Kurilian Bobtail
cat breed (or breed group, depending on registry) from the Kuril Islands area
The Kurilian Bobtail is a cat breed (or breed group, depending on registry) originating from the Kuril Islands, as well as Sakhalin Island and the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia. Short- or long-haired, it has a semi-cobby body type and a distinct short, fluffy tail. The back is slightly arched with hind legs longer than the front, similar to those of the Manx. The breed is also called the Kuril Islands Bobtail, Kuril Bobtail (both often misspelt "Kurile") and Curilsk Bobtail, and may be referred to without "Bobtail". It is sometimes also spelt Kurilean.
The original short-haired variant is a natural breed, known on the islands for over 200 years. As selectively bred pets, they have been popular in USSR and to some extent other parts of Europe, especially for their rodent-hunting abilities, since the middle of the 20th century, but remained rare in North America as of 2011.
History
This new breed is not well known outside of its native territories. Though it is a native to Japan with a long history on a chain of islands, known as the Kurils, that runs from the easternmost point of Russia to the tip of Japan's Hokkaido Island. Also known as the Kuril Bobtail or the Curilsk Bobtail, because the Kuril Islands are Russian-owned, this breed is being developed and promoted as a Russian aboriginal breed that is separate and distinct from the Japanese Bobtail.
The public source identifies “Kurilian Bobtail” as cat breed (or breed group, depending on registry) from the Kuril Islands area. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kurilian, Bobtail and breed.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7338. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kurilian Bobtail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.