Somali Cats & Somali Cat Breeders

The first Somali cats appeared in the litters of Abyssinians as long-haired kittens. In the 1940s a British breeder named Janet Robertson exported some Abyssinian kittens to Australia, New Zealand and North America. Descendants of these cats occasionally produced kittens with long or fuzzy coats. In 1963, Mary Mailing, a breeder from Canada, entered one into a local pet show. Ken McGill, the show's judge, asked for one for breeding purposes.

An American Abyssinian breeder Evelyn Mague, also received longhairs from her cats, which she named "Somalis". Don Richings, another Canadian breeder, used kittens from McGill, and began to work with Mague. The first Somali recognized as such by a fancier organization was Mayling Tutsuta, one of McGill's cats.

The usual or ruddy Somali is golden brown ticked with black. There are 28 colours of Somali in total although certain organisations accept only some of these colours. All organisations that register Somalis permit usual (also known as ruddy), sorrel (a.k.a. red), blue, and fawn. Most clubs also recognise usual/ruddy silver, sorrel/red silver, blue silver, and fawn silver. Other colours that may be accepted by some registries include chocolate, lilac, red, cream, usual-tortie, sorrel-tortie, blue-tortie, fawn-tortie, chocolate-tortie, lilac-tortie, and silver variants of these (e.g. blue-tortie silver).

Check our listings for Kittens for sale here and click on the links to our breeders below to go to their profile page.  You can also click here to search for Registered Somali Breeders by location.