Turkish Van


The Turkish Van is a semi-long-haired breed of domestic cat, which was developed in the United Kingdom from a selection of cats obtained from various cities of modern Turkey, especially Southeast Turkey. The breed is rare, and is distinguished by the Van pattern, where the colour is restricted to the head and the tail, and the rest of the cat is white; this is due to the expression of the piebald white spotting gene, a type of partial leucism. A Turkish Van may have blue or amber eyes, or be odd-eyed. The breed has been claimed to be descended from the landrace of usually all-white Van cats, mostly found near Lake Van, though one of the two original breeders' own writings indicate clearly that none of the breed's foundation cats came from the Van area.
Then called the Turkish Cat, the breed was first recognised as such by a breeder/fancier organisation, the UK-based Governing Council of the Cat Fancy, in 1969. It was later renamed "Turkish Van" to better distinguish it from the Turkish Angora breed. The term "Turkish " is used by some organisations as a name for all-white specimens of the formal Turkish Van breed, nomenclature easily confused with the Van kedisi landrace cats, which are also often all-white.

Breed standards

Breed standards allow for one or more body spots as long as there is no more than 20% colour and the cat does not give the appearance of a bicolour. A few random spots are acceptable, but they should not detract from the pattern. The rest of the cat is white. Although red tabby and white is the classic van colour, the colour on a Van's head and tail can be one of the following: red, cream, black, blue, red tabby, cream tabby, brown tabby, blue tabby, tortoiseshell, dilute tortoiseshell, brown-patched tabby, blue-patched tabby and any other colour not showing evidence of crossbreeding with the point-coloured breeds. Not all registries recognise all of these colour variations.
While a few registries recognise all-white specimens as Turkish Vans, most do not. The US-based Cat Fanciers' Association and Fédération Internationale Féline recognise only van-patterned specimens, as they define the breed by both its type and pattern. The Germany-based but international World Cat Federation considers the all-white specimens a separate breed, which it calls the Turkish , a name that is easily confused with the landrace Van kedisi.

Varieties

Origins

In 1955, two British women, Laura Lushington and Sonia Halliday, on a trip to Turkey were given some cats that featured what is now termed the Van pattern, and decided to bring them home. They bred true, and were used as foundation stock for the breed. According to Lushington, her original imported cats were: Van Iskenderun Guzelli, a cat that came from Hatay Province, Iskenderun, and Stambul Byzantium, a cat given by a hotel manager in Istanbul, both in 1955. Two later additions to the gene pool were Antalya Anatolia, from the city of Antalya, and Burdur, from Burdur city, both in 1959. Lushington did not see Van city before 1963, and only stayed there "for two days and two nights". It is unclear why the name "Turkish Van" was chosen, or why one of the original 1955 kittens was named "Van Iskenderun Guzelli", given their provenance. Of the founding 1955 pair, Lushington wrote, in 1977:
It is unclear whether Lushington was intending to imply that the Hatay and Istanbul kittens had originally come from the Lake Van region, or was simply referring to the Turkish Van founding stock as "Van kittens" for short. Neither city is anywhere near Van Province.
Turkish Vans were first brought to the United States in 1982 and accepted into championship for showing in the Cat Fanciers' Association in 1994. Since then, CFA has registered approximately 100 Vans born each year in the US, making them one of the rarest cat breeds. Imported Vans have no human breeding intervention and are quite robust. No other breed is allowed to be mixed into the breeding schedule, and all registered Turkish Vans can trace their ancestry back to imported cats of Laura Lushington.
Called the Turkish cat when first given breed recognition in 1969, the name was changed in 1979 in the UK to Turkish Van to better distance the breed from the Turkish Angora cat which had its origins around Ankara, in central Turkey.

Physical characteristics

The coat on a Turkish Van is considered semi-long-haired. While many cats have three distinct hair types in their coat – guard hair, awn hair and down hair – the Turkish Van has no evident undercoat, only one coat. This makes their coat feel like cashmere or rabbit fur. The lack of an undercoat gives a sleek appearance. The coat is uncommonly water repellant, which makes bathing these cats a challenge, though the coat dries quickly.
The Turkish Van is one of the larger cat breeds. Ideal type should feature broad shoulders with a body that is "top-heavy", that is, a cat with its center of gravity forward. The cat is moderately long, and its back legs are slightly longer than its front legs, but neither the cat itself nor its legs are so long as to be disproportionate. These cats are large and muscular. Males can reach and the females weigh about. They have large paws and rippling hard muscle structure which allows them to be very strong jumpers. Vans can easily hit the top of a refrigerator from a cold start on the floor. They are slow to mature and this process can take 3 years, possibly longer. Vans have been known to reach long from nose to tip of tail.

Behaviour

The Turkish Van is an excellent hunter. Although early bloodlines had a tendency to be aggressive, today the breed is generally very social, with a friendly disposition toward people, and the cats tend to develop a strong bond with their owners. Turkish Vans, not just with their owner, are friendly to other animals. They prefer other cats to be of the same kind, but will accept other kinds of cats. They are also friendly to "cat friendly dogs" as well. They are very playful and lively. Many Turkish Vans will play fetch, and may bring a toy to their owner to initiate play.
The native Van cat landrace of Turkey have been nicknamed the "swimming cats", due to an unusual fascination with water. Despite the modern Turkish Van breed consisting almost entirely of pedigreed, indoor-only cats with no access to large bodies of water, and despite dubious connections between them and the cats of the Lake Van area, some feel that the Turkish Van has a notable affinity for water; for example, instead of swimming in a lake, they may stir their water bowls or play with water in the toilet, and some may even follow their owners into water. However, the idea that the breed likes water more than other cats may be mistaken according to some pet writers.

Genetics

The piebald spotting gene appears in other different species. It also shows up in the common house cat, and other breeds of cat, since the van pattern is merely an extreme expression of the gene.
A Turkish Van may have blue eyes, amber eyes, or be odd-eyed. The variability of eye colour is genetically caused by the white spotting factor, which is a characteristic of this breed. The white spotting factor is the variable expression of the piebald gene that varies from the minimal degree, as in the blue-eyed cats with white tip on the tail to the maximal degree that results in a Van-patterned cat, as in Van cats, when coloured marks occupy at most 20% of the white background, but the white background in the breed covers about 80% of the body. Breeding two cats together with the same level of white spotting will produce cats with a similar degree of spotting.
Van-patterned Turkish Vans are not prone to deafness, because their phenotype is associated with the van pattern semi-dominant gene. Solid-white Turkish angoras carry the epistatic white colour dominant gene associated with white fur, blue eyes and often deafness. All white Van cats may share this gene. All three types of cat may exhibit eye colours that are amber, blue or odd. Deafness is principally associated with cats having two blue eyes.