Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Jack in the Box




I was watching a cat show on the Animal Planet the other day and saw a segment on the Nebelung.  I had never heard of this breed of cat, but it is basically a long haired Russian Blue.

What was interesting was the segment featured a Nebelung that the owners had found stray.  They then talked about the history
The Nebelung (NAY-bel-ung) breed began the way so many of our breeds began, a stray cat wandered out of the mist and into someone's home and heart. In the early 1980s a black domestic vagabond-turned-housecat named Terri produced a litter of three- two shorthaired black females and one longhaired male. The father, another anonymous nomad, was thought to have been an Angora mix.
Terri's owner, Cora Cobb of Denver, Colorado, gave one of the female kittens, Elsa, to her son, and in 1984 this shorthaired black domestic produced a litter of kittens that included a blue semi-longhaired male kitten. Subsequently named Siegfried, this kitten became the Nebelung's foundation cat.
Elsa's next litter, fathered by the same shorthaired Russian Blue-type neighborhood Tom, produced a female kitten, Brunhilde, who possessed Siegfried's qualities and characteristics. By that time, Cobb was so taken with Siegfried's beauty and personality that she decided to see if she could preserve his qualities by breeding brother to sister. In May 1986 Siegfried and Brunhilde proved to Cobb that they bred true by producing a litter of three blue longhaired kittens. Cobb named the cat the Nebelung, a German word that means 'creatures of the mist'.

So basically Nebelungs came about originally from stray kitties.  So it would stand to reason that that genetic combination could and would and should happen again.  I've seen several cats at my local shelter that looked very similar to Jack - in an almost scarey way.  
from http://www.catster.com/cat-breeds/Nebelung
So he might not have papers, but I bet you he's a Nebelung..

11 comments:

  1. He is a handsome mancat no matter what you call him!!!

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  2. He may be a Nebelung, but I sure hope he's not the result of a brother-sister mating!

    Yikes!

    (I also think he is very handsome!)

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  3. probably not, but Ollie was the result of a mother and son. I like to joke that he was his own uncle when he got particularly annoying :)

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  4. I sure hope Ollie doesn't have health issues.

    I used to take care of an Abyssian which was inbred like that -- he had to go to the vet pretty much every month for one problem or another. Among other problems, he lost his teeth by the time he was two - they just rotted in his jaw, causing him much pain.

    I think that's one of the reasons I hate to hear about inbreeding. The animals end up suffering...

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  5. Ollie was pretty healthy in his life. He had one bout with constipation with no obvious cause, and one other small health issue before VAS (vaccine associated sarcoma) took him earlier this year.

    I'm always bothered by inbreeding, and I hated bringing up that Ollie was a healthy boy because I too know what can go wrong..

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  6. My condolences to you for Ollie's passing. It's good to hear he was healthy, despite his sketchy genetics.

    When my two get annoying, I call them bastards. Because, you know, it's technically true...

    Their parents weren't married!!

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  7. Anonymous3:24 PM

    We are the lucky parents of an absolutely beautiful Nedelung female cat. She was a gift for my birthday. She's smart, bossy, sassy and funny. At first the vet thought she was a "long hair russian blue"... but after investigating! The person who brought her to us said she was in a litter where all the cats didn't look alike.

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  8. CAD_Grrl5:01 PM

    Your Jack is the "spitting image" of my Tomo! What a handsome boy you have =^..^=

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  9. I do adore the Russian Blue Lines.. and had a True Blue along with a Rose Gold Classic Pattern Marmalade Tabby for 18 and 17 years respectively... The Blues have such a fine attitude and delightful talons for claws... That's one beautiful longhair there.. My current quest is to find one like him for this home.. It has been too long without Our Little Ones around...and too quiet...waaaay tooooo quiet..

    Namaste...

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  10. Hi! I just read your blog about your cat Jack. I am amazed that he looks almost exactly like my cat Zeus. Zeus was a rescue cat and we had been told he was Maincoon. But after seeing pictures today, I do believe he is a Nebelung. Just amazing and if all Nebelungs are like my cat Zeus, I have a new bread to love! :)

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  11. Hi "Unknown" I bet Zeus is a Nebelung!! Every one I met have been absolutely amazing, and I bet Zeus is too.

    Thanks for stopping by.

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