An Abyssinian Cat Adopting Me

It was in the first days of december 1997 when I saw her the first time. Having lost my first Somali Cat the beginning of the year, I wanted to have a tom-cat the same breed again, but not of the same colour. Blue ones were rare and very expensive, breeders told me I had to wait at least a year or even longer, when I saw an advert in the paper: "Somali-Mix for sale".

Why not a Mixed Cat? Rescueing cats for a long time it was hard for me to pay for a breeded cat when I could spend the same money for lost cats so I said to myself: Give it a try, just phone and ask... So I did.

The lady on the phone was very nice, we talked about for more than one hour, and when she told me, there was a little boy among the Somali kittens I visited her at once.
We spent several hours on the carpet surrounded by 13 (thirteen!) kitten! Her two cats, one a beautiful Somali cat, the other one a gorgeous Main Coone had brought their litters of kittens nto the world of her house within two days and shared everything, food and sleeping places as well as the kittens and their attention for them. The breed I was interested in was the result of the love story of her Somali lady with a stray cat and soon I fell in love with the little boy, the only one of this breed. But he was so shy! Whenever I tried to play with him, a tiny little short haired girl came across. As ugly she was as friendly she was, curious and lovely but I was alert. I didn't want to have another girl, girls are so difficult but I had no chance. She had decided to adopt me...

I went home. The next morning I'd made my decision: I would take them both... The little boy was too shy and I hoped she would help him to integrate to the rest of my cats, for this two were a fantastic team... By the way she had convinced me with her charme and whoever has the chance to face a friendly abyssinian cat should run away as long as he can

Lea, as I called the Aby-variant (sounds friendlier than mixed) is really something else...
Even now she loves to play with everything which is round and sparkling, she's everybodys darling and loves to wash even visitors... She ruined several young trees in the garden by jumping on them too often, she went underground when my house was renewed, presenting me embalmbed mice she found and loves to take a shower under the lawn-sprinkler.
As a typical Abessinian she's more like a dog than a cat and follows me wherever I go. A short whistle and she comes running through the garden (or my house), telling my all the things she'd seen or experienced outside. She is very, very communicative, even meeows me a "God bless you!" whenever I'm sneezing...
Every morning she wakes me up by sucking and trampling with her front paws on my shoulder so I can't wear sexy things anylonger without being asked who tortured me...

At the end of 1999 she became mother herself - and she was a wonderful mother! Her mate had been a gorgious blue Somali cat, starting to breed Somalis in blue and I was more than surprised to see her one early morning feeding three little blue kittens. Later I found out her father had been a blue Persian-Mix so he left her the recessive gene for this colour. I was just little disappointed she had done all the work alone, but stubbornly she had refused my assistence as a midwife and decided to surprise me instead.
She was a very, very careful mother, except for one thing...
When the kittens were about three weeks old, one late night Lea decided to move them to a new nest. Unfortunately she had chosen the upper part of my wardrobe, about 1,8 m high, at the time the kittens started crawling... Picked up by the scruff of the neck Lea tried to transport each kitten the long and dangerous way from the my sleeping room through two other rooms, over two other wardrobes till she reached the last one, opening her jaws to let the kitten drop to the ground. Sometimes nearly 2 m below... A frind of mine stood there to catch the kitten and bringt it back, meanwhile Lea started to transport the next kitten... After two hours we all were exhausted so I locked up the young family in the bathroom and hardly slept that night because of Lea's loud and scratching protest... But she forgive me and accepted the bathroom two days later, especially my red tomcat Fuchs helped her to bring up the kittens from thast day on.

Even every cat is very special, Abessinian cats are more special.
Abessinian cat's are usually small, thin cats, but very agile! Firmly muscled, lithe and very panther-like.
They are very communicative so one could think to be faced with a Siamese cat in the wrong coat... Especially when girls are longing for a mate. Never try to keep an Abessinian alone if you are out of the house for hours and/or have neigbours being susceptible to a screaming cat!

Being a short-haired cat they are very easy to groom, better said, forget about comb and brush, you just don't need it. Except for caressing...
The coat of an Abessinian has an iridescent quality because of the agouti ticking with even, dark-coured ticking providing a contrast to the lighter bands of colour. (Agouti is the colour between the tabby stripes - each hair can be ticked up to six to eight times!)
The most common colour is ruddy (orange-brown with either black or dark brown ticking), or red (warm red with chocolate brown ticking).
New colours are blue (warm rosy beige with blue grey to steel blue ticking) and fawn, a sort of very light red as well as the silver variations and chocolate and lilac.
But I prefer the orginal colour ruddy, the "Aby look" ("wild but not savage, centres on the large expressive eyes, whose glance is intelligent, mischievous, demanding and yet affectionate and sensitive" as described on http://www.theabycat.com/abyssinian_cats.htm) and the old style with a rounder face and ears than the "oriental style" as in nowadays Siamese Cats...

It's one of the eldest breeds of cats, first mentioned in the Harper's Weekly (January 27, 1872 issue) where the 3rd prize in the December, 1871 Crystal Palace show was taken by an Abyssinian Cat, the first Abyssinians to be imported to North America from England arrived in the early 1900s.

For more information see
www.theabycat.com
www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/abyssinian.html.

© LeaofRafiki 03.03.2004