Persian

The Persian has the most expressive face in the feline world: it looks like someone who has read all the books, watched all the sunsets, and come to the conclusion that essentially nothing is capable of surprising it anymore. This expression of a jaded critic is, however, only a facade of dignity — because the Persian is not at all bored with the world. It has simply decided that the world does not require running. Everything truly important happens, after all, at the level of the cushion: a ray of sun, a good armchair, your presence. Why climb onto the cabinets, when the summits of this home come to it by themselves anyway.

This calm has four hundred years of career behind it. The first Persian cats were brought to Europe in the 17th century by the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle — he was returning from Persia with a caravan in which, besides silks and stories, traveled cats with fur the West had never seen. Two centuries later Queen Victoria fell in love with them, and with her all the salons of Europe — and so the Persian took the throne of the most popular breed in the world, on which it spent most of the 20th century. For four hundred years, moreover, it has performed exactly the same profession: it ennobles rooms by its mere presence.

In daily life the Persian is an observer of the master class. In the home's life it participates like a theater critic — from an armchair, with full concentration and the expression of a reviewer who has not yet decided how many stars to award today. It speaks rarely, quietly, and to the point, like someone with no need to shout anyone down. And that famous fur it wears like haute couture: in layers, with dignity, and with full awareness that such a wardrobe requires a valet. That valet is you — and it is a full-time job, not a hobby: daily combing is with the Persian simply part of the agreement, because without it this magnificent robe turns in a few days into mats that hurt.

And here is a thing easy to overlook behind all that dignity: the Persian's silence is not indifference. It is its language. The Persian does not run after you around the house — it waits for you. It chooses an armchair beside yours and turns it into a lifelong observation point of your life. It does not demand, does not insist, does not make scenes — it simply is, softly and continuously, and its calm has that strange property of lowering the blood pressure of the whole house. Whoever has once had a Persian knows: this is not a cat you pet for its sake. It is a cat you pet for your own.

At the bowl the Persian needs more attention than its calm way of life would suggest — for one serious reason: as many as 40% of Persian cats and related breeds inherit polycystic kidney disease (PKD), a disease in which cysts slowly grow in the kidneys.

Because the Persian is a cat for people who understand that the most precious things happen slowly. It will not take your home by storm — it will quiet it. Evening by evening, armchair by armchair, over a dozen or more years.

In a world that constantly shouts, the Persian is the most convincing argument for silence. Sit down beside it. It was waiting for exactly this — very patiently and very much in the Persian manner.