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Havana Brown In the Beginning
No cat made has got the shade of a sweet
Havana brown. This green-eyed cat with the distinctive corncob
muzzle has sent writers ripping through their Thesauri (or is it Thesauruses?)
in search of synonyms for "rich, warm, glowing mahogany
color." But alas, there is no feline-color-descriptors
category in Mr. Roget's book or in any of the 28 editions that
appeared in his lifetime (1779-1869). Indeed, Roget probably
never saw a brown show cat anyway (they weren't called Havanas
then) because he died nineteen years before a cat with similar
color took first prize at a show in his native England in 1888.
Fortunately, cats are plain-speaking people, so "rich, warm,
and glowing" will do it up just brown.
The Havana brown was created in Great Britain
during the 1950s, but brown cats first appeared at cat shows more
than 60 years before. Some of the earliest cats imported from
Siam by English cat fanciers were solid brown. In addition to the
all-brown cat that won first prize at a show in England in 1888,
a brown cat said to belong to a breed called the Swiss mountain
cat was exhibited in England in 1894, and in 1928 the Siamese Cat
Club of Britain presented a special award to the cat with the
best chocolate body in show.
By 1930, however, the Siamese Cat Club had
decided it was "unable to encourage the breeding of any but
blue-eyed Siamese." Therefore, brown cats were not seen in
England again until 1954, when photographs of two
chestnut-colored kittens appeared in the August edition of the
journal Our Cats. These kittens were called Bronze Leaf
and Bronze Wing. They were from the Craigiehilloch cattery of
Mrs. R. Clarke in Reading, County Berkshire. The mother of the
kittens was a seal point Siamese named Our Miss Smith. Their
father was Elmtower Bronze Idol, a brown hybrid who was the first
Havana registered in England. Bronze Idol's mother was a black
domestic shorthair by a sealpoint Siamese. Idol's father was also
a sealpoint Siamese.
Development
At first, chestnut-brown kittens with green
eye color were called Havanas, though there is some disagreement
about the origin of that name. Some people declare that the breed
was named after the rabbit of the same color. Others say that
Havana tobacco was the inspiration. When the Governing Council of
the Cat Fancy in England (GCCF) recognized Havanas for
championship competition in 1958, it assigned the name chestnut
brown foreign to the breed. A dozen years later GCCF reverted to
calling the cats by their original name, Havana.
The first chestnut brown foreigns arrived in
the United States during the mid-1950s. By the end of the decade
the United Cat Federation accepted the breed for championship
competition under the name Havana Brown. While the American and
the English versions of this breed ultimately shared the same
name, they do not share the same conformation. In England the
Havana is a judged with foreign-bodied cats like the Siamese,
Abyssinian, and Russian blue. In the United States the general
conformation is midway between the short-coupled, thickset breeds
and the elongated, svelte ones. One unique characteristic of the
Havana brown is its corncob muzzle, which juts from the end of
the cat's face, dramatized by a definite whisker pinch.
Though it has been called by one British
observer "a uniquely North American breed," the Havana
brown has gathered limited support in the United States and
Canada. The subsequent development and instant popularity of the
Oriental shorthair, which shares a common ancestor or two with
the Havana, is, perhaps, part of the reason for the Havana's slow
progress. Moreover, as many breeds were in the early stages of
their development, the Havana sometimes displayed a
less-than-amenable attitude. As also happened with many other
developing breeds, the Havana did not always breed true. The
presence of Russian blues and other shorthairs--some of unknown
origin--in the Havana's background occasionally revealed itself
in lavender Havana brown kittens. Today these are accepted for
championship competition in The International Cat Association
(TICA) and the Cat Fanciers' Federation. TICA, in fact, simply
calls the breed Havana. The brown Havana is accepted for
championship competition in all North American registries.
It Looks Like ...
The Havana brown is a medium-sized cat with
good muscle tone and a rich, solid-color coat. The Havana's head
is longer than it is wide, narrowing to a rounded muzzle with a
pronounced break on both sides behind the whisker pads. The
somewhat narrow muzzle--called a corncob muzzle because of its
unique shape--and the whisker break are distinctive
characteristics of the Havana. Although the end of the muzzle
appears almost square, this is an illusion created by a
well-developed chin, whose profile appears more square than
round. Ideally, the tip of the nose and the chin form an almost
perpendicular line.
The Havana has large, round-tipped ears that
are cupped at the base and set wide apart, but not flared. The
Havana's green eyes are medium in size, set wide apart,
brilliant, alert, and expressive.
Personality
Erstwhile temperament problems
notwithstanding, the Havana is now "the most people-oriented
cat I've ever encountered," reports one Havana fancier.
"They follow you about, and they have to be a part of
everything that's going on. But they're very quiet, too. And very
intelligent."
If this sounds like the best of all possible
worlds that could have evolved from a Siamese-shorthair cross, it
is. "They're a nice mixture of the two personalities. You've
got elements of both personalities there, and it's nicely
blended."