Guest Article By Cheshire & Wain's Resident Historian Kathryn Hughes

According to the latest report by Cat's Protection about cat ownership in the UK, more pedigree cats than moggies were acquired in the last 12 months for the very first time. The enduring charm of the British Shorthair means they continue to hold the top spot as Britain's most popular breed but what is their history and how did their popularity grow to what it is today? 

In 1903 Harrison Weir, the man often referred to as ‘the godfather of the modern cat’, asked rhetorically, ‘why such breathless talk about long-haired cats, be they blues or silvers?’ before declaring that the ‘high-class short-haired cat is one of the most perfect animals ever created’.

If Weir sounds a bit cross, that’s because he was. Thirty years earlier, he had been instrumental in setting up Great Britain’s first cat show, with the intention of showing the world just how beautiful, gentle and domestic cats could be (many people still regarded them as marauding wildlife). In 1889, he published the cat lover’s bible Our Cats and All About Them, in which he had laid down breed standards, giving owners the idea of what they should be aiming for: how long should a calico’s tail be, and what about the length of a Manx’s ears? 

  Our Cats and All About Them by Harrison Weir

What particularly irritated Weir was how fashionable long-haired cats had come to dominate the prize lists at the annual Crystal Palace cat show.  These were the fashionable cats, the newly-arrived ‘exotics’ whose very name – Angora, Persian - suggested origins that were full of far-away mystery.  Where, fumed Weir, were the more familiar native British shorthairs which had lived in this country for centuries? ‘The fact that these cats exist is the best proof of [their] endurance and strength’. As far as Weir was concerned, they were just as lovely as the fancier breeds, maybe more so since their compacted colours blazed more brightly than if they had been dispersed in a cloudy puff.  What’s more, maintained Weir on no particular evidence, short-hairs were ‘far in advance of long-haired cats in intelligence’.

Judging in the ring at the Crystal Palace
 (Photo : Russell & Sons, Crystal Palace.)

Could it be a case of familiarity breeding contempt? There had been shorthaired cats in Britain for as long as anyone could remember so it was hard to get excited when you saw one hanging out on a street corner or at the bottom of the neighbour’s garden.  There were two theories as to how shorthairs arrived on British soil.  The first and most popular was that native shorthairs were descended from the cats the Romans brought over from mainland Europe, intended as working cats to help reduce the rodent population. These newcomers interbred with the wild “Celtic” cats of the British Isles to produce what we recognise today as the typical shorthair: a large, cobby animal with a dense, plush coat and a friendly but independent character.

The second origin story goes that in the 16th Century, the monks of La Grande Chartreuse monastery near Grenoble intensively bred stocky shorthair cats to keep their wine sellers clear of rats.  French sailors eventually acquired these useful animals to travel in the holds of their ships to protect their food supplies.  Since these sea-faring cats lived in unstable conditions, keeping upright as the boat rocked from side to side, they developed stout limbs and paws that were very steady and strong. The legend goes that one or two of these seaborn cats escaped to shore, taking their strong paddy paws with them.  Here, they began breeding with local cats, from which the British shorthair eventually emerged.

Percy's chunky paws captured by Rachel Oates in a recent photoshoot

Whichever backstory you choose (or neither), there’s no doubt that shorthaired cats were particularly suited to modern life in the nineteenth century.  Britain might be the world’s leading industrial country, with more than half the population living in cities, but it was still heavily dependent on agriculture for its vital foodstuffs.  Hardy short-haired cats, with a strong streak of ‘wild cat’ in them were perfectly capable of adapting to either environment.  Out on the farm, the shorthair could patrol the haybarns and milking sheds for rodents without getting its hair tangled up in machinery. In the city, they performed that same service in basement kitchens: their easy-to-clean double coat meant they could keep warm no matter how cold it was outside.  Calm and sociable, they weren’t too proud to catch their own dinner. Then again, the placid shorthair might simply curl up on the sitting room hearth. 

As to why the adaptable, self-cleaning, serene shorthair had been forgotten in the rush towards the silky Persian or the fluffy Angora, Weir’s friend and fellow judge H E Jung believed he knew the answer.  ‘It is a matter of regret that … the prettier long-haired variety secures greater support from the lady exhibitors’. From here, it was a short, imaginative step to elide the long-haired cat with its female owner and project upon it everything that was most annoying about the fairer sex. Take the long-haired cat’s intense self-grooming. All that intense face washing and whisker-primping recalled the behaviour of a fashionable miss or a glamorous matron preparing to go out on the town to attract admiring attention and break a few hearts along the way.  There was something slightly dishonest about long-haired cats, too: underneath all that fur, they looked exactly the same as any street corner moggy. They were, to an extent, pulling the wool (or fur) over their owners’ eyes.

High-society felines by Louis Wain from his 1905 Annual

A short-haired cat, by contrast, was a man’s cat that prided themselves on being low maintenance. They liked to keep themselves clean and tidy without disguise or artifice. Unlike the long-haired cat, they did not pretend to be something they were not. With a quick lick, the shorthair was ready to head out and start the day in a business-like fashion! 

Considerations of social class added an extra twist to this imaginative analysis. Weir and his friends were certain that aristocratic and would-be ladies were ruining the cat fancy by favouring long-haired breeds.  Not only did long-haired cats tend to be more delicate than short-hairs, but owning one involved extra expense in the form of a special diet and elaborate grooming routines.  Brushes and combs were needed to keep those coats knot-free, and some lady owners felt it necessary to dress up their long-haired cats in little booties to stop their paws from getting dirty in wet weather.  Moreover, Angoras, Persians and the rest generally agreed to be picky eaters. Rather than catching mice or making do with kitchen scraps, they preferred to be served the new modern cat food that had come on the market, courtesy of Spratts.  Either that or something particularly delicious (and expensive) from the butcher. As for their toileting arrangements, long-hairs preferred to use an indoor tray with specially bought litter (the best came from Japan) rather than take their chances at the bottom of the garden. 

The short-haired cat, by contrast, was particularly suited to being a working man’s (or woman’s) cat: sensible, undemanding, self-contained, and self-catering. At least, that is how Harrison Weir and some other senior ‘cat men’ thought of it. In 1901 Sir Claud Alexander founded the British Cat Club to encourage the breeding, exhibiting, and kind treatment of the short-haired, which is to say ‘domestic’, cat. At the outset, the subscription was 5 shillings, which was soon reduced to 2s. 6d., to attract the poorer classes. That same year, the animal portraitist Gambier Bolton instituted the Short-Haired Cat Society. Again, the subscription was carefully pegged: 5 shillings for the gentry and 2s. 6d. for the working classes. The underpinning principle was that shorthaired cats and the working classes had much in common: they were both salt of the earth.

'Manx Kippers for Tea' Louis Wain Postcard from the Cheshire & Wain archive

Yet despite what Weir feared, upper-class women did continue to keep a soft spot in the corner of their hearts for shorthaired cats.  One reason may have been that shorthairs, like aristocrats, shared an ancient, landed lineage, a link to essential Englishness. Lady Decies, owner of Fulmer Zaida, a fluffy Chinchilla, who was the most successful long-haired cat ever to compete in Britain, was the equally proud owner of Xenophon, a rich brown tabby whom she had carefully bred to perfection.  Despite having a homely appearance compared to his more glamorous cattery mate Zaida, Xenophon was never defeated in his class, often taking Best of Colour, Best in Variety, followed by Best Shorthair Cat, and on occasion, Best Cat in Show.  

Excerpt from "Cats as a Hobby", The Tatler, 1901

Thanks in part to the success of Xenophon, shorthair cats became very popular amongst British cat fanciers in the 1890s.  There were stories of eager men and women scouring kennels up and down the country in search of the best specimens to add to their breeding stock.  Whites with blue or odd eyes and silver tabbies and well-marked calicoes were always popular.

 Cheshire & Wain CEOs, Percy and Penelope, are both British Shorthairs despite their completely different coats. (Photography: Rachel Oates)

Despite gaining modest popularity by the end of the nineteenth century, the British Shorthair was devastated by the coming of the First World War when breeding programmes stopped completely.  By the time breeding started again, only a few pedigree shorthairs could be identified. To avoid a dangerous amount of inbreeding, these rare survivors were mated with Persians to preserve some semblance of the breed.  Later on, British shorthairs were bred with European and American shorthair cats and Russian Blues. Even nowadays, when looking at pedigrees of purebred British shorthair cats, you can find origins of different breeds like Persians, Exotic cats and even the relatively rare Scottish Folds.  Further refinement continued after the Second World War and the shorthair started to climb again in popularity.  

Penelope (above) is known as a 'Blue Tortoishell and White' British Shorthair. Her distinctive markings are made up of splodges of blue (grey), peach (ginger) and white (Photography: Rachel Oates)

These days, and for the last few years, the British shorthair is Britain's most popular pedigree breed. Their teddy bear looks, consisting of a plush fur coat in a spectrum of colours, large round eyes and big fat cheeks, make them irresistible. In addition, their superb health and kind, calm nature qualify them as the nation’s first choice for a feline companion. Moreover, since the 1980s, Americans have come to feel the same way, and the British shorthair is now the sixth most popular breed with our friends across the pond. All of which would have made Harrison Weir a very happy cat man.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ARTICLES BY CHESHIRE & WAIN'S RESIDENT HISTORIAN HERE