British Shorthair

British Shorthair desciption and history



Description


The British Shorthair may be a comparatively powerful, durable and compact cat, having a broad chest, robust thick-set legs with rounded paws and a medium-length, blunt-tipped tail. the top is comparatively giant and rounded, with a briefmuzzle, broad cheeks (most noticeable in mature males, UN agency tend to develop outstanding jowls) and hugespherical eyes that ar deep chromatic orange within the British Blue and otherwise vary in color betting on the coat. Their medium-sized ears ar broad at the bottom and wide set.

The 'British Blue' variant will usually be confused with the gray Scottish Fold. However, the Shorthair will be defined by having its pointy triangle ears, whereas the Fold has softer, doubled ears.

They are slow to mature compared with most cat breeds, reaching full physical development at roughly 3 years more maturedunco among domestic cats they're a perceptibly sexually pleomorphism breed, with males averaging 9–17 pound (4.1–7.7 kg) and females seven–12 pound (3.2–5.4 kg).



History


The origins of land Shorthair possibly initiate to the primary century AD, creating it one in all the foremost ancient specifiable cat breeds within the world.[citation needed] it's thought that the offensive Romans ab initio brought Egyptian domestic cats to nice Britain; these cats then interbred with the native European wildcat population. Over the centuries, their naturally isolated descendants developed into distinctively massivestrong cats with a brief howeverterribly thick coat, the higher to resist conditions on their native islands. supported artists' representations, the trendyBritish Shorthair is essentially unchanged from this first sort.


An early example of the "English type" Blue Shorthair, from Frances Simpson's Book of the Cat, 1903
Selective breeding of the most effective samples of the kind began within the nineteenth century, with stress on developing the weird blue-grey variant known as the "British Blue" or "English type" (to distinguish it from the additional fine-boned "Russian type") especially. Some sources directly credit GB creator and pioneering animal fancier Harrison Weir with the initial idea of standardizing the breed; others recommend a gaggle of breeders mightare concerned. The new British Shorthair was featured at the first-ever cat show, union by Weir and command at the Crystal Palace in London in 1871, and enjoyed nice initial quality.

By the Nineties, however, with the arrival of the freshly foreign Persian and alternative hairy breeds, land Shorthair had fallen out of favour, and breeding stock had become critically rare by war I[citation needed]. a minimum of part to alleviate this, British Shorthair breeders mixed Persians into their bloodlines[citation needed]. The genes thereforeintroduced would eventually become the idea for land Longhair; at the time, however, any hairy cats made were placed into the Persian breeding program[citation needed]. As all cats with the "blue" colouration were then judged along as variants on a de facto single breed, the Blue Shorthair, outcrossings of land with the Russian Blue were conjointlycommon.


A young British Blue male showing the copper eyes typical of cats with 'blue' fur.
After the war, in a shot to keep up the breed normal, the GCCF set to simply accept solely third-generation Persian/British Shorthair crosses[citation needed]. This contributed to a different shortage of pure breeding stock by war II, at that purpose the Persian and Russian Blue were reintroduced into the mix[citation needed]. British Shorthair breeders conjointly worked with the French Chartreux, another ancient breed, that though genetically unrelated to landBlue may be a terribly similar cat in lookonce the war, breeders worked to re-establish verity British sort, and by the late Seventies the distinctive British Shorthair had achieved formal recognition from each the yankee a (CFA) and also the International Cat Association (TICA). in keeping with the GCCF's 2013 register informationit's yet again the foremost in style pureblooded breed in its native country.

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