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The Shortest Distance ...
Nature
had already invented the essential Himalayan elements--Persian
and Siamese cats--long before anyone tumbled to the notion
that foursquare Persian type and blue-eyed Siamese point color
would make a killer combination. Having framed that idea,
all breeders had to do was figure out a way of superimposing
Siamese markings and blue eyes on a chockablock Persian frame.
That task,
however, proved only a tad less difficult than playing three-dimensional
tick-tack-toe. Long hair, blue eyes, and the pointed color
pattern are the handiwork of recessive genes, which must be
present in both parents in order to be observable in their
offspring. Consequently, crossing a Persian and a Siamese
does not produce a Himalayan. It produces, instead, nonpointed
kittens with short hair, copper-to-yellow eyes, longer noses,
bigger ears and daintier scaffolding than Persians are expected
to display.
Yet each
of these first-generation ducky uglings carries the genes
for long hair, point color and its genetic soulmate, blue
eyes; and crossing two Persian-Siamese hybrids will produce
-- once in every 16 kittens on average -- the desired longhaired,
blue-eyed, colorpointed outcome. One such outcome, to be sure,
does not make a breed. The Himalayan required years of backcrossing,
calendar watching and nail biting before it was solidly established.
A Debutante Is Born
The earliest
known premeditated crosses between Siamese and Persian cats
occurred in the United States and Sweden in the early 1920s.
We are not privileged to have records that indicate what,
if anything, resulted from those breedings. In 1931, however,
Virginia Cobb and Clyde Keeler, both of whom were associated
with the Harvard Medical School, set about producing a Persian
cat with Siamese markings. Five years later their efforts
yielded a Himalayan kitten named Debutante and an article
in the American Journal of Heredity that detailed the
recipe by which Debutante had been produced.
History
is silent regarding the fate of Debutante, but we are safe
in assuming that she did not immediately give rise to a new
breed. Nearly two decades elapsed before Himalayans were first
officially recognized as a new pedigreed cat. Part of the
reason, The Book of the Cat explains, is the fact that
Cobb and Keeler's work had been undertaken "to solve
problems in cat genetics," not to develop a new breed
of show cat. This despite the fact that Cobb was active in
the Siamese Cat Society. Therefore, the Himalayan did not
make its official cat fancy debut until 1955 in England, where
it was called the "colourpoint longhair."
Go Forth and Multiply
Meanwhile,
back on this side of the genetic pond, Marguerita Goforth,
a California artist and cat breeder, agreed one day in 1950
to take care of a cat for a friend who was moving. A Persian
and Siamese breeder of some tenure, Goforth described the
cat, which her friend had obtained from the San Diego Humane
Society, as "a mixed Siamese-Persian" with seal-point
coloring.
Such
a cat, as we have noted, is the work of at least two purposeful
crossbreedings and enough luck to make your point when the
odds are 15-to-1 against you. Thus, one is inclined to wonder
what immortal hand or eye had framed the presence of this
unspayed cat, named Princess Himalayan Hope, in an animal
shelter on the West Coast. Be that explanation as it may,
Goforth has written, "The longer I had this cat ... the
greater became my interest in what might be done toward developing
a cat of Persian type but with the striking coloring of the
Siamese, so with her owner's consent, I began a breeding program."
At about
the same time, north of the 49th genetic parallel, a rancher
and cattle judge in Southern Alberta named Ben Borrett began
working on a similar breeding program. Borrett and his wife,
Ann, imported colorpoint longhairs from Brian Stirling-Webb,
a British cat fancier who had played majordomo in getting
the colorpoints officially seated in England. In 1957 at an
American Cat Fanciers Association (ACFA) show in Calgary,
the Borretts exhibited two of their imported cats. Subsequently,
they were asked to write a breed standard for the Himalayan,
a name the colorpoint longhair had acquired somewhere in transition
between England and Canada. The name was, no doubt, borrowed
from the rabbit, goat or mouse fancies, where the same color
pattern appears. Indeed, that pattern has subsequently been
grafted onto other breeds of cats.
The Company They Keep
In 1958
the four-year-old ACFA became the first North American cat
registry to accept Himalayans for championship competition.
At first -- in ACFA as well as in other cat registries that
eventually recognized the Himalayan as a separate breed --
cat fanciers were not permitted to breed Himalayans to anything
but other Himalayans. Yet fanciers are a pragmatic lot, and
the Himalayan is supposed to look like a Persian. The shortest
distance to that goal lies in breeding Himalayans to Persians,
so beginning in 1960 the Persian gradually became a sanctioned
Himalayan outcross in cat associations. The Siamese was no
longer needed as an outcross because the only jewels the Siamese
had to contribute to the Himalayan crown -- blue eyes and
point color -- did not have to be contributed ad infinitum.
Solving
the problem of making the Himalayan look more like a Persian
-- as solving a problem often will do in the cat fancy --
led to the creation of another problem: What to do with the
nonpointed kittens resulting from Himalayan-Persian crosses?
Like the prototypical crosses between Persians and Siamese,
breedings between a Persian and a Himalayan will not produce
Himalayan cats. Such crosses will produce longhaired cats
that carry genes for the Siamese pattern. Because such genes
are recessive, breeding one of these "colorpoint carriers,"
as they are known, to a Himalayan will produce, on average,
two Himalayan kittens in every litter of four.
As Himalayans
began to look more and more like Persians, colorpoint carriers
did, too. Nevertheless, for a number of years colorpoint carriers
could not be shown in any cat association. In time, though,
the proscription against showing these nonpointed Himalayan-Persian
hybrids was rescinded by several associations. The byzantine
nature of the cat fancy in North America --there are 10 associations,
each with its own rules and regulations, that register cats
and license shows -- prevents us from discussing which associations
do and which do not permit colorpoint carriers in the show
hall. It is worth noting, however, that two registries --
the Cat Fancier's Association and the American Cat Association
-- no longer consider the Himalayan a separate breed. Both
groups have concluded that it is simply another Persian color.
Top of the Pops
The pointed,
blue-eyed cat that is supposed to look just like a Persian
has made 180-degree, about-face progress since the days of
Debutante and Princess Himalayan Hope. The modern Himalayan
and colorpoint carrier can go nose-to-virtually-nonexistent-nose
with the most extreme Persians being shown. What's more, the
Himalayan is now the most popular breed in the United States;
and when registration figures for the Himalayan and its Persian
and colorpoint relatives are combined, the result is a staggering
presence in the world of pedigreed cats. In 1996 the Cat Fancier's
Association, which is the largest pedigreed-cat registry in
the world, enrolled a total of 68,948 new cats and kittens.
Of that total, 62 percent were "Persians," a designation
that includes Himalayans and colorpoint carriers. As far as
Himalayan fanciers are concerned, we are still living in the
heyday of the Age of Aquarius, where longhair and bright colors
are the prevailing vogues.
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