Nebelung

Nebelung History by Cora Cobb

One could say that Siegfried and Brunhilde, the first Nebelungs, were the inspiration for the breed, because it would not have been started without them. When Siegfried was born in August 1984, I never dreamed I would found a new breed of cat.

Siegfried’s mother was Elsa, a black Domestic Shorthair belonging to my son, Karl and his father was a cat which looked like a Russian Blue. Although I knew that Elsa’s father was a longhair (resembling a black Angora), I was surprised to find that, out of a litter of six black and blue shorthairs, one was a blue longhair. He was big and outstandingly beautiful, with the long legs, long tail and distinctive features of the Russian Blue combined with medium long hair. I decided he must become my cat and named him Siegfried.

Five months later, another litter was born to Elsa and her blue boyfriend. This time there were seven kittens, including two longhair females, one blue and one black. The little blue female was so beautiful and unusual, her silky hair longer and lighter than Siegfried’s, that I thought they could be the start of an entirely new cat breed.

When I accepted a computer contract in El Paso, Texas, I brought Sieg6ied and Brunhilde with me from Denver, Colorado. They were great companions for me in a strange city, loving and intelligent, but rather shy with strangers. The only problem was that Karl and I had allowed Siegfried to go outside when he was very young. After a few months cooped up in my efficiency apartment, he became so insistent that I had to let him out at night. After a few fights, he became the absolute leader of the apartment complex. Once he stayed away for nearly a week, during which time I frantically searched for him, even in the city animal shelter, but he returned with a bitten foot and never strayed far again.

In May 1986, Siegfried and Brunhilde’s first litter was born. They were gorgeous kittens, with their father’s Russian Blue body type and their mother’s long glossy hair. The three kittens proved lively and healthy and a lot of fun. Brunhilde took excellent care of them. When they were a couple of months old, I decided to see how to start a new breed of cat.
After copying a list of cat registry associations from Cats magazine, I made a call to the first name. That was the last time I made use of the list because the first association I called was TICA. The lady who answered the phone did not seem surprised when I said that I wanted to start a new breed. She referred me to Dr. Solveig Pflueger, the TICA genetics specialist.

From the start, Solveig encouraged me with the breed. She said it would be best to describe it as a longhair Russian Blue. She told me about a breed standard, which I would be expected to write. Also, I had to get others interested in breeding the cats. Also, I had to get other cats into the Nebelung breeding program, preferably Russian Blues with a longhair recessive.

Soon I had a provisional standard worked up, based on the Russian Blue, except for coat.. I was now ready to find other potential breeders. Patty Pendergrass, the wife of a coworker, Guy Motley, had requested a kitten. I asked if they would be willing to take two females, Schatzi and Liebchen, from the second litter and breed at least one of them to a Russian Blue male, which cat or stud service I would somehow provide. Patty said they would do that, so now I had others interested in breeding the cats.

To bring other cats into the breed, I had to make the Nebelungs better known. The best way I knew would be to enter a cat in a show. (At that time a cat of any new breed, recognized or not, could be shown in the NBC category.) I entered little Schatzi for Saturday at the City Kitty cat club show in Dallas, Texas.
I took Schatzi to a local groomer, who applied a shampoo which gave her lovely blue fur a pale brownish tinge. Another drawback for showing was that Schatzi lacked a true Russian Blue type face.

Nonetheless, this show achieved what I had wanted. I made contact with a breeder of top quality Russian Blues. Provided that I did not disclose her name, she would let me mate Schatzi to her supreme grand champion. Five beautiful shorthair kittens resulted from this mating. Their longhair descendants show the best qualities of their forbears.

Schatzi and Liebchen needed a full time Russian Blue mate, hopefully with a longhair recessive. Once again I looked in Cats magazine, this time for Russian Blue breeders. Coincidentally, Dianna Zinn of Ocean Grove, Mississippi, had a young male cat with longer-than-usual hair whom she as glad to sell to me. This was the start of a lasting friendship based on working together with the breed. The male cat, Universal Concord, soon set to work fathering kittens, of whom nearly half were longhairs.

Other early breeders included Karena Carlson of CK cattery, whose beautiful foundation male, Silver Paradox, later made a hit at the Paris cat show of 1989 and John Hruza, who took two of Siegfried and Brunhilde’s kittens, Zophie and Loki.
By accident, Zophie and Loki got together when she was in heat and produced Pralo and Tsumi, both of whom have descendants in the breeding pool. John also adopted Antony of Romani, a foundation cat with medium long hair, whose first fourth generation descendants were born in 1997.
Kim di Nubilo of Sacramento, California, started breeding Nebelungs, but an FIP epidemic wiped out her entire cattery, a great personal tragedy and a tragedy for the breed.

Through the early years I received much help from the late Jim Becknell and Sue Becknell (now Sue Bower) who had founded the El Paso Compadres Cat Club. The shows which Compadres put on allowed me to exhibit Nebelungs at far less cost than the usual $1000 up it took to attend other shows, none of which were within easy driving distance of isolated El Paso.

A tragedy for me was the deaths of Siegfried and Brunhilde in the late 1980’s. She died of unknown causes and he was hit by a car in the parking lot of the apartment complex where I lived. I still miss them very much. From that time on, none of my cats has been allowed to roam outside.

In the early years of the breed, there was much opposition from Russian Blue breeders and others. I had been warned that non-mutation breeds (mutation breeds being those which have folded ears, curly coats or other non-standard traits) which did not make use of pedigree stock from the beginning had little chance of attaining championship in TICA. Whether true or not, this drawback did not seem to be a problem for me or the other Nebelung breeders.

Showing in NBC is great fun. You don’t get championship points"but you get a lot of ribbons, owing to the small number of entries in that category. There is always much interest in new breeds from spectators at shows. (I did get tired of hearing, "That cat looks just like my Fluffy." Such comments, however, reinforced the idea that the Nebelungs were a natural breed.)

An unexpected advantage of starting a new breed was traveling to different places for cat shows. Such trips included one to Paris in November 1989. Karena and John went with me. We showed some cats and brought others for sale. Parisians loved the Nebelungs and bought all the for-sale cats. Karena could not afford to take much time from her job, but John and I had plenty of vacation time, so while Karena returned with the cats, John and I toured eastern and central Europe. We were in Berlin the night the wall came down. We took pictures of the crowds surrounding the Stasi offices in Dresden and were warned about Czech secret police in Prague. Both of us rejoiced at the coming of freedom to the Soviet satellites.

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