Traditional Siberian vs Neva Masquerade

Most pet owners do not understand the differences between Siberian and Neva cats and it can be confusing indeed since Tica and WFC accept Neva as a Siberian while Fife separate both breeds. The look is totally different and you can see clearly catteries doing one but not the other. It can get confusing if you are not a cat Fancy expert.

We decided to create the profile for each, Siberian and Neva to explain better the differences and similarities between both cats.

Some breeders may say that a Siberian is simply a Russian farm cat which is a very simplistic vision.

The confusion happens because Siberians had a very difficult start since the situation in Russia wasn’t exactly simple when the first standard of the breed was made by the Kotofey club.

Russians were not allowed to breed cats under the Soviet Union regime. Dog breeding was encouraged and even important, therefore dog breeders received a very good education in both genetics and practical education on breeding and canine ethology since these dogs, were used as work dogs.

There are several breeds of Russian working dogs. They were developed, nearly engineered to execute certain tasks like the Sulimov dog created to act as airport control dogs, bomb, drug sniffers and they are remarkably efficient.

The situation with cats wasn’t the same and the world had to wait the end of the cold war to finally be able to enjoy and own one of these this wonderful fur balls.
After the cold war it was extremely “chic” in the USA to own Russian pets. However, Siberians are brown tabby cats and not exactly the most exotic looking pets that one could imagine and especially not in Russia where they were pretty common.

So the idea of creating a large color point cat with similar characteristics emerged and was embodied with the acceptation of several color point house cats registered as “Neva” during the first cat show held in Russia.
Neva was highly appreciated at the time.

The Neva cat creation would have been extremely positive if only people acted with common sense and separated both breeds.
The Neva “creator”, Olga Mironova says herself that the cats were “brought in” and mixed creating this “interesting” pattern variation. You can check the article on the Neva page.

The main point is that Neva sells well and they wanted to sell obviously!
In Europe, the education required to become a breeder in most countries is close to none and therefore a fair amount of people who had no idea of what they were doing started mixing Siberian and Neva lines, destroying bit by bit the Siberian gene pool.

The Clean Genealogy Group, linked to the ISBC website, was created to promote the Siberian cat (the original Siberian cat) to educate young breeders and create a common line of work for older breeders.

Very soon all the cats from the ISBC group will be tested with MyCatDNA and we are aiming our selection towards: all Studs and Queens blood Group A and none carrying the color point gene. Most kittens will be sold with proof of parentage.

As result of this messy start and imposition of Neva by these first Russian clubs, nowadays most cat fancy associations accept Siberian and Neva as one breed and only Fife respects the fact that Siberians are like Norwegian cats, a natural breed and the introduction of foreign gene like the color point gene should be avoided.

This does not means that we hate Neva, it simply means that we are doing our work to protect the original cat that is the object of our affection. Working hard so pet owners (like you) and breeders to be can still find the original Siberian cat in ten years time.

Daniela Barros