The Abyssinian cat's name points to Ethiopia, but its genes point elsewhere
The first Abyssinians shown in England arrived from Abyssinia, today's Ethiopia, and the breed kept the name. Yet genetic studies trace its ancestry to Southeast Asia and Europe. The oldest known specimen, a stuffed cat bought by a Dutch museum in the 1830s, was even labelled as coming from India.
That specimen still sits in the Zoological Museum in Leiden, acquired around 1834 to 1836 from a dealer in small wild cats. The popular origin story is more colourful: a cat called Zula, said to have been brought to England in 1868 by Lieutenant General Sir Robert Napier after the Abyssinia War, took first prize at the Crystal Palace show in December 1871. Many breeders doubt Zula was really an Abyssinian, pointing out that drawings show ears too small and fur too long and wavy. One suggestion reconciles the evidence: travellers passing through Calcutta may have carried the cats to Abyssinia.
What defines the breed is its ticked coat. Each hair has a pale base followed by three or four bands of colour darkening towards the tip, produced by an interaction between a tabby gene and a ticking gene. Kittens are born dark and lighten over months. The classic colour is a warm reddish brown with black ticking, and cinnamon arose as a mutation of it. In 2007 an Abyssinian named Cinnamon became the first cat to have its entire genome published.
Temperamentally Abyssinians are restless and social, rarely lap cats, and are sometimes nicknamed clowns of the cat kingdom; they make soft chirruping sounds rather than a typical meow. Veterinarian Joan O. Joshua described Abyssinians and Burmese as showing an almost dog-like attachment to owners.
The breed was recognised by Britain's Governing Council of the Cat Fancy in 1929, then came close to disappearing there once wartime losses were compounded by a feline leukaemia virus epidemic, so breeders had to bring in cats from abroad. A University of California, Davis study found low genetic diversity. The breed is prone to several inherited conditions, most notably progressive retinal atrophy, although in Sweden one hereditary blindness fell from 45 per cent prevalence to under 4 per cent by 2008.
Source: Abyssinian cat
