The Javanese Cat: One Name, Two Entirely Different Cats

Before anything else, the fact that untangles every confusing thing you have read: "Javanese" names two different cats, depending on who is speaking. In the American CFA registry, the Javanese is a color division of the Balinese: the same pointed, blue-eyed, semi-longhaired breed, in colors beyond the classic four.

In Britain's GCCF and Australia's ACF, "Javanese" is an alternate name for a completely different cat, the Oriental Longhair: non-pointed, usually green-eyed, a longhaired Oriental. Neither usage is a mistake. They are two real, current naming systems. This page covers the first sense, which is what most people searching the term are looking for. The second gets its own clearly marked section below.

The CFA Javanese: the Balinese beyond four colors

CFA's Balinese standard is one document with two divisions. The Balinese Division holds the four classic point colors (seal, blue, chocolate, lilac). The Javanese Division holds everything else: solid color points in red, cream, cinnamon and fawn (each including smoke), lynx points in all eight base colors including silver, and the parti-color points (the tortie and cream combinations).

Each division carries its own color-class number series in CFA's registration system: the 1270s for the classic division, and the 2000s through 2098 for the Javanese side. Same body, same coat, same blue eyes. The division line is purely a color chart. Our Balinese colors page maps how the other registries file the same chart.

How the name happened: a 1979 refusal and a 2008 merger

The history is better than the usual listicle version. When breeders of the extended-color pointed cats sought CFA recognition, their first choice was to join the Balinese outright. The 1979 CFA Board refused, requiring "another name" to keep the classic Balinese chart pure. So the Javanese became CFA's own genuinely separate breed: provisional from 1979, full Championship status in 1986, and a free-standing breed for nearly three decades.

In 2008, CFA breeders voted the two back together, and the registry's own rules record it in five words: "Merge Balinese and Javanese Effective: 05/08." Since then the Javanese has been a division, not a breed, at CFA. Wikipedia's own article on the breed, which focuses explicitly on the CFA population, also records the older alternate name "Colorpoint Longhair."

One genuinely odd registration mechanic survives. CFA rules currently allow an Oriental Longhair to be re-registered as either a Balinese or a Javanese depending on its color. That means the same physical cat can hold three different CFA identities across its paperwork over a lifetime. No other breed family we have profiled carries that.

The OTHER Javanese: Britain's and Australia's different cat

Now the second sense, stated with equal precision. GCCF's own Oriental breed page says it directly: "The Oriental Longhair (formerly known as the Angora, and also known as the Javanese in some countries)." ACF's standards index lists "Oriental Longhair (Javanese)" as its own document, entirely separate from its Balinese standard. And ANCATS profiles "Javanese" as a green-eyed cat "obtained recently by crossing Oriental Shorthairs and Balinese," against its own blue-eyed Balinese entry.

In all three systems, the word names a NON-pointed, typically green-eyed cat: the Oriental Longhair, whose own page carries that breed's six-names-one-cat story. TICA and Canada's CCA-AFC, for their part, use the name Javanese for nothing at all. A search of TICA's own site returns zero results for it.

So when a US breeder site and a UK breed guide seem to contradict each other about what a Javanese is, both are quoting their own registry correctly. The word is the collision, not the cats.

Buying one: what the market calls it

Practically: in North America, extended-color pointed kittens are sold as Balinese or Javanese interchangeably, often from Siamese-and-Balinese catteries with one shared price list, and our price page carries the real figures. In the UK and Australia, a "Javanese" listing will usually mean an Oriental Longhair. Read the ad's color description (pointed and blue-eyed, or solid and green-eyed) and you will know which cat you are looking at before you ask.