A Maltese

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

is any whose

fur A fur is a soft, thick growth of hair that covers the skin of almost all mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an ...

is completely or primarily grey (often called "blue" by cat fanciers) and regardless of

breed A breed is a specific group of breedable domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist seve ...

. ''Maltese'' is a coat-colour term, not a breed name.

Description

There is some evidence of a historical breed with such colouration that existed in

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

, which may have given rise to the use of the adjective in this context. There are several cat breeds that always produce "blue" or grey fur, of whom the adjective may be used. These are the

Russian Blue The Russian Blue cat (), commonly referred to as just Russian Blue, is a pedigreed cat breed with solid blue colours that vary from a light shimmering silver to a darker, slate grey. The short, dense coat, which stands out from the body, has b ...

, the

Chartreux The Chartreux is a rare breed of cat from France, and is recognised by a number of registries around the world. The Chartreux is large and muscular (called ''cobby'') with relatively short, fine-boned limbs, and very fast reflexes. They are known ...

and the

Korat The Korat cat (, ) is a silver-tipped blue-grey, short-haired Cat breed, breed of Cat, domestic cat with a small to medium build and a low percentage of Adipose tissue, body fat. Its body is semi-cobby, and unusually heavy for its size. It is an ...

, none of which are associated with Malta. There are several other breeds that often produce blues such as the

British Shorthair The British Shorthair is the Purebred, pedigree version of the traditional British Domestic cat (landrace), domestic cat, with a distinctively stocky body, thick Fur, coat, and broad face. The most familiar colour variant is the "British Blue", wi ...

. The blue variant of this breed was so common that some thought it was its own breed called the "British Blue". Regardless of breed, any cat with solid grey colouration has two pairs of double-recessive genes for the non-agouti and colour-dilution traits, and so an exclusive mating between two solid grey cats should always produce solid grey kittens.

Cultural references

In literature, "The Maltese Cat" is the title of a 1895

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

(in the collection " The Day's Work") by

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

. The story is about a

polo Polo is a stick and ball game that is played on horseback as a traditional field sport. It is one of the world's oldest known team sports, having been adopted in the Western world from the game of Chovgan (), which originated in ancient ...

match set in

British colonial India The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or dire ...

, told from the point of view of one of the ponies, a grey named the Maltese Cat.

Patrick Leigh Fermor Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot. He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War, and was widely seen as Britain's greate ...

alludes to this usage in 1986's '' Between the Woods and the Water'' where, after a game of bicycle polo at a country house on the

Great Hungarian Plain The Great Hungarian Plain (also known as Alföld or Great Alföld, or ) is a plain occupying the majority of the modern territory of Hungary. It is the largest part of the wider Pannonian Plain (however, the Great Hungarian Plain was not par ...

, he refers to the bicycles as "Maltese Cats": "The other side won but we scored four goals, and when the iron Maltese Cats were back in their stands, we limped back to the steps, where Countess Denise and ... had been leaning on the balustrade like ladies gazing down into the lists." O. Henry alludes to a Maltese cat in his 1908 story A Lickpenny Lover as being "secretive and wary" when he compares the protagonist - an 18 year old girl Masie - to it. A Maltese cat comes into the kitchen where main character Jim Burden is taking a bath on his first day at his grandparents' Nebraska farm in

Willa Cather Willa Sibert Cather (; born Wilella Sibert Cather; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including ''O Pioneers!'', ''The Song of the Lark (novel), The Song of the Lark'', a ...

's 1918 novel ''

My Ántonia ''My Ántonia'' ( ) is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are ...

''.

References

{{Cat nav Cat coat types

Description

Cultural references

See also

References