|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Somalis Somalis are medium sized, foreign type, semi long haired cats. They share the same personality as the Abyssinian, being lively and affectionate, curious and intelligent and resemble little foxes with their bushy tails, earning the name ‘the foxy Somali’. Their coats are ticked and they have tabby markings on their face, with the traditional tabby ‘M’ on their forehead. They have a dark rim round their eyes which makes them look as if they are wearing eye liner, which is particularly striking in the silver colours. We breed most colours of Somalis, usual (ruddy), sorrel, blue and fawn, silvers in these colours and also chocolate and lilac, red and tortie. We started in Somalis in 1996 with a usual Somali queen, Mycene Creole Dansa (Poppy), and a usual pet Somali variant boy (Max), both bred by Margaret and Peter Frayne who were some of the first people to import and breed Somalis in the UK. Their foundation Somalis, Black Iron Vagabond and Black Iron Venus lie behind many of the present-day UK Somalis. Poppy was mated to Teresa Stracstone’s Kelmscott Magritte and she produced two small litters after deciding that motherhood was definitely not her thing! From her first litter we kept a blue queen (Adentsh Morgan), known as Maisie and she proved to have a lovely personality and was a very good mum. At this time, we decided that we would like to go into breeding more seriously and we bought a usual silver queen, Mycene Quintessence (Sylvie) from Margaret Frayne. A year later Opal, a blue silver queen (Bazara Bright Opal) and Oscar, our sorrel boy (Bazara Amber Glow) came to the cattery. These two cats brought in some other lines to expand the gene pool of our own Somalis. Later two Manot cats came to join us from Carol Ottey and a Cannona girl (Kate Munslow) to bring in the chocolate/lilac and red series colours and we have also introduced some import lines through Helen Andrew’s Abfab cattery. We aimed to start with sound cats with good temperaments, who have been bred with care and to the standard, and who are representative of their colour and type. We wanted to build on the work of good breeders and to develop our own Aswani Somalis of which we could be proud both as pets and as representatives of their breed. From these beginnings, we have established the Aswani cattery, working with other breeders to maintain and develop the Somali and Abyssinian (and now the LaPerm). As breeds they are loving and lively pets but some have also achieved show success, especially our two home bred champions: Ch. Aswani Just William (blue silver, owned by Tracy Thompson) and Ch Aswani Arabella (fawn, owned by Jan Read). Below and on the left are photos of some of our Somalis, past and present.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
