Were it a movie star, it’d be Audrey Hepburn, were it a car, it’d be a Ferrari. Then it’s a cat. The perfect cat for all those who love him: it’s the Oriental. But before deciding to get one, be warned: if you’re looking for a calm and independent cat, the Oriental isn’t for you.
The story of the Oriental Shorthair is one of the most animated ones in the feline world. A very ancient Asian breed, the Oriental was imported from South East Asia to Great Britain by the end of the 19th century, with other exotic cats. There were unicolour cats with black, blue or chocolate, colorpoint cats with blue eyes, with a clear coat and darker tips – which would be called Siamese – and finally others, with intermediate coats, which would later be called Burmese or Tonkinese. All those small felines enjoyed a great popularity in their native countries, where they were used as luck bearers or mice hunters. In Thailand, they were so much loved and respected, that the 13th century artists already paid tribute to them in their paintings and writings, like for instance in the Book of the Cat.
Blue cats were particularly loved. Called Si-Sawat, their rain cloud like coat and their green eyes symbolised fertility and abundance. Unfortunately, Victorian England and the new born cat fancy didn’t care much about poetry. In the cat shows, people were so crazy about blue-eyed cats that they completely neglected their coat-coloured, green-eyed brothers. This injustice reached such an extent that in 1920, the Siamese Club of England stated that breeding other varieties than the blue-eyed ones, should be discouraged.
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