Monday 1 September 2008

Antipodean cat

The New Zealand Cat Fancy makes no mention of the Antipodean cat. This cat is meant to be a New Zealand short haired and long haired domestic cat. Just out of interest, they have a Tiffany, which for the Kiwis is a medium long haired Burmese. Their Tiffany is not the Tiffany I describe and illustrate on Pictures of cat.org. (see Tiffany cat). I couldn't see anything like this cat registered with the Australian Cat Federation Inc either.

In reference to the name of this cat "the antipodes refer to lands and peoples located on the opposite side of the world compared to the speaker" (src: Wikipedia published under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version - Wikipedia license applies). In this instance the cat must have been, at least theoretically, named by a person living in the UK, I suggest (who named the cat breed? - please tell me)

Is the Antipodean a purebred pedigree cat? It can't be as it would be listed by The New Zealand Cat Fancy and it is not nor is there any oblique reference to it as far as I can see. The Antipodean cat must then be a mixed breed domestic cat that is simply a pet. But websites talk about this cat as if it a purebred cat. {but please note the useful comments below}

A pretty thorough search of the Internet does not produce any breeders and extremely little information. The breed has been described in some detail as if it comes from a breed standard indicating it is a pedigree cat - very strange.

Then you've got Clippercats, Polydactyl Antipodean cats, supposedly. Is this a con? Probably not but it kind of sounds like it. Are we inventing cat breeds to drum up interest? Jumping over to Australia again, the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy Australia and Victoria Inc. makes no mention of the Antipodean Cat nor anything remotely associated with it.

So the Antipodean cat, which is meant to be a cat from the opposite side of the world, seems not to exist - any comments welcome. Oh, I couldn't find any pictures either, not surprising I suppose.

Antipodean cat to Home page

4 comments:

  1. The breed Antipodeon cat is now known as the New Zealand SH & LH
    and is a breed being developed
    and registered with catz inc
    http://www.catz.org.nz/index.html
    not the nz cat fancy

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Clippercat is also a New Zealand breed registered with catz inc

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, thanks for the comment and shedding some light on this.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Polydactyl simply means many fingers, Polydactyl cats have more than 5 toes, usually a 2nd duclaw on their front paws, this can (but not always) indicate too much inbreeding in the family line.

    ReplyDelete

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