Egyptian Mau(cat)
July 16th, 2008The Egyptian Mau is the fastest breed of domestic cat, clocked running more than 30 miles per hour. A unique flap of skin extending from the flank to the back knee gives this cat greater agility and length of stride. Mau is the Egyptian word for “cat.”
History and Origin
One of the oldest breeds, the Egyptian Mau is thought to be the ancestor of the sacred cat worshiped by ancient Egyptians. As the story goes, during the time of the cat cult, maus were worshiped as the physical manifestations of gods, and Egyptian women patterned their elaborate eye makeup after the mau’s facial markings.
In Egypt, cats were first welcomed for their ability to keep rodents away from stores of grain, but later they became much more – first beloved household companions and then objects of worship.
In Egyptian mythology, cats were identified with the goddess Bast, who was often depicted as a slender, regal woman with the head of a cat. So revered were cats as Bast’s physical symbol, that upon a feline’s death Egyptians went into mourning, shaving their eyebrows as signs of their grief. Such cats were often mummified, along with rodents and other small prey, to nourish them in the afterlife.
Evidence in the form of writing, ornaments, frescoes, statues and papyrus paintings shows that spotted cats did indeed exist during the time of the Egyptian cat cult, and fanciers believe that the mau is a direct ancestor of those cats. However, whether the mau is truly the ancestor of the sacred cat of Egypt we will never know, since no direct proof of this exists.
The modern and better documented history of the mau begins in the early 1900s, when fanciers in Italy, Switzerland and France worked to develop the mau. However, as it did many purebred breeds, World War II decimated the mau population and by the mid-1940s the mau was almost extinct.
The efforts of the exiled Russian princess Nathalie Troubetskoy brought the mau back from the edge. While in Italy, she rescued some of the remaining maus and, using her political connections, she obtained several more through the Syrian embassy. In 1956, Troubetskoy and three maus immigrated to the United States. Once there, Troubetskoy established a cattery and promoted the breed. Many modern maus can trace their ancestry back to Troubetskoy’s cats.
In the 1980s, another breeder succeeded in bringing 13 maus into America, paving the way for more imports. In the 1980s and 1990s more imports further enlarged the gene pool. The new bloodlines and careful selective breeding brought the breed the health and stability it needed.
Today, all major associations accept the mau and while numbers are still low, the breed has a strong following of fans who feel the mau is indeed worthy of worship.
Description
Egyptian Maus do bear a resemblance to paintings of ancient Egyptian cats, although this does not prove that they are actually of Egyptian origin. The first documented Maus were brought to the United States in 1956 by a Russian princess named Natalie Troubetskoy. The matriarch of the Egyptian Mau breed was a silver female named Baba.
These active, athletic cats have the randomly-spotted tabby pattern resembling wild cats, but are fully domesticated. In fact, the Mau is the only naturally-occurring pedigreed breed of spotted domestic cat. It is an intelligent and devoted breed with expressive green eyes and known for a slightly “worried” expression.
They are accepted in colors such as bronze, silver, and black smoke. They were first accepted in 1968 by CFF.
