Ragdoll Cattery Calaquendi Ragdoll Kittens in Belgium België

History and origin

Ann Baker, a breeder in Riverside, California, started working in 1963 with a white female cat, called Josephine, belonging to her neighbour, to create the Ragdoll breed. Josephine has been described as a Persian type cat, although experts believe it was an Angora cat. It was even mentioned that she was a feral cat. Josephine was involved in a car accident.. She broke her pelvis, was hospitalised at a university clinic and recovered without apparent injury. After the recovery from the accident, she was used by Ann Baker in a breeding program.

The males Ann Baker mated Josephine with were a Burmese and a mitted male. According to the time frame of the creation of the Ragdoll there were no Sacred Birmans present in the USA when Josephine was mated with a mitted male. Ann Baker confirms this in a newsletter where she writes that the Sacred Birman breed was not used to create the Ragdoll.

One common thread in all of the stories of the creation of the Ragdoll is the fact that Ann Baker recognized wonderful qualities in the offspring of Josephine. She believed that the new temperament of the kittens was due to the road accident their mother suffered from. This caused many "authorities" to argue on the fact how an accident could have affected the resulting offspring at a genetic level. Resulting in the myth that during her stay in the clinic Josephine was used in a genetic experiment. At that time however there was no knowledge and understanding of genetics to be able to tamper with the genetics of a cat.

Although Josephine most likely suffered from an accident, this could not have had any effect on the genetic floppy character of her offspring. It is more likely that she bred with cats with a very gentle nature.The kittens possessed besides their beautiful laid back, floppy nature also a huge size, a non-matting fur and were very tolerant when being picked up the wrong way.

In 1969 Laura and Denny Dayton got interested in the Ragdoll breed and bought their first breeding pair. They had never signed any agreements with Ann Baker , who attempted to implement a franchise agreement demanding more money. Baker issued the first franchises in 1970 and updated them in 1975. This was brought to court and Baker was subjected to a restraint order to prevent further bad propaganda against the Daytons.

The Daytons worked very hard to get the breed recognized by TICA (The International Cat Assosiation) Denny began charting pedigrees of all the Ragdolls. Today this has grown into an International Chart that is up-dated annualy within the Ragdoll Fanciers Club International (RFCI).

In 1971 Ann Baker formed her own organisation IRCA (The International Ragdoll Cat Assosiation) with very strict terms and breeding policies. Due to the many strange, contradicting and hard to believe statements Baker made, several breeders broke off from her and continued breeding Ragdolls.Very few breeders are still working under the IRCA and cats registered with the IRCA are only recognized to participate in IRCA shows. In 1994 a group split off from the IRCA and thought of a new name for their Ragdolls : Ragamuffin.

Even though Ragamuffins and non pointed Ragdolls share a few of their early ancestors and even though the standard of the Ragamuffin breed is way to close to the Ragdoll standard, they are not the same breed.
For a Ragamuffin the placement of the white is not important. For the Ragdoll, the placement and amount of white is very important to determine if you have a show, breed or petquality Ragdolls.

Another important difference is that the Ragamuffins are a "registration only" breed in TICA. They are not at all recognized in TICA. In CFA they have achieved recognition for their non pointed variety only and this was only obtained by making the promise that the Ragamuffin breeders would stop breeding blue eyed and thus also stop breeding the pointed variaties. From what we have seen so far this seems to be one promise that they do not intend to keep !

In FIFE one overzealous fanatic judge (who is by the way also a Ragdoll breeder) decided to create an EMS code for the Ragamuffin. That's a decision made by her alone without any say in this from the Ragdoll breeders or the Ragamuffin breeders and without thinking about the consequences this has. The consequence is that in FIFE the Ragamuffin will now have the same standard as the Ragdoll and this also includes the same divisions of white as the Ragdoll ! One person alone should not be allowed to hold such an immense power to change 2 different breeds overnight !

The Ragdolls with who breeders achieved recognition in the big catclubs for gaining titels where all pointed Ragdolls with a blue eyecolour.
The IRCA registered catteries however continued to work with besides the pointed also with Ragdolls in a rainbow of colours ; the mink Ragdolls and non pointed or self coloured Ragdolls, who are sometimes also called solid Ragdolls.
A few of the IRCA registered catterys also registered their non pointed Ragdoll from Ann Baker with TICA, where they obtained the status SBT (Stud Book Traditional) after a few generations.

ann Baker devided her Ragdolls into a "dark side" and a "light side". Buckwheat, one of the founding Ragdolls belonged to the dark side. Ann Baker described her as a dark longhaired brown cat with yellow eyecolour (perhaps a sepia ?). Buckwheat's father was described as a Burmees. Most likely this introduced either the mink gen or the genetic make-up for the darker colourpointed kittens you sometimes see at birth. Most breeders combined the darker Ragdolls with the lighter ones to achieve more contrast between the points and body colour. Kittens with a different eyecolour (aqua, light grey) where mostly sold as pets.

Sometimes the darker Ragdolls where combined with each other and this gave kittens with an impossible colour and eyecolour for pointed Ragdolls, which pointed in the direction that possibly a lot of the pointed registered Ragdolls could have been mink instead of colourpoint. Ragdoll breeders where surprised to have from time to time out of pointed x pointed combinations kittens who at birth already show a brown paperbag colour instead of white. Often these kittens will have when grown up a lighter yellow to dark green outer edge or even a blue/green (aqua) eyecolour. Sometimes the eyecolour is even greyish to very dark blue. If you like to compare the eyecolours, a tip we give is to visit the websites of the Tonkinese breeders and have a good look at the eyecolours of their minks.

Since a few years, there is a genetic test available for the sepia (cb) gen. The testresults learned us that the dark pointed Ragdolls are not mink (cscb) Ragdolls, but pointed (cscs) Ragdolls.
According to a geneticist the darker pointed colours combined with lighter or aqua eyecolour at a young age colouring towards blue when aging, could be due to a not yet discovered mutation with colourpoints (cscs).
The smoke/silver gen can also have an influence on how dark the coatcolour is with new born kittens.
Even though Ann Baker worked already with mink before the existance of the Ragamuffins, the sepia gen from most of the mink Ragdolls (who will test positive for the sepia gen by genetic test) can be traced back towards 1 Liebling Ragamuffin cat.

From mink x mink combinations you can expect sepia (very dark solid coloured with yellow/golden eyecolour), mink and pointed kittens.

An interesting link with for everybody easy to understand colour genetics about non pointed, pointed and mink, can be found at this website from Catz Inc.
Another interesting website to learn more about the sepia gen, is the following with genetics behind the Tonkinese.

Besides the pointed and mink Ragdolls, also solid Ragdolls have been registered in the past by IRCA breeders as Ragdolls. Many of the pointed Ragdolls who have red in their pedigrees are descendants of a few of these solid Ragdoll lines. The solid Ragdolls have gained a lot of popularity during the past years in Europe. Their popularity has nothing to do with monetary gain, because they usually are being sold at the same prize as their pointed littermates. They have adversaries among both the Ragdoll and Ragamuffin breeders. The solid Ragdoll breeders are working hard to get the solids, minks and sepia's recognized during one of the future years for championshipstatus. At this moment they are in most countries not yet recognized to gain titels at shows. They all have however a TICA SBT registration and full Ragdoll pedigree.

In New-Zealand the non pointed Ragdolls have achieved championship status and in South Africa there is a non pointed Ragdoll who obtained championship titles.

More information about the non pointed Ragdolls can be found soon at www.solidragdolls.be
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