Oriental Longhair

Oriental Longhair
Alternative names	British Angora Javanese Foreign Longhair Mandarin
Breed standard
FIFe	standard
CFA	standard
TICA	standard
ACFA	standard
ACF	standard
Cat (Felis catus)

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 fancies in order to avoid confusion with the Turkish Angora.^{[citation needed]}

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 fancies may refer to this type as Foreign Longhair or Mandarin.

Description

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).

 The breed originated as a byproduct of the introduction of the Sorrel [=Cinnamon] gene from a Somali 
 into Oriental cats. The F1 generation, when mated to each other, did produce Cinnamon kittens,
 but also some longhairs as well. These were originally called "Angoras".
  The late Julia May was involved and is, perhaps, the reason why the OLH breeding policy is rather more 
liberal than usual in Pedigree animals.The breeds open to outcrossing are Siamese, Balinese and 
 Oriental Shorthair as well as OLHs. Any offspring which are long-coated and WITHOUT points may be shown as 
an OLH at GCCF shows.
 TICA and FIFE recognise the other kittens from such an outcross according to their phenotype
 or ,simply, what they look like. 
The excellent outcome of this policy is that the breed is healthy, vigorous and fecund.
Each litter can be a delight , especially if one or both parents are "variants" 
[in thise case = short-haired cats carrying the longhair gene]
.There can be pointeds and selfs, long and short coated and any of the 
very many coat patterns currently in the Oriental breed.

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.

External links

• AACE
• http://tica.org/public/breeds/si/si.pdf STANDARD ORIENTAL LONG HAIR & SIAMÉS GROUP - TICA]
• STANDARD ORIENTAL LONG HAIR - FIFe