Cats
A letter from M Lottin de la Val, President of the Imperial Acclimatation Society, to the
President of the French Zoological Society in 1856 stated, "When you recently did me the
honour of calling on me, you imparted the recently held view that the so called 'Angora' cat
does not exist or could not exist except in the vicinity of ancient Ancyra. I hasten to dispel
this illusion. I myself came upon specimens of that lovely feline species in the great Armenian
plateau, at Erzerum, where the climate is greatly different from that of Angora. The species is
very numerous at Mourch in Kurdistan, where it is the dominant variety. I also found it at
Billis and in the pashalik of Bayazit.. The finest specimens, however, which I saw belonged to
the Archbishop of Van, a town in the east of Kurdistan, on the frontier of Azerbaidjan. He had
three of them, one pearl grey, one orange-hued with black and white flecks, and a third,
which was completely white
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