CAT BREED INDEX

Affectionate but undemanding, the Siberian is growing in popularity. Here we find out why.

The Siberian is the breed in focus.

With its origins lost in the mists of time, the Siberian is what is known as a landrace or natural variety of domestic cat. Also known as the Siberian Forest Cat or Moscow Longhair, it comes from Siberia and is the national cat of Russia. Living pretty much as a feral cat in its native country, it found its niche as a rodent controller on farms, but was also prized as a loyal and affectionate pet by Russian families. It has regularly appeared in Russian fairy tales and stories.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ending of the Cold War, the Soviet

Union became a series of independent republics and the Siberian Cat started to be exported; first to the United States in 1990, imported by a breeder called Elizabeth Terrell of Baton Rouge.

These included a male, Kaliostro Vasenjkovich and two females, Ofelia Romanova and Naina Romanova.The Siberian was accepted for registration by the Cat Fanciers’ Association in February 2000, and granted championship status in February 2006, but is still fairly rare in the US.

Harrison Weir first mentions the Siberian in his 1889 book ‘Our Cats and

All About Them’ and he states that they appeared at early cat shows. However, they didn’t arrive officially in the UK until 2002, where they have quickly become popular and are now the tenth most popular breed by registrations with GCCF.