Sokoke
| Sokoke | |
|---|---|
Sokoke cat
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| Other names | Sokoke Forest Cat, African Shorthair (standardised breed); khadzonzo or kadzonzo (original landrace) |
| Origin |
Kenya, Denmark, United States (std. breed); Kenya (landrace) |
| Std. breed developed from landrace cats, ultimately of Asian origin | |
| Breed standards | |
| FIFe | standard |
| TICA | standard |
| CCA-AFC | standard |
| Domestic cat (Felis catus) | |
The Sokoke (or Sokoke Forest Cat in long form, and formerly the African Shorthair) is natural breed of domestic cat, developed and standardised, beginning in the late 1970s, from the feral khadzonzo landrace of eastern, coastal Kenya. The Sokoke is recognized by four major cat pedigree registry organizations as a standardised cat breed. It is named after the Arabuko Sokoke National Forest, the environment from which the was obtained, for breed development primarily in Denmark and the United States. The cat is long-legged, with short, coarse hair, and typically a tabby coat, though specific lineages have produced different appearances. Although one rumored to be a domestic × wildcat hybrid, genetic study has not borne out this belief. Another idea, that the variety is unusually ancient, remains unproven either way. The native population is closely related to an island-dwelling group, the Lamu cat, further north.
Coastal Kenya's distinctive, free-roaming, feral cats – known as khadzonzo or kadzonzo, and found from city streets to the Arabuko Sokoke national forest – were "discovered", in the Western cat fancy sense, by horse breeder and wildlife artist Jeni Slater in 1978 near Watamu coconut plantation, though of course the cats were known for much longer by native people. By that point, the rural population were thought to be nearly extinct due to human encroachment on the forest and its resources. Although there were ideas that it might be a new subspecies of wildcat, the tameness of the kittens Slater reared suggested that theoretical hybridisation with wildcats was unlikely, as did features like the long, tapered tail (not characteristic of any wild African species), a general form consistent with Asian domestic cat breeds (very unlike the cobby figure of wildcats), and the mottled, blotched coat pattern (a characteristic of urban cat populations). The feral khadzonzo were developed into a standardised breed, the Sokoke, which has a much more uniform appearance than the landrace cats.
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Wikipedia