Breeders Profile

Sicorn Cornish Rex, British Shorthairs & Siamese

All photos courtesy of Bob Fox, Louvain Woodmass and Graham & Sandie Taberer

Tell us a bit about you:
I (Graham) am a trainer of Building Skills for Leicester City Council and Sandie works in a call centre, but I've been involved in showing small livestock for over 30 years.  When I met Sandie at first we showed dogs and rabbits, but Sandie didn't like dog showing much so we carried on with showing rabbits, poultry and pigeons for the next 16 years.  In that time we ran one of the biggest shows in the world for the Dutch Rabbit Club (with 978 rabbits making 1,558 entries) and were also secretary for the National Mini Rex Rabbit Club (which we founded) and of the Midland Area Satin Club.  I'm still a rabbit judge of Fur and Rex rabbits.

Why did you choose your breed(s)?
One day we were at a rabbit show when a lady named Liz Tomlinson asked to see a rex rabbit and feel its coat.  I was asked to talk to her, after about half an hour we were invited to see her Cornish Rex cats, and we were so smitten that we came home with one that day!  She was a blue bi-colour and her name was Rexlizian Rarebit.  We bought a black silver spotted British Shorthair (Satinmist Silver Kierra, left) with the intention of developing a new colour in the Cornish Rexes but never got around to it, and for the last twenty-three years we have always had a Siamese around the house!

Why/how did you start breeding?
When we had been showing for about four years we got a new kitten that did particularly well, and thought it would be nice to have cats of our own breeding on the show bench, and to improve on the stock we had.

Why did you choose your prefix?
We decided we didn't want to use the same prefix that we used with our other livestock, so after much deliberating we went with a mixture of the cat breeds we kept - 'Sicorn' is made up of SIamese and CORNish Rex.

When were your most memorable occasions as a breeder?
The Number One Memorable Occasion for us has to be the 2004 GCCF Rex Cat Club show!  We went with an adult male, Whytuk Red Baron (Bertie) (below right), and two kittens, a male, Sicorn Red Robin and a female, Sicorn Electra - and came home with seven trophies!  Bertie won BIS Adult Male; Robin won BIS Male Kitten - and Electra, the star of the show, won BOB, BIS Si-Rex, BIS Female Kitten, BIS Kitten and Overall Best in Show!

The funniest thing about that show, though, happened the following year - you may know that if you go to a GCCF show, the club will normally automatically send you a schedule to enter the following year - so it did amuse us when they *didn't* send a schedule, just a letter reminding us to return the trophies in time!

A second memorable occasion would have to be when our lovely Siamese girl Landican Stormbrewing (Storm, left) won Best in Show Adult Female at the 2007 Aristocats Show in Thornbury!  Storm was brought for Graham as we had lost our Siamese, and the house felt wrong without one in it. Sarah Johnson & Pat Norman kindly agreed let us have Storm, who in true Siamese fashion rules the roost. Her BIS was a total surprise & delight!

Who were/are the most memorable cats you've had?
Well, one has to be Sicorn Red Robin (above right), our first own-bred European Premier - and the first Cornish Rex ever to make this title!  He achieved it at the end of last year (see the Roll of Honour page on this site!) and we are very proud of him!

Then we'd have to include Bertie (Whytuk Red Baron, below right), who sadly passed away in his sleep on 31 December 2007.  He was our second stud cat, and we bought him because there were simply no Si-Rex stud boys around at the time.

And, of course, our first ever Cornish Rex, Rexlizian Rarebit, who passed away in 2002 at the ripe old age of 17.

What are your hopes for the future of your breed/your breeding programme?
Despite the recent success with Robin, we have just made the decision to stop breeding the Cornish Rexes (although we will always have one or two around!) because we want to concentrate on the BSH and Siamese for a while.

Is there anything else you'd like to mention?
For us, showing with FIFe/FB is the best way to show in Britain - and we hope that FB can see that if we/they don't do something soon, TICA will take over as the second biggest cat registry here in the UK!  In fact, sadly, if nothing is done, we can see there will be no FB in a few years time ...

Finally, we would like to thank all the people who have entrusted their cats to us, without whom we would have no breeding program at all!

Graham & Sandie Taberer

February 2008