Breed Profiles

The Javanese is what happens when a Siamese decides it also wants a fancy coat, and the result is a cat with the voice of a talk-show host and the fur of a show pony. My Linus greets me at the door with a full sentence, follows me room to room narrating his day, and somehow always has more to say about the empty food bowl than any other topic.

He is not actually from Java, which is the first joke the breed name plays on you. The Javanese was developed in North America as a long-haired version of the Colorpoint Shorthair, which itself is a cousin of the Siamese, so he is essentially a Siamese in a longer, silkier outfit. The coat is medium length, lies close to the body, and comes in those pointed colors with the darker face, ears, paws, and tail.

The thing that owns your attention is the conversation. Linus does not meow so much as hold forth. He has a soft chirp for hello, a demanding wail for dinner, and a low mutter he reserves for the times I am on the phone and he has decided I am ignoring him. Friends who visit think it is adorable for the first ten minutes and then start answering him, which he clearly believes is the correct response.

A Cat That Needs to Be Part of the Story

These are not lap ornaments that tolerate being left alone for long stretches. Linus gets into everything, supervises the laundry, and sits on the edge of the bathtub to judge my shower. When I work from home he types on my keyboard, not by accident but with the deliberate air of a cat correcting my grammar. A Javanese left bored is a Javanese inventing trouble, so I leave puzzle feeders and a window perch with a bird view to keep his mind busy.

The coat is the easy kind of long hair. It lacks the thick undercoat of a Persian, so it does not mat the way those do, and a comb twice a week keeps Linus glossy. He loves the grooming, rolls onto his back, and purrs loud enough to drown out the television. The pointed areas, the face and ears especially, do get oily, so I wipe them with a soft cloth when they look dull.

He is athletic in a way that surprised my spouse, who expected a dainty couch cat. Linus jumps to the top of the bookcase in a single bound and walks along the curtain rod like a tightrope, then looks down as if to ask what took me so long to notice. A cat tree by the window and a rotating set of feather toys have saved more than one plant from being knocked over in the name of exploration.

Health has been straightforward, though the breed shares the Siamese-family predisposition to a few things worth knowing. Linus was screened for heart and kidney issues as a kitten, and his breeder explained the family tendency toward crossed eyes and a kinked tail in the old lines, neither of which he has. He eats a measured portion twice a day, because a talkative cat with free access to food becomes a round talkative cat, and the vet was blunt about that.

What I did not expect was how much he attaches. Linus sleeps against my legs every night and wakes me with a gentle paw to the face, not a claw, fifteen minutes before the alarm, as if he is personally responsible for my punctuality. The Siamese heart in him wants a person, not just a house, and he has clearly chosen me, complaints and all.

He plays like a dog sometimes, fetching a rolled sock down the hall and bringing it back for another throw, which never stops being funny from a creature most people assume is above such games. I have a video of him mid-retrieve that has settled more than one argument about whether cats can be trained to fetch.

The one drawback is travel. Linus hates the carrier and voices his objection all the way to the clinic, then forgives me by the time we get home, because he is, at his core, a forgiving cat who simply believes the world should hear about his feelings in real time.

He has a peculiar habit of narrating the opening of every cabinet in the kitchen, as if each one might contain a meal he has been unfairly denied. The sound of a drawer sliding now sends him into the hallway at a run, and I have learned to open the cat food quietly to avoid the performance. It is a small vanity, the belief that every closed thing is a missed opportunity, and it is the most Javanese thing about him.

If you want a quiet, low-interaction pet, look elsewhere. If you want a cat that treats you like a long-lost confidant who finally came home, the Javanese will talk your ear off and mean every word.