CARAMIA EXOTICS

THE EXOTIC BREED

 'Personality Plus' this breed is not called the 'Teddy Bear' Exotic for nothing!!

The Exotic has inherited the calm, affectionate, charming temperament of their Persian cousins, but with a little extra 'sparkle', being slightly more playful and sociable, possibly due to the prescence of many short haired breeds in their ancestory.  In my opinion, it is this very special character which makes the Exotic unique amongst other shorthaired breeds.  The Exotics have all the desirable qualities of a Persian to make them fabulous family pets, with the advantage of a beautiful plush, low maintainence coat....a Persian in pyjamas!!  The coat of an Exotic Shorthair is unique to the breed, being thick, dense, short and plush, which gives them a soft rounded 'teddy bear' appearance.

Extremely affectionate, calm and confident, our Exotics are never fazed by our noisy young children or two large dogs!  They have a gentle, melodic voice, which often softly calls for more affection or to fill up the food bowl.  Their calm and steady nature makes the Exotic ideal for apartment life. They require limited exercise with ample room indoors to stretch their short sturdy limbs.  Non-demanding and non-destructive, our Exotic's are happy to laze around on the sofa whilst the house is quiet, though they enjoy playing games with Cat Toys and being amongst the family.  Never far from my side, they are always ready for a cuddle........ they really are true teddy bears.  We have found our Exotics to be a joy to share our home with.

(Pictured above - Caramia Luv Bug)

The Exotic is a heavily built, compact cat with a short cobby body, short legs and tail. The head should be completely round, with small rounded ears, set wide apart and large round eyes, brilliant in colour. Though they have a short flat face, the expression should be sweet and as open as possible.  Exotics are medium to large size Breed.  A full description of the Breed standard can be found on the TICA website.

MALTA'S TOP WINNING SHORTHAIR CAT!!

SUPREME GRAND CHAMPION KIS HERBAS VINNETU OF CARAMIA

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 EXOTIC ORIGINS

The Exotic is a relatively new breed, only recognised by FIFE in 1986.  The breed originated in the USA, during the 1960's, when American Shorthair breeders crossed with Persians in an attempt to strengthen type and improve the coat and colour of the American Shorthairs.  These resulting hybrids did very well at shows but they slowly began to take on more Persian characteristics such as rounder face, smaller ears, more compact body type and their coats became softer and longer!  As a result, the Breed Standard of the American Shorthair was revised to disqualify any cats showing any evidence of Persian ancestory! 

Thankfully, a number of breeders recognised the potential of these American Shorthair x Persian Hybrid kittens and began working to establish a new breed  - a Shorthaired Persian!!  This new breed was first proposed to the CFA Board for acceptance in 1966 by CFA Judge and American Shorthair breeder Jane Mantinke and was to be called the 'Sterling' due to their predominantly Silver colouration.  They finally agreed that the Breed would be named the Exotic Shorthair ( ESH), as the silver colour was not previously found in American Shorthairs, thereby making them 'Exotic'.  In 1993 CFA shortened the name to just 'Exotic'.

Many shorthair breeds were orignally used to develop the Exotic, including American Shorthairs, British Shorthairs, Burmese and Russian Blue.

GROOMING EXOTICS

Chalky & Luv Bug enjoying a grooming session :)

Care of the Exotic Shorthair coat is simple, requiring only weekly brushing.

Their easy maintainence coat is why they are affectionally refered to as the 'lazy mans persian'.

Though the coat does not matt, it is as dense as the Persian coat, and so requires weekly brushing to help the cat remove dead hairs from their plush coat.

Due to the distinct morphology of the face and productive tear ducts, the eyes of Exotics must be cleaned daily, the same as Persians.

BREEDING EXOTICS

Our Beautiful Exotic Longhair - TGC Svajone's Darling-Of-Fortune

MALTAS BEST OVERALL CAT OF THE YEAR 2008/9!

The only permitted outcrosses to the Exotic Shorthair are other breeds within the Persian Breed Group - namely PERSIAN & HIMALAYAN.  In fact, the Exotic Shorthair "is the shorthair equivalent of the Persian and Himalyan breeds and is differentiated from the Persian and Himalayan by coat length ONLY" (quoted from TICA Breed Standard).  Indeed, it is preferable is regularly outcross Exotics to their longhaired cousins in order to "maintain type, conformation and quality of coat"(the Exotic Shorthair Cat Society, UK). 

As most Exotics carry a recessive Longhair gene, even matings between two Exotic Shorthairs still produce a percentage of longhaired (PERSIAN) kittens.  Only homozygote Exotics will not produce Longhaired kittens.  Homozygote Exotics, whilst valuable in making more progress towards a greater percentage of shorthaired kittens, are often characterised by a shorter coat than their heterozygote counterparts.

PERSIAN kittens produced from an exotic breeding programme are GENTICALLY EXACTLY THE SAME as a 'Pure' PERSIAN, as, like 'pure' persians, they have two recessive Longhair genes.   That being the case, they both appear and reproduce exactly the same as a Persian produced from 2 longhaired parents.  The shorthair gene is a dominant gene which means that those who inherit this gene from their parents are visibily shorthaired.  The shorthair can not be carried (such as the recessive colourpoint gene 'CPC').  Exotic Shorthair kittens can only be produced from a Shorthair parent. 

PKD

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (AD-PKD) is an inherited condition that causes multiple cysts (pockets of fluid) to form in the kidneys. It is a particular problem in Persians and exotics, although it is also present in some other breeds.  These cysts are present from birth. They start out very small but they grow larger with time and may eventually severely disrupt the kidney; when that happens the kidney can no longer work and kidney failure develops. The cysts usually grow quite slowly, so most affected cats will not show any signs of kidney disease until relatively late in life, typically at around seven or eight years old, or even into older age. However, in some cats kidney failure will occur at a much younger age and at the moment there is no way of predicting how rapidly the disease will progress in any particular cat. 

The quickest way to eliminate this problem is to neuter or spay the affected individuals and only breed from PKD-negative cats.  However, as this disease is inherited via a dominant gene, it is possible to breed Negative kittens from a positive parent, if the other parent is Negative.  This practice has allowed many breeders of the Persian Breed group to retain valuable bloodlines which otherwise would of been lost.

In recent years a genetic test for PKD in cats has been made available to breeders.  Prior to this breeders were only able to use Ultrasound scans, which though valuable in diagnosis, could not determine whether or not the cat had inherited the disease which was yet to develop.

Caramia Exotics has used ONLY DNA Tested PKD Negative cats as the foundation of our breeding programme. 

We GUARANTEE all our kittens to be PKD Negative.

SHOWING EXOTICS

GC Almerians Party Squad of Caramia

The Exotic Shorthair has quickly become recognised as a very striking show cat - number 3 breed in USA and increasingly popular throughout Europe.  Despite the dominance of the Persian breed in Malta, our Exotic cats have proved themselves to be very competitive on the show bench consistently obtaining high appraisals and a number of coveted awards and show titles, including OVERALL BEST IN SHOW in both FIFE & TICA!!

Many PERSIAN kittens produced from Exotic Shorthair programmes, have also obtained numerous top show titles in various organisations across the globe, beating many 'Pure' Persians in the process!!!!!!!!!!  Indeed, our ELH girl 'Darling' was NATIONAL BEST PERSIAN and MALTA'S BEST OVERALL CAT OF THE YEAR, TICA 2008/9!!

 In most Genetic registrys, such as TICA, FIFE & WCF all Longhair kittens produced from an Exotic breeding programme are registered and exhibited as PERSIANS.

Only CFA differs by identifying PERSIAN kittens born from Exotic Shorthair parents as Exotic Longhairs (ELH).  Though they are exhibited in the Persian breed classes, CFA scores Exotic Longhairs in their own division, so they compete separately from the 'Pure' Persians for International and Regional awards :))

More info on Exotics from The International Cat Association (TICA)

TICA EXOTIC BREED STANDARD

TICA EXOTIC BREED PROFILE

Pictured above, our own article on Exotics, as featured in Maltese Magazine Gwida, March 2008.

Maltese National Newspaper, 'The Times', December 2007, reporting our Exotic boy, 'Almerians Party Squad', as the 1st Cat in Malta, other than a Persian, to win an Overall Best In Show!!