Breed Profiles

There is a particular kind of cat that sleeps on your face in winter and somehow becomes the centre of the household, and for me that cat is a Himalayan. I resisted for years. The flat face, the grooming demands, the reputation for being high-maintenance put me off. Then a friend's Himalayan climbed into my lap during a power cut and purred through the whole blackout, and I was done resisting.

Himalayans are what happens when you take a Persian and give it the colourpoints of a Siamese, and the result is a cat that looks like a fluffy cloud with a serious expression. Mine is a seal-point called Biscuit, and the expression is mostly for show. Underneath the regal stare is a cat whose single ambition is to be warm, near a human, and undisturbed. He is, in the best sense, a lap-warmer with a personality.

The flat face comes with paperwork, and I don't mean literally. Brachycephalic cats like Himalayans can have trouble with heat, with exertion, and with the usual cat habit of eating too fast. Biscuit pants if the flat gets warm, so I keep it cool and never let him outdoors in summer. His eyes water a little and need a daily wipe, which took me about three days to fold into the routine. It's a small price for the company.

Grooming is the real commitment, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. That long, dense coat mats if you look at it wrong. I brush Biscuit every day with a wide-tooth comb and a slicker, and even then a neglected weekend means a tangle behind the ears. The first time I skipped two days I spent twenty minutes undoing a knot, and he forgave me by sitting on the brush. They're forgiving cats, which helps.

The temperament that won me over

What I didn't expect was how social he is. Himalayans get described as placid, which is true, but placid isn't the same as distant. Biscuit wants to be where I am. He greets guests at the door, inspects the shopping, and supervises the kitchen from a safe distance. He's not a climber or a wildcat; he's a companion who happens to be beautiful, and the combination is hard to resist once you've lived with it.

Health is the part to take seriously. The flat face means dental crowding and the occasional breathing noise that's worth a vet's ear, and the breed carries polycystic kidney disease risk, so I asked for the PKD-negative paperwork before I took him home. Good breeders test, and the ones who don't are the ones to walk away from. Biscuit's screenings have been clean, and at four years old he's healthy, if theatrically lazy.

He eats measured meals because free-feeding a Himalayan is a fast route to an overweight cat who can't groom himself properly, and then the coat suffers and the cycle gets worse. A measured bowl, a daily brush, a cool room, and a lap to occupy is the whole formula. It sounds like work. Most days it just feels like having a very fluffy, very content roommate.

Would I get another Himalayan? Ask me on a cold morning with a cat on my chest. The answer is yes. He's not the easiest cat I've owned, but he's the one I'd miss the most, and that's the only metric that ever really counts.

The first Himalayan I met belonged to my mother, and I judged it as a fluffy ornament until I watched it follow her from room to room all afternoon, settling wherever she paused. That quiet devotion is the breed's real trait, and it is easy to miss under the coat and the flat face. Biscuit does the same to me, and I have stopped calling it needy and started calling it pleasant.

I would be lying if I said the maintenance is trivial. It is not. There are evenings I would rather sit down than brush a cat, and on those evenings I do it anyway, because the alternative is a matted, uncomfortable cat and a vet bill for a professional groom. The routine takes five minutes a day and a longer session on Sundays, and once it is habit it costs nothing but the time. For the company Biscuit gives, it is the cheapest deal in the house.

The first Himalayan I met belonged to my mother, and I judged it as a fluffy ornament until I watched it follow her from room to room all afternoon, settling wherever she paused. That quiet devotion is the breed's real trait, and it is easy to miss under the coat and the flat face. Biscuit does the same to me, and I have stopped calling it needy and started calling it pleasant.

I would be lying if I said the maintenance is trivial. It is not. There are evenings I would rather sit down than brush a cat, and on those evenings I do it anyway, because the alternative is a matted, uncomfortable cat and a vet bill for a professional groom. The routine takes five minutes a day and a longer session on Sundays, and once it is habit it costs nothing but the time. For the company Biscuit gives, it is the cheapest deal in the house.

The first Himalayan I met belonged to my mother, and I judged it as a fluffy ornament until I watched it follow her from room to room all afternoon, settling wherever she paused. That quiet devotion is the breed's real trait, and it is easy to miss under the coat and the flat face. Biscuit does the same to me, and I have stopped calling it needy and started calling it pleasant.

I would be lying if I said the maintenance is trivial. It is not. There are evenings I would rather sit down than brush a cat, and on those evenings I do it anyway, because the alternative is a matted, uncomfortable cat and a vet bill for a professional groom. The routine takes five minutes a day and a longer session on Sundays, and once it is habit it costs nothing but the time. For the company Biscuit gives, it is the cheapest deal in the house.