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Breed Profile

Origin: Kenya
Colour: Tabby

Originating from the Sokoke district of eastern Kenya in East Africa, this is a new breed that is now being developed in Denmark. It has an unusual form of tabby coat pattern and there is still some disagreement as to how it acquired this.

Owner's Guide

Domestic Breed. Originating from the Sokoke district of eastern Kenya in East Africa, this is a new breed that is now being developed in Denmark. It has an unusual form of tabby coat pattern and there is still some disagreement as to how it acquired this. One theory suggests that it is a local, spontaneous mutation of an ordinary domestic cat. Another prefers to see it as a local subspecies of wildcat, while a third views it as a cross between a Kenyan domestic cat and a wild cat.

Appearance: The Sokoke Forest Cat, or Sokoke Cat, has a tabby pattern that has been designated 'African Tabby' to distinguish it from the other types. It is similar to Blotched or Classic Tabby, but with a 'wood-grain' look. Pat Turner has accurately described the way in which it differs from the typical Blotched Tabby: 'The differences are really only in the shape of the 'oysters' which can easily be accounted for by a modifying gene or genes extending the central spot. The remainder of the pattern is as found in other blotched breeds with bonnet strings, eye liner, necklaces (Alderman's chains), butterflies and black dots at the whisker roots.'

As might be expected with a tropical feral cat, the Sokoke Cat has an elegant, slender body and a long, pointed, tapering tail.

History: In 1977 a female cat with a litter of kittens was discovered in a hollow under a dead bush during land clearance at the edge of the forest. The owner of the land, wildlife artist Jeni Slater, inspected the family and realized that they all had unusual markings of a kind she had not seen before. She took a male and female kitten home with her, hand-reared them, and later started breeding from them.

The ease with which they became tame suggests that they were, in fact, domestic cats that had gone wild, rather than true wild cats. It is perhaps significant that no further 'wild' specimens have been seen since that first encounter in 1977. This points to the likelihood that the Sokoke cats were a very restricted phenomenon, probably resulting from a few escaped domestic cats (belonging to Europeans resident in Kenya) that began breeding and at some point developed the novel coat pattern through a mutation in the small local population.

When Danish cat enthusiast Gloria Moldrup visited Jeni Slater, she was given a pair of Sokoke kittens and took them home with her to Denmark. There they were exhibited at the JYYRAK Show at Odense, and became the foundation pair for the breed in Europe. Jeni Slater has refused to allow any Sokoke Cats to go to Great Britain because of the strict, six-month quarantine laws.

Bibliography:

1993. Turner, P. The Sokoke Forest Cat. In: Cat World Magazine, February 1993, p.8-9.