by Sanem
(Balıkesir, Turkey)
About 12 years ago my mum had a Turkish Angora female and that cat gave birth to wonderful babies fathered by the tabby of a neighbour.
There were five kittens in the litter and we gave them to other people.
We kept the most beautiful female to ourselves.
She is ginger with the green eyes of her mother.
Her father was a grey tabby with short hair but Tarcin has her mum's long Angora hair, with the mane, fluffy tail and the jodhpur-like appearance of her legs.
Sanem
do you still have kittens?
Patricia, thanks for enquiring. However, this is an old post.
You could not resist throwing in an strongly implied insult about by ability. I can’t accept it.
We just adopted a cat from an animal shelter in Maine USA. His name is mike. He looks just like your cat. The vetteranarian said they thought he was Turkish angora and tabby. When I saw your picture I knew that was it. Showed my husband your picture and he thought I took a picture of our cat!
Great and thanks for visiting and commenting Diane.
Hello from China 🙂
I got an Angora cat 17 yrs ago and he passed away last week. I am still very sad about it. I started to Google about him-his breed, the doppelgangers…everything that I could find about him. And that’s why I came here because she looks exactly the same with my little boy. It’s not common to see Angora cats in China but I am so glad the Angora ginger cats lives so well in the other side of the world.
Btw, the website is great. Thank you:)
Koiee
Hello. It is great to hear from China. I think, in fact, that you’re the first person to comment on this website who lives in China! It is nice to know what sort of cat breeds you are likely to see in China. I’m not surprised that the Angora cat is rare in China. The Angora has a long history. The name “Angora” in relation to cats is quite a tricky one in my opinion. We know the Turkish Angora very well but when the word “Angora” is used individually then it’s meaning becomes less clear in my opinion. The link below points to a page on this subject. And below that there is a link to articles on this website about “Angora” cats which many refer to the Turkish Angora.
https://pictures-of-cats.org/angora-cat.html
Lots more
Thanks again for coming to this website and sharing. Come back and ask your friends to come back because I love to hear from China!
Thanks for reply Michael!
What does it mean purebred? You mean pedigree?
There is NO Angora cat in Turkey with pedigree but it doesn’t make them less Angoras. These are simply longhair street cats. Ankara Zoo has only whites (again no pedigree!), while colored ones are not even regarded as Angora cats by many Turks. Unfortunately.
We could debate about ”modern Turkish Angora” which hardly looks like a cat from Turkey. In west they breed them so pure that they even got pointed/siamese patterns, which are not found in turkish cats! I know this from those who breed Angora cats. Sure you won’t see these cats in cat shows, as they will be quickly neutered and placed to new houses… Not only selectively breeding but also outcrossing them with who knows what. This could happen in early development of Angora breed, where type was changed drastically. İt is known that Gisela Stoscheck (Tai-phoon cattery), which got cats from Taspinar, was accused for outcrossing her Angora cats. Yet her cats still won awards in CFA and it appears in almost every pedigree of modern Angoras. It’s all controversial, but worth to mention.
Thanks for Harvey Harrison for writing this: https://pictures-of-cats.org/first-we-should-know-what-turkish-turkish-angoras-look-like.html
”Nevertheless, the findings of the UC Davis Genome Project determined that the contemporary Turkish Angora (TA) is more closely related to the Egyptian Mau and to Tunisian cats than to cats with Turkish DNA”.
Egyptian Mau, Tunisian cats- these are mixed moggies. Original paper of Lipinski 2008 states that Tunisian and Mau cats have a strong western cats influence. That means that Angora is not purebred, but a cat created from moggies, which are not even turkish! Turkish Angora is a mix of many cats.
Mr. Harrison has Angora cat from Ankara Zoo and he told in his comments that this cat was grouped with Cyprus cats as well many others recent imports from Turkey with Cyprus cats, in 2012 unpublished turkish cats study of L.Lyons. Now this scientist claims that Cyprus cats are distinct group from Mediterranean (Mediterranean= moggies), ignoring many turkish cats that were said to be ”Cyprus” (many have very high percentage of so called Cyprus genes). Unbelievable! This is how science turn to pseudoscience.
By the way we think your website is great, there is a lot of more information than in any other cat related pages. Thank you.
Angora Cat Association.
Yes purebred can mean pedigree.
Great comment. It should be an article. I have learnt more from your comment than any other of the books I have about the Turkish Angora.
It is interesting that the TA is a moggie (random bred) in Turkey but it has a type and appearance that is very definite. So it must have purebreeding to a certain extent. This is because the street cats interbreed and they have a similar genotype, I guess.
The thing is that random bred cats can be more genuinely a cat breed than selectively bred pedigree cats because as you say breeders selectively breed to please themselves and not to create a genuine cat.
The Persian cat in America has no connection to the original Persian cats. Breeding takes the cat away from the original. It is just a business.
The cats you have are more cobby than the TA’s in the West. They breed them quite slender (foreign type) in America. They probably think it looks more ‘elegant’.
Michael
Hello Michael,
Where you think Angora came from? Angora is a breed from Turkish street cats! If you say turkish strays are moggies, so is Angora!
I am from Angora cat association, Turkey. We research our cats and soon we will share many articles about it in our website.
Greetings
Angora Cat Association
Turkish Angora cats come from Turkey. They were and still are non-purebred cats in Turkey. Some are purebred cats in Turkey. Some where selectively bred to be the modern Turkish Angora purebred cats in the West. The real Turkish Angoras are in Turkey. See this article:
https://pictures-of-cats.org/first-we-should-know-what-turkish-turkish-angoras-look-like.html
Merhaba, Sanem
I don’t know why you wrote it is a mix, but this cat is indeed a real Angora!
All longhair cats seen in turkish streets, no matter their colour are less or more Angoras. Many times in litters you will see mixed kittens – both longhair and shorthair. Shorthair cats obviously don’t have long fur, but they are sisters and brothers of Angoras (genetically).
You should be proud of your cat, it is a very beautiful Angora!