The Balinese is a breed of oriental cat with long hair and Siamese-style markings, or points. It resembles a Siamese with a medium-length silky coat and a plumed tail, but is not nearly as fluffy as a Himalayan, and requires much less grooming. Balinese are extremely intelligent cats, although less talkative than their Siamese ancestors.
The Balinese was originally registered as a "longhaired Siamese", and examples were known from the early 1920s...
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The Balinese is a breed of oriental cat with long hair and Siamese-style markings, or points. It resembles a Siamese with a medium-length silky coat and a plumed tail, but is not nearly as fluffy as a Himalayan, and requires much less grooming. Balinese are extremely intelligent cats, although less talkative than their Siamese ancestors.
The Balinese was originally registered as a "longhaired Siamese", and examples were known from the early 1920s. The occasional long-haired kittens in a Siamese litter were seen as an oddity, and sold as household pets rather than as show cats. This changed in the mid-1950s, when two breeders, Mrs. Marion Dorsey of Rai-Mar Cattery in California and Mrs. Helen Smith of MerryMews Cattery in New York, decided that they would commence a breeding program for the longhaired cats. Helen Smith named the cats "Balinese" because she felt they showed the grace and beauty of Balinese dancers, and because "longhaired Siamese" seemed a rather clunky name for such...
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