Cats
longhair varieties. This is due to a recessive gene. It has appeared in ancient Japanese art and
has evidently existed back as far as the 6th century. It is claimed that it was introduced into
Japan from China at that time, which corresponds to Ida Mellen's account of curly tailed cats
in China. Once the pet of Japanese nobles, it eventually spread to the general population but
was not considered anything more than a common moggy. It attracted the interest of
American breeders in 1968 and was recognised in the US in 1978. The longhaired version
had always existed (longhair is due to a recessive gene) but was not given breed status until
1991.
In a study comparing the genetics of several breeds (Lipinski MJ, et al., The ascent of cat
breeds: genetic evaluations of breeds and worldwide random-bred populations, Genomics
(2007), the Japanese Bobtail was found to be more closely related to Western cats than to
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