The Siberian Cat
A Novel Approach
by Phil Maggitti
Photograph by Isabelle Francais

You might expect a cat that is alleged to have originated in Siberia to be larger than the average bear and, perhaps, to be involved in the sort of plot twists found in a Russian novel. If such were your expectations, you wouldn't be disappointed by the Siberian cat, a creature of surpassing strength, musculature and size. What's more, the story of its importation to this country is enhanced by a certain novelistic flair.

In March of 1990 a materials engineer from Hackensack, New Jersey, named David Boehm read a magazine article about Siberian cats. He owned several Norwegian forest cats at the time, but he was so taken with the Siberians that he resolved to be the first person to import them to this country. He telephoned the woman in West Germany who had written the article and learned, to his delight, that she would be in Orlando, Florida, in May exhibiting two of her Siberians at the ACFA (American Cat Fanciers Association) international show. Earlier that year ACFA had become the first American cat group to accept Siberians for registration and exhibition in experimental classes. This despite the fact that there were no Siberians living in the United States at the time.

After Boehm had chatted up the two Siberian cats in Orlando, he began working the phone, but soon he concluded that "it would be difficult to obtain these cats from known sources." He decided to plunge into the unknown instead. He left Kennedy airport on Wednesday June 27 bound for Leningrad, the site of a cat show that weekend. At nearly the same time that he arrived in Moscow on an Aeroflot jet, three Siberian kittens departed the airport on a Pan Am flight bound for the United States. The kittens, nine to 15 weeks old, were being shipped to Elizabeth Terrell, a Himalayan breeder who then lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The kittens were part of a cultural exchange program between Terrell and Nellie Sachuk, a member of Leningrad's Kotofei cat club. Terrell had sent two Himalayans to Russia -- a male and a pregnant female -- in return for the Siberian kittens. The exchange between Terrell and Sachuk had been inspired by a 1988 article in a Himalayan breed publication that asked if any American breeders would be willing to send Himmies to Russia to help get that breed established there.

And the Runner-up Is

Although he had spoken with Terrell by phone a week before leaving for Russia, Boehm didn't realize when he landed in Moscow that he was playing for second place in the first-to-import stakes. He took a flight from Moscow to Leningrad, checked into a hotel, and asked where to find Siberian cats. He was told there would be many at the show that weekend. Meanwhile he might want to look in the markets, all-purpose Soviet institutions similar to farmers' markets in the United States. Armed with a note written for him in Russian that read, "I am looking for Siberian cats," he left for the nearest market, about an hour's walking distance away. There he bought a young, red- and-white male, which he carried back to the no-pets-allowed hotel and sneaked in under his jacket. The hotel staff, intrigued by this cat- gathering American who distributed pantyhose, cigarettes and generous tips, quickly became co-conspirators in the acquisition and lodging of Boehm's growing colony.

After five days in Leningrad, Boehm left for Moscow with 13 Siberian cats, a Russian blue, and a white, good-luck cat that had been given to him by a Russian English teacher. He bought two more Siberians in Moscow, then was airborne on the Fourth of July. He didn't find out until he phoned Terrell two days later that his 15 Siberians were numbers four through 18 on the U.S. import list.

The Firstborn Prize

Although Boehm had been left at the importation gate, he did claim the distinction of being present at the birth of the first Siberian kittens born on American carpeting. The kittens were delivered at 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday October 10 by a black female named Mary, whom Boehm had bought, with papers, from a member of Moscow's Fauna cat club. According to registration rules then in effect, Mary's kittens were eligible for enrollment in The International Cat Association (TICA), which required that Siberians born in this country had to be the offspring of cats with demonstrable Russian origins." (The perceptive reader will note that TICA did not require Siberians to have demonstrable Siberian origins.)

The rules for registration in ACFA were somewhat different. Because there was no central cat registry in Russia, such as the half dozen or so central registries in the United States, pedigrees were issued and shows were sponsored by individual clubs. There were two cat clubs in the Soviet Union, according to Boehm, that issued registration papers for Siberian cats: the Fauna club in Moscow and the Kotofei club in Leningrad. Each maintained that its Siberians were the true representatives of the breed, while the other club's were watered-down vodka. Yet both agreed that cats bred without club sanction and sold privately in the markets were black-market Siberians.

Earlier in 1990 the 1,046-member Kotofei club had become a licensed, international partner of ACFA, which agreed to accept for registration any Siberians (or the American-born offspring of any two Siberians) imported from Russia with the Kotofei seal of approval. This seal was granted only to cats whose parents were registered with the Kotofei club. That didn't mean ACFA refused to register cats from the Fauna club or from the markets, but it did so only on a case-by-case basis.

The Kotofei club, one should note, was just three years old then. It hadn't been keeping records on Siberians for significantly longer than anybody else had, nor had it demonstrated that the cats in its registry were derived from different, let alone better, stock than cats selling for a lot less money to Westerners shopping in the Russian markets.

Shapes of Things to Come

A cat association that accepts a provisional or experimental breed for registration still must be convinced that the breed is worthy of official sanction before permitting members of that breed to compete in championship classes. Thus, Siberian advocates were obliged to answer one pass-fail question: Why do we need another semilonghair cat from a cold, unforgiving, take-no-prisoners climate when we've already got the Maine coon cat and the Norwegian forest cat, both of which resemble your cat?

Siberian breeders artfully split these resemblances by contending that their cats are a constellation of circles and curves, while Maines are a confederation of rectangles, and Norwegians are triangular in theme. That argument has been accepted by six of the big nine cat registries in the United States: TICA, ACFA, the American Association of Cat Enthusiasts, the Cat Fancier's Federation, the United Feline Organization and the International Cat Enthusiasts. All of the above currently allow Siberians to compete in championship classes. Anyone interested in acquiring and registering a Siberian cat should ask the breeder of that cat for the names of the associations in which the cat is eligible to be registered.

Historical Inaccuracies

According to most accounts of Siberian cats' history, Russian immigrants to Siberia brought cats with them; and those cats eventually consorted with local cats. In time, perhaps owing to the severe climate or to the liaisons with local cats, or to both, the original cats from Russia developed longer hair, weatherproof coats and the ability to defend their households like guard dogs. At some subsequent point a significant number of these new-and-improved Siberian cats made the 800- to 1,000-mile trip across the Ural Mountains to Moscow and Leningrad, the cities where Siberian cats are most prominent. Finally, the members of cat clubs in those cities were able to distinguish these Siberian cats from run-of-the-market, nonpedigreed longhair cats.

For all its currency this theory remains a series of dots with few connecting facts or documentation. This writer spoke with Elizabeth Terrell in October of 1990 and asked her, "At what point did people go to Siberia and take their cats with them?"

"That," replied Terrell, "hadn't come up" in her conversations with Siberian breeders in Russia. "They never told us."

Then at what point did Siberian cats start coming back to Leningrad or to Moscow from Siberia?

"They haven't told us that either," said Terrell.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the lack of historical information about Siberian cats, people seem willing to accept the most fanciful stories concerning this breed. Many of those fanciful stores appear on the mother of all repositories of half-truths and myths -- the Internet. On one website (www.pets4you.com/pages/croshka.html) we read that "Siberians then spread throughout Europe and was noted in Harrison Weir's late 19th century book, Our Cats and All About Them, as one of the three longhairs represented at the first cat show held in Europe in the 1700s."

Excuse me, but the first cat show held in Europe, a show that was organized by Harrison Weir, occurred in London's Crystal Palace in 1871. More important, there is no mention of a Siberian cat in Weir's book. On page 30 of that text is a pen-and-ink sketch of a Russian longhair, which, said Weir, was "given me many years ago." Its "parents came from Russia, but from what part I could never ascertain."

Until the appearance of substantive proof that Siberian cats actually came from Siberia, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "Siberian is the name given to Russia's native semi-longhair," as one website does (www.breedlist.com/siberian-breeders.html).

One American breeder puts an interesting spin on the Siberian's history by claiming, "Centuries ago these magnificent animals made their homes in Russian monasteries, where they would walk along the high beams as lookouts for intruders." (www.siberiancats.com) This statement begs at least two questions. How did the cats get from the monasteries to the Russian cat clubs? And wouldn't the cats have made better lookouts if they had sat in windows instead of balancing on beams?

Dasvedanya

Oftentimes the hype and happenstance surrounding a breed of cat obscure its real virtues. When we read, for example, that "Siberians" are unique in that they do not have the FEL D-1 in their saliva and do not produce dander on their fur," we are inclined to wonder how this information was obtained. Then, upon reading in the following paragraph that "No official study has been commissioned to date" to study this phenomenon, we might be tempted to throw the cat out with the caterwauling. That would be intemperate. Thus, the final words on Siberian cats should come from the person who was the first to import them to the United States.

"We were impressed from the time we got the cats," said Elizabeth Terrell, who now resides in Maine. "They were two and three months old when I got them, but they looked like grown cats. Nobody could believe they were kittens. They were extremely friendly from the beginning. They never once cowered in a corner or anything. We've never found anything they're afraid of.

"I have a 4,000-square-foot house, we live in 200 feet of it, the rest is cats. The Russians described the Himmies I sent them as true cowards. They're people oriented, but they don't like company. These [Siberians] are the most affectionate things I've ever seen."

Phil Maggitti is a freelance writer and editor living in a land of virtual reality. His forwarding address is: http://home.ptd.net/~heyphil