Sherwood Oriental Whites
Established
in 1960
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By Lu Wagner
There are few Oriental Whites to be seen anywhere and in South Africa very few are on shows. They are such a delightful breed and they make charming pets. They are very clean and they seem aware that their coats call for constant attention to present a really spotless appearance of which they seem proud. Yet they are not difficult to keep in that pristine appearance. In fact I feel they are easier to keep clean than a Pointed Siamese! They will follow you about the house and welcome you with a great show of affection every time you return from an outing. It is beyond doubt that a white cat which conforms to the standard is not at all easy to breed. Orange eyes are allowed in White Longhairs which are recognised as a distinct breed - but this is not the case with the White Shorthair. Here only blue eyes are allowed and they have to be deep sapphire blue. White cats with blue eyes are not common in any case and there is no certainty about breeding them, let alone breeding them with the right shade of blue. There is nothing more evasive than eye colour in Oriental Whites. A pair with the deepest of sapphire blue eyes may well produce kittens with yellow or green eyes. In Parents that have yellow or green eyes. 50% may have blue eyes or you are just as likely to get none at all! White cats with green or yellow eyes are the norm and it seems to be such a pity that they should be denied recognition. Because the white coat of the breed is dominant and masks any underlying colour genes and because back crosses to pointed Siamese were necessary to "fix" the blue eyes and to produce a truly Siamese in body and in shape, some of the kittens bred in the early Oriental White litters were non-white. And since the original white cats used in the program were not from Siamese ancestry, non-white genes were also present. As a result, some of the kittens did not simply have coloured all over but were coloured all over. Some of the first of these were spotted tabbies, solid reds and solid blacks. Most of these were not bred further. Lovers of Oriental Whites find it hard to remember a time when there were none in the household but at the same time it has taken an Oriental White - Sherwood Hua Ting - to be chosen as a finalist for the Cat of the Year and several major awards at shows (he is now a Supreme Premier), for people to sit up and take notice of them. It's with the persistence of Carol Barker in showing him, Lucy Arends-Wagner, Johan Lamprecht in the Cape and myself, that they have been noted. At one stage I couldn't even give them away due to the terrible stigma attached to white cats being deaf and having skin cancer. This really doesn't seem to be the case with the Oriental Whites and it is hard to accept that there was a time that our household was not ruled by these elegant white cats that have both the angelic baby mannerisms with the intelligent Siamese characteristics and the sparkling ethereal beauty of the whites. The Oriental White variety is a Siamese wearing a white coat and a number of Siamese / White matings had been recorded by Tjebbes in his paper as early as 1924; but the Oriental whites as we know them today were first born in 1962. The renowned breeder Mr Sterling-Webb was asked to consider developing a white breed similar to the Havana after mating a short hair to his sealpoint stud. That year, with the co-operation of Irish and English Breeders, the Foreign Ehite or Oriental White became known to the outside world. Mrs Patricia Turner, one of the most prominent Oriental White breeders, writes that in Ireland a Sealpoint queen whose litter was not planned this way, produced a kitten whose blue eyes and white coat was so attractive to the breeder that she decided to keep her and today, her kittens are at the back of all the Irish pedigrees. In 1964 Mrs Turner agreed to buy all the kittens from a breeder willing to mate a non-pedigreed white to a Sealpoint stud and from then on things started to improve and the whites increased in numbers. Mrs Turner and Mr Sterling-Webb bred a number of litters from white hybrids and Siamese. The kittens included blacks, reds, torties, tabbies and bi-colors. In those early years she found that some whites had coloured hair on their heads during kittenhood and eye colour ranged from blue to green, green-gold to warm-gold to copper, grey eyed and odd eyed. This odd eye characteristic is sometimes described as heterochromia iridis, or as unilateral blue eye color. She writes that they found that some of the blue eyed whites were really Siamese wearing white overcoats while other were fully colored cats under their white overcoats. They noticed, as Mr Prose in his white longhair project, that head smudging did not seem to be present when the white was of the Siamese wearing a white overcoat variety. This phenomenon has not been experienced here in South Africa bur perhaps that is because the breed has progressed much further or that there have not been enough kittens to prove the point. Originally the name Chinese White had been chosen for the breed but as it was not appropriate for a manufactured breed, the name Foreign White was decided upon - and consequently Oriental White. Both blue and golden eyes were first included in the GCC standard. Odd eyes were faulted (unilateral blue) and it was known even then, that with both the Siamese and other eye colors present, it would be necessary to select for golden eyes in order to avoid fixing odd eyes in the breed. When judges placed blue-eyed (non-Siamese type of blue) cats over those of equal quality but golden eyed, it was a natural consequence for the prize winners to become the breeding stock on the basis of show quality rather than a combination of show success and genetic formula. This non-Siamese eye color (now known as white/blue) can apparently persist and skip six or seven generations of breeding ; the problem is increased by the fact that some cats give no evidence of carrying it until a number of generations of white kittens have been produced. Another problem is that the pigmented blemish on the desired pink nose leather (blotches) increases in size with advancing years. A similar problem is found in the Red Point Siamese where, in many cases it is not noticed until the fifth or sixth year. It has been noticed that in most cases in the whites the nose spotting has occurred in pedigrees involving orange (red), so here I feel that cats of another color must be chosen very carefully. The problems of the early years are almost unknown to those who were fortunate enough to acquire stock bred after the Foreign Whites began to go up for Best in Show in 1966. Only the pioneers will remember the smudges, upstanding coat and indeterminate eye color. I feel that the head shape and tails of the Oriental Whites can be improved, but as they are so scarce, concentration on increasing the breed is far more important - especially as they have good basic type. There is so very little written on these cats, so I hope that what I have written about them will be advantageous to those interested and intending to breed, and not go the wrong way - wanting to use cats which may not be suitable.
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