In 2002, the British Angora was renamed Oriental Longhair by British cat fanciers. This was to remove confusion with the Turkish Angora. With no globally recognised naming convention, other cat fanciers refer to this type as Javanese, Foreign Longhair or Mandarin.
The Origin of the breed
In the late 60's and early 70's, Kernow Gerza and Kernow Koptos, offspring of a mating between a Sorrel Abyssinian and a Seal Point Siamese, were used by Maureen Silson in her breeding programme. In 1971, from the brother-sister mating of these cats, Maureen bred Southview Pavane, the first Oriental Cinnamon.
These two inherited more than the light brown (cinnamon) gene from their Abyssinian sire - they had also inherited the gene for longhair and passed this on to several of their kittens. Although not the first to be produced, the first Southview longhair to cause excitement was Trappist, a "longhaired Havana" who was born in 1973. Trappist, known to his friends as "Cuckoo", was used for breeding and was on exhibition at the 1978 Supreme Show.
This was the start of the modern UK Angoras who are not related to the Angoras of the last century or to the Turkish Angoras which are not recognised by the GCCF.
Today's Oriental Longhairs
Many of the immediate descendants of Kernow Gerza and Kernow Koptos proved to carry the longhair gene and are behind the majority of today's UK Oriental Longhairs. In order to maintain the breed, they were mated out, first to Siamese and Oriental Shorthairs and then to Balinese as well when these became available and these matings are still the basis of today's breeding programme. Some new lines have been produced by mating Oriental Shorthairs to Balinese and breeding the resulting full-coloured, short-coated variants back to Balinese.
So why, after so many years, have longhaired Orientals made such slow progress? Part of the reason is that the continuing matings to Oriental Shorthairs and Balinese, essential to enlarge the gene pool and improve the breed, produce a large number of variants (shorthaired, carrying longhair) and pointed Oriental Longhairs (Balinese look-alikes) who are useful for breeding but cannot be shown.
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