Cat Fact Files

This long-haired Angora-type cat originated from the Lake Van region of Turkey. It is a lively, white-coated cat with auburn-marked ears or face. The Turkish Van has a long history of enjoying water, being bathed and swimming-almost like the feline equivalent of the otter. Althought known to the local Turkish people for hundread of years, [...]

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This very recent breed was developed from a number of others. These are said to include a spotted Manx, silver-spotted tabby long-hair, seal-point Siamese, British and American Short-hairs, feral cats from Cairo, and Asian non-pedigrees. The new breed arrived in the USA to a fanfare. The Holy Grail of producing the strikingly spot-patterned, wild-looking cats [...]

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This coal-coloured breed originated in a 1950s mating between a sable Burmese and a black American short-haired cat. This imaginative cross produced an Oriental-looking, miniature panther-like cat. It has deep copper-coloured eyes which sometimes fade or turn slightly green as the cat gets older. The Bombay is often put into the asian group and, althought [...]

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This breed was developed by an American geneticist who cross-mated a male domestic cat with a female Asian leopared cat. The resulting breed, one of the most striking spotted-patterned of all cats with a destinctively thick coat, is said to have the look of a wild cat with the temperament of a domesticated one. Bengals [...]

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It has been debated over whether this ancient breed, which can be traced back over more than a thousand years, is the forerunner of all long-haired cat breeds, including Persians and Angoras. This is a rough-and-readybreed, genetically traceable to modern-day tabby cats that live around St Petersburg, and has an extremely thick coat to help [...]

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This wolly-looking, short-haired cat first appeared in the 1950s when a British farm cat produced one curly-haired male kitten in her litter. It was consequently bred back with her. Since then, this breed has been crossed with Burmese and British Shorthair. Its short coat is incredibly soft to the touch, resembling velvet, and is said [...]

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The product of a different gene mutation, this curiy-coated cat appeared about ten years after its Cornish cousin. It is said to have resuited from a cross between a curled-coated feral male and a stray British straight-haired female. The gene for a curly coat is recessive and inbreeding became necessary in order to continue the [...]

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This is one of the oldest of all domesticated cat breeds. It was first established in 1868 by soldiers returning from war in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and was accepted as a breed in 1882. It is similar in 1882. It is similar in appearance to cats illustrated in tombs and mummified individuals that can be [...]

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Records suggest that this very young breed, recognized in 1987, resulted from a curly-coated female stray mated with a black persian. There are long and short-haired types,with males more readily abtained because females are usally restricted to breeders who wish to retain them for their programmes. This cat’s distinctive patches of curls, rather than a [...]

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This apparently hairless cat, often found without whiskers, is the product of a natural mutation first recorded in 1966. However, the Sphynx cat probably has a gene history going back centuries, with obscure references made to it around the world. Some cat fancy associations choose to take a negative view of this sude-like downy-haired breed, [...]

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