British Shorthair Cat Breed Profile: Purebred Brit Cats – History ...
A quiet, undemanding breed with a mellow disposition, the British Shorthair played an important role in British history.
British Shorthair HistoryAlthough some cats may have been brought to the British Isles by the Phoenicians prior to the arrival of the Romans, it was the latter who introduced them in great numbers. The Romans kept cats for rodent control, and brought them to the territories they conquered. The British eventually got rid of the Romans, but kept the cats.
Cats in the UK were appreciated for their ability to protect food stores from rodents until the Middle Ages when ignorant superstition led many to believe that they were aligned with the devil . Enormous numbers of cats were slaughtered, and many cases, their innocent owners as well. This dramatically reduced the cat population, and so the rodent population expanded unchecked. As rodents carried plague-bearing fleas, the mass slaughter of cats was a significant contributor to the widespread devastation of the Black Plague.
Eventually the madness subsided, but cats were still kept by most people for rodent catching rather than companionship, until purebred cats became widely recognized status symbols. British Shorthairs, especially the blue-gray type (often called the British Blue), saw a surge in popularity with the rise of the modern cat fancy movement.
In subsequent years, the British Blue’s fortunes fell again as cat fanciers developed a preference for exotic foreign cats such as the Persian, and the two World Wars took a toll on the British Shorthair population. Nearly extinct by World War II’s end, the British Shorthair was saved by cross-breeding its few survivors with Burmese, Chartreux, Russian Blues, and Persians.
Although introduced to North America early in the 20th century, the breed didn't attract much notice there until the 1960s when it was recognized by the American Cat Association, and later the Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA). Though the British Shorthair is still relatively rare in North America, in recent years it has ranked among the CFA’s top 20 most popular breeds.
British Shorthair Old Bloodlines - Bookshelf
Bloodlines
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