How Long The Isolation Is?
A “Siberian Exile” for Siberians: Will They Ever Be Back?
About the Neva question you will find several articles as well as this short text I had created originally to my personal website but adapted now tot his site.
Neva or not Neva? Here is a controversial subject. Each breeder has their own views and convictions.
I would like to express here MHO. 
I was born into this world of feline passion. My mother who is a journalist, fell madly in love with Persian cats when covering a cat show conducted by the newspaper that she worked for at the time.
She started breeding cats in 1988. We also had a couple of Angora and Siamese cats.
I inherited this love for cats and I became a breeder myself.
I take this passion very seriously and the future of this wonderful breed, that has so much to offer, is entirely in the hands of today’s breeders. It is an honour and an huge responsibility.
For this reason, we focused on the question ” Neva Masquarade ” in depth.
A cat with all the Siberian breed virtues associated with a colour point look might seem very attractive to begin with if you are a new breeder in the first steps of your education. This is exactly why the education of news breeders is so important. Once a new breeder invested in the purchases of cats (it is an not only a financial investment but also emotional) it is much harder to change direction. Once you have mixed cats or neva, good Siberian breeders don’t sell to catteries with Neva. It can get tricky for those one who started badly and want to change direction.
There are two types of Neva, the ones born from an encounter of a Siberian and a colour point house cat brought to the area (ex Nysusia) and those that were hand made by breeders.
Here is an interesting article by Olga Mironova. This article is particularly interesting exactly because it was written by a feline judge and Neva breeder and it explains perfectly how Neva was created. The amount of Neva cats like Nyusya originated from a match of Siberian + colourpoint house cat was extremely small compared to the huge numbers fabricated “hand made”.
http://www.siestadream.com/articles_safe/siberian-cats.htm
Everyone is entitled to have an opinion on the subject but I believe here on this matter, it is clearly not only a conflict of opinions but above all an huge conflict of interests. Neva cats sell well to pet owners.
In our case, considering we already had Siamese cats we knew the colour point pattern mutation occurred naturally in Asia: Thailand Malasya etc. Colour point cats do not belong to the geographical area where Siberians evolved, they were brought in by men.
Here another interesting article, this time about colour point cats history and it’s origins.Nothin better to understand neva than to read about colour pointed cat’s origins.
http://messybeast.com/colourpoints.htm
I wonder what would be the result of the following experiment:
A cattery breeding Neva, only using studs and queens coming from those blood lines with Neva as foundation (either “natural” or hand made) without any addition of Siberian cats and blood lines, purely, for several generations NEVA on NEVA.
Knowing that the texture of the fur on Neva cats is completely different from the Siberian’s fur, I wonder what would be the result of this experience in 20 years, 30 years. I believe that despite a good selection of the best breeding animals, the results would not be satisfactory regarding that same Siberian standard that was fixed including Neva as a full Siberian. How long would it take to see strabismus problems, weaker, lighter constitution, different shape of the head and therefore a cat that no longer looks like the traditional Siberian.
Neva is like any other breed in which colour point cats were introduced (no matter how this happened) and the final result is something else in between two breeds and types of cat, a sub breed perhaps but not the same. Like in the case of Persians. A colour point Persian is a sub breed or cousin breed called Himalayan.
The most important point on this whole neva subject is that neva breeders need Siberian blood to retype their cats and at the moment there are several Siberian lines being totally lost to the crazy neva mixing to a point that the entire Siberian genetic pool is seriously in danger. Soon all the bloodlines, old and new will be mixed with neva (for the pleasure of neva mixers).
We need more Siberian breeders and we need to take care of the education of these Siberians breeders to be. This is the whole goal of this website. Do not hesitate to ask for help and integrate the mentor program that is already OPEN.
Daniela Barros.