Balinese and Javanese Cat

Sometimes the names of the races can create confusion. If well the roots of the Turk angora and of the van Turk effectively go back to turkey, there doesn’t exist absolutely any relation between the Balinese and the isle of Bali, in the South East Asia; the name is an invention of its creator.

Breed Origins
To cat lovers who don’t know about this breed, the Balinese would seem as a contradiction: a pure Siamese with long hair.

In genetic terms, it is an homozigotic Siamese; its genotype includes two recessive L genes of long hair, one from each parent, for which all the mating give place to long hair whelps.

The origin of the race goes back to the forties, when long hair whelps began to appear in the Siamese litters.

(There exists certain polemics in the feline environment with respect to if it was a spontaneous mutation or product of a selective breeding).

Since it didn’t obey the criterions of the Siamese, the breeders sold them as animals for company and the feline world weren’t interested in them.

At the middle of the fifties, and as consequence of the increasing of the population, the United States breeders developed the feature, with the intention of establishing a new race.

The first step for the recognition is to breed enough cats that obey the wished standards, so that in this way you may maintain the race without any excessive consanguinity.

The first selective bred Balinese were born in the United States in 1955, from two mutated Siamese: a seal color point male of long hair and a blue color point whelps of long hair.

Independently from this Californian breeder, and at first without any knowledge, a New York breeder, Helen Smith, decided to name it Balinese because of its graceful movements, that made her remember the dancers of the Indonesia Isle of Bali.

The Balinese made its debut as a race at the empire cat show exhibition of New York in 1961, with the name of longhair red Siamese.

Acknowledgment
Big feline associations of the United States recognized (with the name of Balinese) in between 1963 and 1970, and at the beginning of the eighties it also obtained the acknowledgment of the International Feline Federation and of Great Britain.

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