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Influential Felines

Group of British and Foreign Celebrities
Painting by Rosa Bebb; frontispiece to 'Rabbits, Cats and Cavies' (1903) by C.H.Lane, F.Z.S; from a first edition owned by the Earl of Belmore. Courtesy of The Harrison Weir Collection.

Ask any serious cat fancier, and they will always tell you, "It's all about the CATS!"

It is the cats which have drawn each and every one of us into THEIR world, either with a personal fascination about a particular breed, or a general and inexplicable attraction to all things feline! We fall in love with their antics; with their singularly aloof attitude, or their amazingly coquettish behavior. Or maybe we just adore their coat, or colour, or pattern, or we are simply drawn into looking deep into their amazing lustrous eyes, and imagine that we can see far into a mystical past, to when they accompanied our ancestors in ancient and developing civilizations.

This section of our website is the core reason for creating it. Through it, we hope to connect fanciers to the wonderful cats and cat fancy of the past, by bringing their individual stories back into the present.

Where possible, we have provided photos or illustrations of the cats, along with as many facts about them as we could muster, including commentaries from fanciers, judges and authors of the past, and where they exist, stories and information about the individual cats drawn from referenced resources. See a slideshow of ALL Fact Files for the cats on the site.

The term 'influential' is used loosely and in the broadest possible terms, in that a single cat may have been influential within a breed, or within a colour, as a stud cat or brood queen. Or, they may not have been a successful breeder, but instead, shined in the show ring. Whatever their story, they are all special and they have all in their own way contributed to expanding our knowledge of their species and provided us with immense pleasure in the process.

So we dedicate this section to the wonderful CATS contained in it, in the hope that by reading it, you will derive as much pleasure consuming its contents, as we continue to have in creating it.

LONGHAIR:

SHORTHAIR:

Editors' note: Asterisk indicates a completed file; others contain "Fact File" information and are a work in progress.

LONGHAIR

SHORTHAIR

Blue Persian and Sealpoint Siamese
Image from an unused and undated French 'Carte Postale', (Postcard) circa 1905, courtesy of The Harrison Weir Collection

A note from the Editors:

Registers associated with this article include The Incorporated Cat Fanciers Association of Great Britain (TICFAGB), National Cat Club (NCC), The Cat Club (CCR), Beresford Cat Club (BCC), Feline Federation Francaise (FFF), Siamese Cat Registry (SCR), US Register & Studbook for Cats (USR)including Supplement(USRS), The Studbook of the American Cat Association (ACA), and the Studbook & Register of the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA).

This resource is an ongoing work in progress. New stories about cats of the past are being added continually. If you have any material which can illuminate the story of a pedigreed cat, we welcome submissions or data, photos, illustrations or ephemera, through the Contacts page.

 


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©The CFA Foundation, Inc and The Harrison Weir Collection
This project is a collaboration between The CFA Foundation, Inc. and The Harrison Weir Collection.
All material on this site is copyrighted and may not be printed or reproduced, in any form, without the express written consent of the collaborators.