Other Name
Dressed in tobacco-brown with a gorgeous pair of green eyes, the Havana is a muscular, medium-size cat related to the Siamese. He enjoys sitting in a lap and chatting to his owner in a soft voice. His short coat is easy to groom. The Havana Brown is a beautiful cat with a warm, chocolate-colored coat and a distinctive head shape. Despite its name, the breed was developed in England in the 1950s. It was also the first breed of cat to bear a name describing its coat color.
A number of cat breeds have been created by crossing the Siamese with other breeds to bring in desired traits, such as new colors, patterns, or hair lengths. The Havana Brown is one such man-made breed. Solid, or “self-brown,” cats were known in England and Europe in the late 19th century and went by the name Swiss Mountain Cats. The breeding of these cats was discouraged in the 1920s, but a group of British breeders in the 1950s crossed chocolate- and seal-point Siamese with black domestic shorthairs and Russian Blues to create striking chocolate brown cats with emerald eyes. They became known as Havana Browns, probably for their tobacco-like coloring rather than any association with Cuba. They have also been called Chestnut Foreign Shorthairs. The first Havana Brown was imported into North America in the mid-1950s. The breed was accepted for registration by Cat Fanciers Association in 1959 and was granted Championship status in 1964. To ensure a wider gene pool, the cats can be outcrossed to unregistered black or blue domestic shorthairs, certain colors of Oriental Shorthairs, and chocolate-point or seal-point Siamese.
