Cats
cat, there is supposed to be only one species, which extends with trifling variety of colour
over all parts of the world, the difference from the tame variety being more in the internal
than in the external structures, its intestines being the shortest and smalles of all the
quadrupeds. […] Hiertro dello Valli evidently means the Angora kind when he says 'There is
in Persia a cat (particularly in the province of Choragan) of the figure and form of our
ordinary ones, but infinitely more beautiful in the lustre and colour of its skin. It is of a grey
blue, without mixture, and as soft and shining as silk. The tail is of great length and covered
with hair six inches long, which the animal throws on its back like a squirrel.'"
Jean Bungartz described the Angora (Felis maniculata domesticus angorensis) in his 1896
book "Die Hauskatze, ihre Rassen und Varietäten" (Housecats, Their Races and Varieties) in "