Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [67]
Longhairs appeared in Europe in the late 1500s. Cardinal Richelieu, in the early 1600s, had an elegant black one named Lucifer among his feline retinue at court. The usual stories about Eastern royalty came with them, and if there were originally two distinct types they were freely mixed after they came west.
Concerned about the purity of what they felt was the true Angora type, officials at the zoo in Ankhara recently undertook a breeding program with several pairs in what they felt was the authentic color, pure white, with blue or amber eyes. It was from these that an American army colonel brought back two pairs in the early 1960s, and breeders are working from their descendants.
This authenticated Angora is longer and slenderer than the Persian, and its head is quite different, wedge-shaped, with a long foxy nose, slanted eyes, and big pointed ears. It carries its tail up over its back.
The Persian, on the other hand, is square and solid, deep-chested and short-legged, with short ears and nose on a big square head. It has big round eyes and an expression defined by some as “sweet” and by others as “mournful” or “imperious.” The extremest type, the peke-faced, with a nose so short it’s said to have trouble breathing, must have its admirers, though I can’t think why.
The assertive, inquisitive, imaginative breeds enjoy a reputation for brains. It’s harder to tell with the sedate Persian, but the ease with which Barney understood his new uncaged life at the age of ten speaks well for him. Curiosity may be a sign of intelligence, but contentment shouldn’t be considered stupidity.
Dignified and affectionate, well-behaved and a bit lazy, the Persian has only two drawbacks: it seldom provides its owner with funny stories to tell at dinner parties, and it sheds. Some shed more than others. Friends of mine have a dark tortoiseshell with coarse, full-bodied fur that stays with her; she rarely has mats of hair-balls, and doesn’t create housekeeping and dry-cleaning problems. Barney’s weightless fluff seems to be everywhere but on Barney in every month of the year. Where it does stay on him, it makes mats; he needs brushing and vacuuming. He much enjoys being vacuumed, and rushes over when I turn the thing on; it’s one of his few pleasures now. Confined to quarters here, he sleeps a lot.
A Persian looks dramatic, but there’s nothing dramatic about his temperament, and he wouldn’t be first choice for people looking for an exciting relationship and major personage in their lives. He’s a fine choice, though, for those of us busy and away a lot. He’ll wait, and be glad to see us when we do get home, unlike Siamese, who, when we come back, rage and sulk until it’s time for us to leave again, and Abyssinians, who will have dismantled our closets and pulled all the papers out of our drawers and probably made a lot of long-distance calls on our bill.
What’s called a Himalayan in these parts and a Colorpoint Longhair in England and a Khmer in France is just what it looks like, a blend of Siamese and Persian. Why, you may ask, when we already have the ancient and sturdy originals, each with its own distinct character, muddle around with a mix of the two and satisfy the aficionados of neither?
A. C. Jude, in an older book, Cat Genetics, called them merely “interesting,” speaking as a geneticist, and doubted they would ever become popular. He was wrong.
They have been said to be delicate, perhaps due to inbreeding; one authority mentions a sixty percent mortality rate. Their fanciers say they have the sweet dispositions of Persians, though in this case we may have sweetness confused with imbecility. The only thing Siamese about them is the coloring. The few I’ve known seem shy and rather tentative, as if astonished by themselves, and why not? On the map we can see the unbridgeable miles between their two homelands; this isn’t a blend they could have thought up for themselves, and they seem uncomfortable with it.
A breeder friend of mine had trouble