Oriental Longhair

Oriental Longhair Cats

The Oriental Longhair, is a breed of domestic cat. It was formerly known as the British Angora before being renamed in 2002 by British cat fanciers in order to avoid confusion with the Turkish Angora.

The Oriental Longhair is analogous to the CFA Balinese and Javanese, and the TICA Oriental Longhair breeds in the United States. With no globally recognized naming convention, other cat fanciers may refer to this type as Foreign Longhair or Mandarin.

Oriental Longhairs feature a long tubular, Siamese-style body (known in the cat fancy as oriental type), but with a longer coat than the short-haired Siamese. The range of possible coat colours includes everything from self-coloured (black, blue, chocolate, lilac, cinnamon, caramel, fawn, red, cream and apricot), tortoiseshell, smoke (silver undercoat), shaded or tipped, tabby or white. All Oriental Longhairs have green eyes, except for the whites, which may have green or blue eyes, or be odd-eyed (two different colored eyes).

If an Oriental Longhair is bred to an Oriental shorthair or a Siamese, the kittens will all be short-haired. However, if these kittens are reintroduced into a breeding program as adults, approximately half of their kittens will have long coats.

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