Other Name
If you are looking for a gentle, quiet, intelligent cat, you may have found your match. It’s easy to see the appeal of the Russian Blue. His long, graceful, slim body is topped by a short, plush double coat tipped with silver. Round green eyes gaze out from his triangular head. He also comes in a longhaired variety known as the Nebelung, which means “creature of the mist.”
Born just south of the Arctic Circle in the Russian port city of Archangel, the Russian Blue was an intrepid explorer who legend says rode with Cossacks and frequently made his way to other climes as a ship’s cat. But don’t think of him as strictly working class. His lavish coat and jewel-green eyes made him attractive to the wealthy and noble, and he is said to have been a pet of Russian czars and that imperial cat lover Queen Victoria, who may have encountered the breed when one — described as an Archangel cat — was shown at a cat show at the Crystal Palace in 1875. Grouped together at first with other blue cats, they were given their own classification in 1912, going by the name Foreign Blue or sometimes Maltese. Although he was capable of surviving arctic winters, two world wars nearly did in the Russian Blue. Few were left after World War II, and breeders were reduced to outcrossing them to cats with similar looks, such as blue British Shorthairs and blue-point Siamese. Russian Blues were first imported to North America in the early 20th century, but serious breeding programs were not developed until midcentury, when cats from England and Scandinavia were brought in. Today all cat registries recognize the Russian Blue.
