They weren’t called munchkins when they were first discovered. It all started when a music teacher Sandra Hochenedal of Rayville, Louisiana brought home Blackberry, a pregnant female in 1982.  When the kittens came out, she was surprised that some of them had short legs so she named them “babylegs”.  It was after seeking the help of a cat geneticist - Dr. Slovieg Pflueger - where she sent two of her cats in the 1990’s in search of the cat’s “true root” that the name Munchkins came about.  Dr. Pflueger called Sandra to ask for a “stage name” as one of the cats was to be on the Good Morning America show and  needed a name for  it quickly.  Put on the spot,  the first thing that came  to Sandra’s
mind were the little people from The Wizard of Oz, and so shouted on the phone – MUNCHKINS!  There was a short pause and finally Dr. Pflueger replied “That would do”.

 

  
 

Blackberry is known to be the mother of the Munchkin breed.  Sandra bred her with a black and white cat named Mr. Gates for about ten years.  She also gave one of her kittens to her friend Kay LaFrance of Boscobel Cottage (now known as LaFrance Plantation) in Boscobel, Louisiana. Kay named him Toulouse and he is now known as the father of the munchkin breed. These tiny cats have also been called the Louisiana Creole Cat.

 

  
 

The earliest record of these cats was reported in 1930 in England by Schwangart and Grau.  It is supposed that the gene was passed on until it fell into obscurity until 1944.  A dynasty of short-legged cats was documented by veterinarian Dr. H. E. Williams-Jones.  He noted the existence of four generations of short-limbed cats.  He described their gate as being similar to a ferret.  When the cats sat back, they gave the appearance of a kangaroo and were dubbed the Kangaroo Cat.  Unfortunately, the line died out during WW II.
   
 

There’s also the Flatbush Mutation which was a local variety found in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950's around the Flatbush neighborhood.  The cats were undomesticated, but were described as having short legs, a short tail, small body, low slung, and a narrow slightly flattened head with short ears.  This was probably a highly local, spontaneous mutation that was lost due to new blood arriving in the area from strays and unaltered pets. In 1956, in "Zoologischer Anzeiger", author Max Egon Theil of Hamburg, Germany, described a cat that he had seen in Stalingrad in  1953.  The cat had unusually short legs and was playing with its  normal size litter mates.  He saw it sit on  its hindlegs with its front legs in the air, so he called it the "Stalingrad Kangaroo Cat".  Nothing else was ever noted on this sighting.

   
 

Kangaroo cats apparently disappeared in Europe, but the mutation cropped up again in New England in the 1970's and then in Louisiana in 1983.  Dr. Pflueger did his research and took the breed to the ASPCA in New York.  They determined the cat to be sound and healthy and that the short limbs were a natural mutation.