From Harrison William Weir's "Our Cats and All About Them" (1889):

"I was rather unprepared to learn that in Norfolk and Suffolk [a tabby] is called a Cyprus cat. 'Why Cyprus cat?' quoth I. 'I do not know,' said my informant."

Weir soon discovered that "Cyprus" was the a kind of cloth "made of silk and hair, showing wavy lines in it, and coming from Cyprus."