A Bit about Aby's in general

Tawny showing good ticking & facial markings

Abyssinians are a lithe, muscular, elegant cat with a ticked coat i.e. each individual guard hair is striped, like the coat of the American Mountain Lion or Cougar, with tabby markings on their face. They are intelligent, loving, playful, curious and very much people-cats. They like to be with you and will help you with everything, like making the bed, reading the paper, weeding the garden etc.etc. They are always ready for a game, sometimes a rough one. They love chasing things and some will bring them back for you to throw again. Some don’t much like being carried around cause they’re too busy, but love to ride on your shoulders and they’ll sit on your knee, or cuddle up beside you, when you settle down.

The colours are Tawny (also called Usual or Ruddy) which has a rich dark apricot undercoat with black ticking; Blue which has a warm oatmeal undercoat with blue/grey ticking; Cinnamon (or Sorrel or Red) which has a rich dark apricot undercoat with cinnamon/brown ticking; Fawn which has an oatmeal undercoat with fawn/light brown ticking; Chocolate which has an apricot undercoat and chocolate brown ticking; and Lilac which has an oatmeal undercoat with dove-grey ticking. Tabby facial markings, tail tips, paw pads & the hair between the pads, all match the ticking but the chest and undersides are not ticked. There are Silver versions of all these, where the undercoat is silver (white), with the same colours of ticking.

Abyssinians (Aby’s to their friends) are a very old breed. A British Army wife is reported to have taken one back to England from Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1868 at the end of the Abyssinian War. No records were kept of cat breeding in those days, so it is not known whether Zula, as it was called, is an ancestor of modern Aby’s, but the coat pattern seems not to occur often, if at all, in the normal English domestic population. The coat pattern is dominant over all tabby patterns so it can be evident if only one parent has it, but at least one parent must have it. The colours, particularly Cinnamon, are also different from those in the normal cat population. I find it very difficult to believe that Aby’s were developed from the normal English domestic cat population, as has been claimed.

There is a specimen of a small wild cat in the Natural History Museum in Leiden, Holland which was acquired some time between 1833 and 1882 from a Mr Frank, who was a dealer in wild animal skulls and skeletons. People who know Abyssinians and have seen this specimen, say it could be any Abyssinian today and this is backed up by photographs and descriptions. A former resident of Zimbabwe has said to me that there are “lots of cats like that all over Zimbabwe” when looking at Abys and an Egyptian man at the counter when I collected one from the airlines, said the same about Egypt. It is hardly surprising that people who have gone to Ethopia and asked are there any purebred cats there have been told no. Any cats at all would most likely be half wild. A species of wild cat, Felis chaus, also called the Jungle Cat, is found all over Southern Asia, India and Egypt now and could have been much more widespread 100 years ago. All descriptions and photographs I have seen are just like an Aby and I think that this cat could be the ancestor. Mention has also been made of the species Felis ocreata and I’m not sure whether this is another name for Felis chaus. People have recently been suggesting that ticked cats reached England from Singapore, Malaysia or the Phillipines where a ticked, unstriped coat is very common. I would be most interested in any other information on the origin of our beloved Aby.