Turkish Van

The Turkish Van is a semi-long-haired, standardised breed of domestic cat, which was developed during the 1950s in the United Kingdom from a selection of cats obtained from various cities of modern-day Turkey, especially southeast Turkey. This rare cat breed is one of the larger ones, and is distinguished by the Van pattern (named after the breed), where the colour is restricted to the head and the tail, and the rest of the cat is white; this is due to the expression of the white spotting gene, a type of partial leucism. A Turkish Van may have blue or orange eyes, or be odd-eyed (having one eye of each colour). The breed was initially registered under the name Turkish cat in 1969 by UK-based Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF). It was later renamed Turkish Van to better distinguish it from the Turkish Angora breed. The Turkish Van has been claimed to be descended from (and is often confused with) the landrace of usually solid white Van cats, mostly found near Lake Van, though one of the two original breeders' own writings indicate clearly that none of the Turkish Van's foundation cats came from the Van area.