The Turkish Angora

Next Generation's Pebels

The Turkish Angora is one of the oldest catbreeds that we know. This breed isn't very populair.

The breed is coming from, as the name already say, Turkey, to be exactly from the city of Angora, this the old name of the city Ankara. In the first quarter of the 17th century this breed comes for the first time to West-Europe, this where always white Turkish Angora's. Because these cats where very rare we found them only on the higher places of the society. Known owners of Turkish Angora's where: Louise XV of France and Marie Antoinette.
From the middle of the 19th century those cats where crossbreeded with other cats. From those crossbreeds came the Persian, but before they had that name they were called Angoracat.

It is almost sure that all catbreeds with long and semi-longhair got that genetic factor from the Turkish Angora. Although the Turkish Angora was very populair in the 18th and 19th century they lost more and more populairity and became at the end of the 19th century almost lost. In the begin of the 20th century the Turkish goverment started a breeding programm in the zoo of Ankara to stop the extinction of this breed. Some American breeders succeeded to import some animales from Turkey that was the start of a new breeding programm outside Turkey.

Nowadays there are beautiful Turkish Angora's they are completly back. The Turkish Angora had to be white, now we know that under the white fur the cats usualy carying a color.
In Turkey in the old day these colored Turkish Angora cat were often killed, they thought that it were not real Turkish Angoras. The traditional preference for white did gave a lot of trouble on catshows.
The white Turkish Angoras where acknowledge by the CFA in 1973 and the colored in 1978. With the FIFe the white Turkish Angoras where acknowledge in 1988 and the colored in 1994. The colors of this breed are the so called natural colors: black and red and bleu and cream this with white and/or silver and different tabby paterns.
Turkish Angoras with the colors chocolate ,lilac and points are per definition crossbreeds and not real Turkish Angoras.

The character:

The Turkish Angoras is a affectionate breed, they are very sweet they can sleep for hours on you legs. They also like to "talk" to you or jump in you neck to hitchike to the kitchen or an other room. If you open a can they scream to tell you that they are "very" hungry. They are nice cats that like to be with people.

Next Generation's Cicek

Written by:

Cattery Next Generation's
Maine coon & turkish angoras
Anneke & Alex de Vries
http://www.IAEhv.nl/users/alexande/index.htm

the Netherlands