Neva Masquerade

How it a as in this country from the
very beginning.
The first Siberians having pedigree documents are admitted to come in to ČR in
the year 1987.Still there remains an opportunity that those without documents
were brought in by people who used to work in siberian oilfields earlier than
this period.The workers and engineers that builtgas pipelines in Siberia simply
took the cats that stayed around with them back to their homeland either to ČR, east Germany,
or Poland or central part russian cities as well.Subseguently,some of those were
given to breeders and registered by them for further reproduction.New species
were looked for in the same region as those initial ones came from.In this way
there appeared siberian foundation cats.In the year 1991 the chairman of my club
Mrs.Jarmila Markova, the blue russians breeder, brought from Moscow for her
stepdaughter a male named Zherar,then in the year she brought females Tata Natusia (CP carrier) 1992,Kroshka Ladoga 1993,Agrafena Over Gold 1994.
The last foundation cat of this breeder ( Z Kajetánky) was a silver tabby ( in fact,the
first registered silver cat,for,originally,FIFE did not recognize silvers and
it was because they were brought up in Czech Rep. for some generations that the then
president of FIFE Mrs.Alva Udin
on the bide of the Czech breeders had come up with the statement to change the
rules of the standard.)

This female named Olga z OK Sibiria was born to parents from the imports of Mrs.Bozena Resslova Mrs.R. whose travels were widely spotlighted by mass media was the first ever to bring to CR the siberian cats.She also had a lot of contacts abroad and via her cattery “OK Siberia and then “Corason“ there came through a vast lot of kittens from different parts of Russia which were sold further on mostly to Western Germany .As far as I know the biggest stock contained 27 kitten packed in one box transported from Moscow by train.By a sheer miracle none of them, despite 14 days travel and absolutely no care taken did die.The pedigrees attached to the box were stuck in to a polyethilene bag and it was extremely diffcult to acertain which belongs to which kitten.Although the kittens were evidently labelled in Moscow, the labels were torn off in this long journey.The foundation cats in the cattery of Mrs.R.were the male Agosha Alexandrov Iz Moskva1988,Fjodor 1989 (Olga OK Sibiria´s fater and CP carrier) ,the females Raisa Maximilievna 1988, Murashka 1989
and many others.Mrs.R.had also brougt the first female cat to which the first neva masquerade kitten was born.As a CP carrier the cat was neutered.and the kitten sold to Germany
.The two mentioted.above ladies deseribed the cats they haveseen in their travels to the depths of Russia as medium large to large semi long coated cats(almost short-coated in summer.The cats admired water and dived for fish with no signs of wet fur afterwards..They lived half-tamed and would appear in towns and villages in a winter season only. In spring,leaving behind their grown-up kittens they returned to the summer wild life.I must admit that Mrs.M. in her seven years spent in a construaetion team had only once seen a ginger cat.In all other cases the colour was tabby black.The other colours of sibies appeared already in registered catteies.I quite enjoyed the story told to me by Mrs.R. that depicted a russian breeder hunting for a blue cat of siberian type in the streets of Moscow in order to satisfy her customers` pretence to have kittens of different colour.Mrs.R.(she is already gone now taking so many valnable memories with her) was the founder and the long-term chairman of BCC(bohemian cat club under WCF.I must confess that at the moment this club register the catteries not able or not willing to recognize the strict rules of FIFE.Nor that I maintain they do not like their cats I just wouldn`t dare to buy an animal from any member of this institution.Anyway, I have bought my cat from BBC and I did so despite theFIFE members warning that I would have in the least to encounter the health problems.So it happened,but I bought the cat because I just had fallen in love with Mouc (Tolstoj ).There came along phneumonie,a number of unidentified and resistent vires and so on,and so on,but I would not regret, not for a cost of a yearly medicat treatment my family had to undertake.
So back to foundation cats.Mrs.J.M.and Mrs.B.R.(let she rest in peace)were not very fond of each other.If the first of them,had much respect for her cats likes and dislikes the latter didn`t have much scruples about the breeding ethics.She had most of the time approximately 30 cats of different breeds in her four-room apartment.Nevertheless there is one issue those two would have agreed upon.The prevalent kind of animals in russian catteries in the seventies and the eighties of the last century were the siamese and the persians of the old type.By the end of the century many of those young catteries vanished and,the important thing,due to the new economic situation, which resulted in broken ties and more expencive means of transport and communication, the direct import from Russia has almost ceased to exist. Luckily enongh,there are a few exeptions in the last years when new,quality cats were brought in, but this is another story as well as the growing support of the judges for the eee... normous weight and their lasting enehantment in short noses and long coat even in summer.Many breeders these days would reasonably think that if the situation will develope like that, in a few years run we shall have old type persians in this country to replace the sibies.