Van cat

Van cat
An adult odd-eyed Van cat
Origin	Lake Van area of Turkey
Variety status	Not recognised as a standarised breed by any major breed registry.
Notes
The Van cat is a landrace, not a formal breed.
Domestic cat (Felis catus)

The Van cat (Van kedisi 'cat of Van', plural Van kedileri; Armenian: Վանա կատու Vana katou, Western Armenian: Vana gadou; Kurdish: Pisîka Wanê‎) is a distinctive landrace of domestic cat, found in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey. It is relatively large, has a chalky white coat, sometimes with ruddy coloration on the head and hindquarters, and has blue or amber eyes or is odd-eyed (having one eye of each colour). The variety has been referred to as "the swimming cat", and observed to swim in Lake Van.

The naturally occurring Van cat type is popularly believed to be the basis of the Turkish Van breed, as standardised and recognised by many cat fancier organizations; it has been internationally selectively bred to consistently produce the ruddy head-and-tail colouring pattern on the white coat. However, one of the breed founders' own writings indicate that the four original cats used to found the formal breed came from other parts of Turkey than the Lake Van area. The capitalised and run-together term "Turkish Vankedisi" is confusingly used by some organisations as a name for all-white specimens of the formal Turkish Van breed.

The Van cat has been reported living in the vicinity of the city of Van and the general Lake Van area for centuries; how long is uncertain. Genetic research has shown that the domestic cat's ancestor, the African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica), was domesticated, for rodent control, about 10,000 years ago in the Near East when tribes transitioned from hunter-gathering to crop farming and settled life. In addition, the white-spotting in domestic cats appeared at the earliest stage of cat domestication, and is one of the points of evidence of early artificial selection. However, this does not necessarily mean that white cats have been in the Van area the entire time.