Kathy Lawson thought she was being smart when she hid her Japanese Bobtail’s toys in her dresser drawers. She placed them there to prevent the cat, Niki, from playing at inappropriate times. As it turns out, the joke was on her.
“I’d come home from work, and she’d have all my dresser drawers open,” says Lawson, a California-based breeder. “I’d have cats and kittens sitting in all my clothes. Niki was hunting her toys. She’d see me hiding them in drawers. I have these half-moon pulls; she’d put her little paws in them, walk backwards and pull the doors open.”
Lawson’s cat exemplifies the gregarious, athletic nature of the Japanese Bobtail. When speaking of the Bobtail’s antics, breeders often laugh at their goodhearted hijinks.
“They mean well. They really love you. They’re very fun and very sweet,” says Nikki Crandall-Seibert, an Illinois-based breeder and veterinarian.
Many Japanese Bobtail owners say they never want to be without one again. “They’re hard to describe in just a couple of words, but generally they’re pretty outgoing,” says Jennifer Reding, a California-based breeder. “They really like being with their people, but they’re not clingy. They follow me around the house to be in whatever room I’m in, and they’re pretty social with just about everyone.”
**For the full article, check out the September 2007 issue of CAT FANCY.**