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Cymric In the Beginning
Cymric--rightfully pronounced (KOOM-rick) but ordinarily pronounced (KIM-rick)--is the Welsh name for Wales. Cymric is also the name of a longhaired, tailless cat that originated on the Isle of Man, a 221-square-mile, rough-cut gemstone of the British tourist industry set gracefully in the Irish Sea about 80 kilometers north of Wales.
The Isle of Man is better known to cat fanciers as the hometown of the Manx, a shorthaired tailless cat; but blood being thicker than usual on small islands--and longhaired cats being indigenous to Northern Europe--cats without tails have coexisted in long and shorthaired versions on the Isle of Man from the Cymric's and the Manx's relative inceptions.
Though hindsight can take one little farther in accounting for the origins of these breeds, many theories have been advanced to explain how tailless cats got to the Isle of Man. Two cats, one legend has it, were the last animals to board Noah's Ark; and Captain Noah, in his haste to beat the weather, slammed the gate on their tails, summarily amputating them.
A determined fleet of believers advances the Manx-it-is- plain-did-mainly-come-from-Spain thesis, which has Manx paddling to shore from a sinking vessel of the Spanish Armada in 1588. But to find a port in that theory's storm, one must also find evidence of tailless cats in Spain and of a shipwreck involving the Armada in the Irish Sea.
In addition to the ones-if-by-sea theories, there are two by-land explanations for tailless cats. Irish invaders are reputed to have decorated their helmets with cats' tails, and mother cats are reputed to have chewed their kittens' tails off to spare them this fate. (The most implausible theory holds that tailless cats are the products of genetic hopscotch between cats and rabbits.)
Scientists--who favor parsimonious explanations--suggest that taillessness in the Manx and Cymric is the result of nothing more exotic than a mutant gene that grew unimpeded in the hospitable, closed environment on the minuscule Isle of Man. (Rhode Island, our smallest state, is 14 times the size of Man.)
The gene for taillessness is an incomplete dominant. If a kitten inherits one gene for taillessness and one gene for a normal tail from its parents, the kitten will be tailless. Thus, in order for a kitten to be born tailless, one of its parents must possess the tailless gene. Yet even if both parents carry this gene, there is no guarantee that an entire litter will be born without tails, and just as sure as pussycat's got a tail, some Cymrics do.
What's more, because all kittens that inherit the taillessness gene from both parents fail to develop in the womb, all living Cymrics are heterozygotes, possessing one gene for taillessness and one for a tail. As a result, there are a number of possible endings to the Cymric tale: rumpy, riser, stumpy, and tailed.
The rumpy and the riser, if they meet the rest of the Cymric standard, are the cats most likely seen in show halls. Of the two, the dimpled rumpy, with an indentation marking the spot where a tail would be, is the ne minus ultra of the show world. A riser, which is a rumpy with a coccyx (the hinge that attaches the tail to the spine), may also be shown if the coccyx does not impede a judge's hand traveling fore to aft along the Cymric's spine. Stumpy and tailed Cymrics, though not showable, are used by Cymric fanciers in their breeding programs.
Unlike the absence of a tail, the presence of a long coat in Cymrics is not the result of a natural mutation. Former Cat Fancier's Association president Richard H. Gebhardt explains in The Complete Cat Book: "Beginning in the late 1930s and continuing for several decades, Manx breeders began to use Persians in their breeding programs, not from any deep desire to produce longhaired Manx, but in order to improve conformation and thickness of coat in their shorthairs.
"Cat fanciers, being what they are, will frequently seek recognition for anything new or different that appears in their litters. Just as frequently they will attempt to explain the unique in terms of a rare mutation, and some people tried to use this as an explanation for the appearance of longhaired Manx kittens. Such was not the case."
Though Manx arrived in this country in the 1930s (and rated their own breed club in England three decades earlier), Cymrics did not rate more than pet or occasional breeding status until the mid-1970s, more than twenty years after their shorthaired brethren had been granted imprimaturs by cat registries in the United States. Presently the Cymric is accepted for championship competition in every major North American cat-registering association. In some associations, however, it is no longer classified as a separate breed or even called the Cymric. It is simply, and more logically, known as a longhaired Manx.
It Looks Like ...
The Cymric is an engaging constellation of circles--from its rounded head that is slightly longer than it is broad to its rounded, tailless rump. This cat's large, round, and full eyes are angled slightly upward toward the nose. A gentle dip in the nose; a definite whisker break, with large, round whisker pads; a well-developed muzzle; and a strong chin complete the Cymric face.
The Cymric's ears are wide at the base, tapering gradually to rounded tips. Medium in size, the ears are amply spaced and are set slightly outward. When viewed from behind, the ear set resembles the rocker of a cradle.
The Cymric has a short, thick neck and a solid, muscular, medium-sized body. Compact and stout in appearance, the Cymric has well-sprung ribs and is powerfully built without being coarse. Its short back forms a smooth, continuous arch from shoulders to rump. The flank (or fleshy area of the side between the ribs and the hip) has greater depth than in other breeds, lending considerable gravity to the body when the cat is viewed from the side.
But for its heavy, glossy, medium to medium-long double coat, the Cymric is indistinguishable from its shorthaired relative the Manx. The Cymric's longer coat, which gradually lengthens from shoulder to rump, may create the impression that the Cymric is longer than its shorthaired relative.
Personality
Cymrics have the personality of the