Cymric
Cat
Weight:
9-12 lbs. Appearance
- The Cymric is a solidly built, medium-size, cobby cat with a round head,
widely spaced ears, and large, round eyes. The powerful hindlegs are longer than
the front legs, so the short back arches upward to the rounded rump. A completely
tailless Cymric is called a "rumpy"; the "rumpy riser" appears
to be tailless but has one to three vertebrae fused to the end of the spine; the
"stumpy" has one to five normal vertabrae, which give the cat a short,
moveable tail stump; the "longy" is a cat witha shorter-than-normal
tail, but a tail nonetheless. The Cymric has a soft, semi-long outercoat that
gradually lengthens from head to rump. Many colors and patterns are accepted,
including tabby, solid, bicolor, shaded, tortoiseshell, and calico.
Personality - The tailless
Cymric, whose name is derived from the Gaelic word for Wales, is a longhaired
version of the Manx. It is a friendly, affectionate, relaxed companion--an easy
feline to share a home with. According to some sources the Cymric is somewhat
doglike in its habits; it will play "fetch," growl at an unidentified
disturbance, and may follow its owner around. This cat is also known for its love
of shiny objects--keep an eye on your jewelry! Cymrics like to snooze in laps
and high places. Children, dogs, and other cats are taken in stride.
Breed Fact - The Cymric
and its shorthaired cousin, the Manx, are among the oldest natural breeds of cats.
They are native to the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea between England
and Ireland. How did these cats lose their tails? Geneticists have determined
that taillessness occurred as the result of a spontaneous mutation. The Manx was
easily established due to the genetic nature of the tailless trait and centuries
of inbreeding in an isolated island environment. Both long- and shorthaired cats
existed on the Isle of Man before the appearance of the mutant gene for taillessness.
When the tailless Cymric appeared, the recessive longhair gene may have been part
of the package. |
