| |
According
to the earliest statements of the breed's founder, Ann Baker,
the automobile contributed to the development of these characteristics
by running over a cat named Josephine in Riverside,
California, in the early 1960s. Baker, also of Riverside,
claimed to have been struck by lightning but never a car.
Later she said that the automobile was only a hit-and-run
player in the ragdoll's development. The operative role belonged
to government agents who had performed genetic alterations
on Josephine in the laboratory to which she had been taken
after her accident. Baker's propensity for this kind of utterance
eventually led many people to believe she ought to have been
required to wear seat belts at all times.
Baker's
Dozens
Josephine,
the autocatalytic female, was a white, footloose cat, perhaps
of Persian-Angora descent. She either belonged to or lived
on the estate of one of Baker's neighbors, depending on which
source you credit. (In the ragdoll chronicles there is generally
more than one source to credit or to discredit, as the case
may be.) Prior to her brush with destiny and the underside
of a car -- not to mention those pesky government operatives
-- Josephine had produced at least one litter of kittens.
According to Baker those kittens were willing to accept food
from humans but did not invite a hands-on relationship with
our species. The kittens Josephine produced after the wheels
of fortune had passed over her displayed a different bent,
however. They were bigger and friendlier than other cats,
more impervious to pain and less endowed with an instinct
for self-preservation. (This last suggests that Nature or
the government is not without a sense of irony.) What's more,
Josephine's postraumatic kittens had nonmatting fur and went
limp when they were held. (A cynic might be tempted to ask
why, considering Josephine's accident, her kittens didn't
develop a carapace.)
When Baker
noticed the aforementioned differences in Josephine's kittens,
inspiration sounded its horn. She acquired one of Josephine's
offspring, a female named Buckwheat, and registered her with
the National Cat Fanciers' Association (NCFA) in 1963. Then
Baker conspired to have Josephine bred to a sacred cat of
Burma, a breed whose first representatives had arrived in
this country in 1959. That breeding produced a longhaired
kitten with sealpoint markings and white feet. He was named
Daddy War Bucks, and he became, said Baker, "the father
of the ragdoll look."
If Daddy
War Bucks was the father of the ragdoll look, Ann Baker was
its godmother. In her autobiography, Let's Do It God's
Way, which she published in the late 1980s, Baker declared,
"I am the owner of the trademark, franchise, and registry
of the authentic ragdolls." She stopped short of declaring
she was the way, the truth and the light, but she ruled her
new breed as though she were. She demanded absolute fealty
from everyone who bought her cats, reserving for herself the
right to approve, if not dictate, the fashion in which those
cats were used for breeding. Nor did she hesitate to banish
from her garden of edicts those owners who would not serve.
In an
instruction sheet mailed to prospective ragdoll breeders Baker
wrote, "You only breed the cats Ann Baker sells you ... if
one dies then you must get another from her and not use your
own male, or sell any pairs… if you have someone who
wants a pair notify Ann Baker… and you can sell one half
of the pair… but the other or mate must come from Ann
Baker."
Moreover,
says the Ragdoll Connection Network, Baker "was paid a royalty
fee for every kitten sold" by people who had obtained their
breeding stock from her. When those royalties ran dry, The
Daily Telegraph of London reported, Baker, who died last
year, "was also said to have used cats as a form of currency:
when she was hard up, she would pay her builders in kittens."
Baker's
tendency to color outside the lines was not confined to her
business arrangements. In addition to claiming that the government
had customized Josephine's DNA, she claimed to have been kidnapped
by rival cat breeders who slaughtered 99 of her kittens, and
she circulated a poster with photos of dead kittens in muddled
clusters to support her claim. She further insisted that she
had crossed ragdolls with skunks in order to improve ragdolls'
tails and that ragdolls represented a link between humans
and space aliens. These and other statements caused many people
to wonder if Baker's eyes glowed in the dark.
Trouble
in Paradise
When we
corresponded with Ann Baker 15 years ago, she was advertising
a book she had written called You've Been Had. Me Too.
In it she claimed that she had "found a cure for things the
vet put your animal to sleep for." She also proudly announced
she was "a party to and supporter of" Jimmy Swaggert, Oral
Roberts, the 700 Club and others.
Having
read Baker's "literature" and her autobiography, one would
be hard pressed to imagine how or why she was able to enroll
a number of dues-paying disciples in the Church of the Large,
Nonaggressive Feline. She was, nonetheless; but as often happens
among true believers, dissent raised its serpentine head,
and the congregation came asunder over the restrictions Baker
had placed on the development of her chosen breed.
Thus it
came to pass that in 1971 Baker founded her own cat registry,
the International Ragdoll Cat Association (IRCA), to "authenticate"
ragdoll kittens produced by breeders who were still on her
wave length. She also trademarked the name Cherubim Cats,
a rubric that included ragdolls, honey bears, doll babies,
baby dolls, shu schoos and other feline creations. "Cherubim
Cats," Baker explained, "are cats that did not get their start
by breeding two breeds together ... one is a phenomena and
the others are DNA." The honey bear, said Baker cryptically,
"Looks like Persian, but not cat skeleton."
Meanwhile
a dissident group of ragdoll breeders started the Ragdoll
Fanciers' Club International (RFCI), which transferred allegiance
and registrations to the more established cat registries.
The cats developed by RFCI breeders were accepted for championship
competition, first by NCFA in 1972 and eventually by every
association in this country except the largest, the Cat Fanciers'
Association (CFA). In CFA ragdolls compete in provisional
classes, but they could become eligible for championship competition
and full acceptance as a pedigreed breed as early as next
year.
For its
part, RFCI is silent about the effects of automobile accidents
on feline temperament and size. Dennis Dayton, one of the
founding members of the group, preferred to explain the evolution
of ragdoll attributes as "simply a fluke of nature." As for
the origin of ragdolls, RFCI quotes Robin Pickering and David
Pollard, authors of The Definitive Guide To Ragdolls,
published by Ragdoll World UK [United Kingdom].
"At the
time [the early 1960s] Ann had been borrowing one of Josephine's
older sons to sire progeny in [Ann's] Black Persian breeding
programme. This son had the appearance of a Black/Brown Persian
and she named him Blackie, and it was [on] one of her visits
to borrow him that she saw Blackie's brother. He appeared
most impressive and in Ann's words had the appearance of a
Sacred Cat of Burma, (The Birman Breed). Having already established
the owner's trust, she was also permitted to borrow this cat
to mate with her own females. She was most taken with this
son of Josephine and named him Raggedy Ann Daddy Warbucks.
What Ann clearly states is that Blackie and Daddy Warbucks
are both sons of Josephine, but with different sires ... During
detailed questioning, Ann confirmed that no-one had ever seen
the father of Daddy Warbucks, and he was the only kitten in
that particular litter of Joesphine's. This being so, makes
it difficult to take the origins of the breed further."
England
Swings
Last year
the ragdoll ranked 20th among the 36 breeds registered by
CFA. The 472 new ragdolls signed up in 1997 represented a
6 percent decrease from the preceding year. In England, however,
the breed is immensely popular. Ragdolls are "the rising stars
of the pedigree cat world," The Daily Telegraph reports.
"Unknown in Britain before the early Eighties, there are now
6,000 of them in the country ... and ragdolls are already
the tenth most frequently exhibited breed at pedigree cat
shows."
The
Daily Telegraph also reports that the Ragdoll Club "even
sent a couple of cats to be examined by veterinary scientists
at Glasgow University. The vets X-rayed them, analysed the
chemical composition of their blood and even stuck needles
in the neck to see how they would react to pain. But after
three days they were declared to be fairly ordinary cats."
One hopes
this research wasn't funded with taxpayers' money. One further
hopes that veterinary scientists won't be needed to disprove
the other myths clinging to the ragdoll's nonmatting coat.
"Unfortunately," the Ragdoll International Cat Club observes,
"myths still persist in some circles, and cat owners have
been mislead into believing that Ragdolls do not feel pain,
do not cause allergies to those allergic to cats, cannot defend
themselves and do not possess normal cat instincts such as
hunting. All of the above are untrue."
Ragdolls
should be treated with the same care and respect bestowed
upon all other breeds."
(Re)enter
the RagaMuffin
In a perfect
world that would be the last word on ragdolls, but just when
people thought it was safe to go on to the next topic, along
came the RagaMuffin, "the ultimate cat to own." In case you
were wondering what became of the Ann Baker faithful while
the RFCI was gaining mainstream cat fancy acceptance for ragdolls,
here's the skinny.
"RagaMuffins
come from the original [IRCA] lines, which have been bred
outside the cat fancy for more than thirty years," writes
breeder Kim Clark. In February 1994, says Clark, a "group
of breeders left the originator [Ann Baker] and petitioned
for registry as RagaMuffins" in several cat associations.
This band, which calls itself the RagaMuffin Associated
Group, changed the breed's name from ragdoll to ragamuffin
because "there is a valid trademark on the name Ragdoll held
by the originator of IRCA. No one can legally use the name
without the permission of the owner."
With the
passing of Ann Baker and the acceptance of the ragamuffin
for championship competition in the UFO (United Feline Organization)
and ICE (International Cat Exhibitors), the journey that began
in Riverside, California, more than 30 years ago appears to
be complete. Josephine has given birth to two breeds of cats
and, by extension, a wonderful collection of stories. There
is, at last, no more to be said -- unless a ragdoll slips
out of the house one day, gets hit by a car and produces nothing
but white kittens that look exactly like Josephine.
The
Building Code
The ragdoll
is a large, long-bodied, handsome cat with a semilong, silken
coat and lovely, oval blue eyes. According to the Ragdoll
Fanciers Club International, "Altered adult males may reach
15 to 20 pounds, females will weigh about 5 pounds less."
Because their undercoat is not so cottony or profuse as that
of some other longhaired breeds, ragdolls do not require as
much grooming. The ragdoll is slow to mature. It doesn't attain
its full color until roughly two years of age, while adult
weight and size are not achieved until the ragdoll is four
years old or more.
Patterns
and Colors
Ragdolls
occur in colorpoint, bicolor and mitted patterns. Colorpoint
cats have a different color on their points -- i.e., ears,
facial mask, legs and tail -- than they do on the rest of
their bodies. The body color of ragdolls may be platinum gray,
milk white, ivory or fawn. The point colors that correspond
to those body shades are blue, chocolate, lilac (sometimes
called frost) and seal, respectively.
Bicolors,
which also come in blue, chocolate, lilac and seal, are colorpoint
cats with a white, inverted V on their faces. In addition
bicolors have a white ruff, white legs and feet and may have
patches of white on their bodies.
Mitted
cats, which can be blue, chocolate, lilac or seal, are colorpoint
cats with a broken or evenly matched white blaze on the nose
and/or between the eyes. Mitted cats have evenly matched and
scalloped white mittens on their front legs. Their hind legs
should be entirely white up to midthigh. The white adornment
must circumnavigate the hocks, and the cat must have a white
stripe, varying in width, which extends from the bib and runs
down the underside between the forelegs to the underbase of
the tail.
Personality
Profile
Though
it shouldn't be expected to live up to some of the fantastic
claims made on its behalf, the ragdoll is an extremely docile
cat. It possesses a genial good nature and is, by all accounts,
irresistibly huggable. "The ragdoll has an exceptionally gentle,
well-balanced temperament," says one breeder, "but we should
keep in mind that it is a cat, and allow it a few catty moments
now and then! It does not display the independence and aloofness
for which cats are generally known, but wants to be where
you are and will follow you everywhere. It is a personality
cat - intelligent, playful and affectionate."
|
www.catsandkittens.com
