. They tend to have slightly wider snoots than their wild cousins.
Cassiopeia - i read somewhere as a kid (no idea where) that from Proxima Centauri, the Sun would appear as an extra zig in the zigzag and was immediately obsessed. It’s also really easy to find as a big ‘W’ in the sky.