History

The origin of the name Angora comes from the city of Ancyra that was  founded by the king Mida. A Turkish legend says that  the king Mida  turned  in gold everything he touched. 

 When the city passed under the control of the Ottoman empire the name changed in "Angora"; from this name the breed gets its name. Angora means "long hair", because of the incredible coat of the cats of this area. In 1923 when the city became the capital of Turkey the name changed in Ankara (the actual capital).

 The Turkish Angora, it is a very old breed, some news are reported up to the 1400 d.c.; the breed was appreciated by the nobles of the past, by the oriental sultans as precious gifts. Give or receive  a turkish angora cat has been for centuries an action of  notable prestige, due to the rarity and the unique beauty of these animals and their incomparable elegance without time. 

They arrived  in Italy in 1600 with Pietro della Valle; he used to exalt the physical characteristics of the cat, the colors the elegance and the beauty. In his writings we read: "... their greatness and their beauty are in the color and in the thin coat, shiny, soft, delicate as the silk, and so long  also being curly in some point, on the breast and on the legs. The most beautiful part of their body is the tail, very long with long and thin hair, that the cats bring turned on the back as they were squirrels. The cats keep high the top of the tail, it seems a plume and it is very pleasant to see ... " .

The French court was so  sensible to the charm these cats that the nobles used to pay huge amounts of money  to have one; the living rooms of the nobility were embellished with their presence, while the artists showed them in the various field of the art. There were years of continuous successes for the Turkish angora cats. 

A judge Harrison Weir - the first president of the  National Cat Club and the inventor of the first feline exposure of the world in the Cristal Palace in London on July 13 in 1871, he was so enthusiastic of the colored variations and the candid white: In these cats the feline essence is... innate. In his book, Our Cats and all about Them, published in 1889 he wrote: "... the best  Turkish Angora cats and the most valuable are the pure white ones with blue eyes. These cats are considered the top of the feline perfection. They have various colours, however the black and the slate (grey) should have orange eyes. The blue one and the white are the most appreciated... ". The white coulor, the most  known  is considered in the native country a symbol; it is  jealously raised and guarded in the zoos of Istanbul and Ankara, where still live the descendants of the cats selected since 1956, in order to safeguard the breed from the extinction caused by intensive crossovers with other breeds from the western breeders.

 After having so much appreciated the aesthetical qualities of TA, the breeders crossed them with other breeds to get new feline breeds, that  also got great success. The Turkish government declared the breed "patrimony of the nation" and it is forbidden the export of the cats even today. After an a dark time, in Europe and in America the love for this cat arose again and in the 50ties some American breeders succeeded in importing some cats.

 The English breeders 10 years later tried to recreate the turkish Angora breed by selecting it from the Oriental cat. This new breed easy to  distinguish thanks  to the typical shape of the head, was called  "Angora"  for around 30 years. It created a great confusion with the Turkish Angora. Recently the new breed has been renamed "Oriental long hair". Fortunately the two breeds never crossed, since that experiment remained located in Great Britain.