Azul Cubano (cat)

The Azul Cubano is a very little-known cat breed from Cuba. It has a "blue" shorthaired coat but it can be semi-longhaired and it was registered in 2010 in Cuba. It is better known as the Cuban Blue. I will refer to "Cuban Blue".

Cuban Blue cat aka Azul Cubano. Image: Reuters.

The Spanish word "azul" means blue in English as you might have guessed. But of course, blue does not mean the colour blue as we know it. It means gray with a slight bluish tint. That bluish tint comes about because blue is a dilute black. When you dilute black because of the presence of a dilution gene you create this slightly blue tint to the gray.

Reuters reported on what was then described as a "new breed" on May 27, 2011, almost 12 years ago. Almost nothing has been heard of the breed since. That tells you how insignificant this breed is in the world of the cat fancy. In fact, it may have fizzled out completely

At that time, the president of the Cuban Association of Cat Enthusiasts, Angel Uriarte Rubio, described the breed as "very docile, very playful. They have a very agreeable personality".

Mr Rubio spearheaded the effort to have the Cuban Blue recognised as a new breed. The breed is described as looking similar to the Russian Blue. Apparently, people had trouble differentiating the two.

But as there are no Russian blue cats in Cuba, they decided to create a new breed. At the time, Mr Rubio said that the poor relations between the USA and Cuba might prevent the Cuban Blue becoming a registered breed in the USA under the CFA and TICA. To this date they have not registered this cat as a new breed.

I have no information about how the breed started other than the cats just turned up. What I mean is that a cat somewhere in Havana, Cuba, possibly a stray cat, had a litter of gray kittens or at least some of the kittens were gray. These appear to be the foundation cats for the Cuban Blue. I don't know any more than that at this time.