Hello!

I wanted to stop by and say hello, and also ask a genetics/color question. My husband and I are hoping to get into showing and raising a few persians. We have a female that just turned a year old, and we are looking for the baby Mr. Right now. Before I fall in love with a kitty, I was wondering a) what you would classify our Chloe's color as (she has changed so much since she was a kitten) and b) what colors would compliment her well with a male. I absolutely LOVE blues, smokes, blacks, silvers and whites. I was hoping to find a silver chin male, but no luck in our area. I am looking at a blue eyed white show quality kitten this week, but I'd love others input on what colors to consider. I can't seem to find anything online that explains the genetics to me clearly.

Thanks!



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Welcome to persian-cats.com

Chloe appears to be a black smoke Persian. She's not show quality but if you are planning on breeding her, I would find the best male you can possibly afford, preferably an older kitten or "teenager" as your girl is already one year of age. Has she been in heat yet? It's not good for a female's health to have frequent heat cycles without being bred. This is the reason I would suggest not getting a baby and try to find an older kitten or young adult male instead. Ideally, you should wait until your female is approximately 18 months old before breeding her for the first time.

A blue-eyed white male could work but it's often difficult to determine what color he is "masking" in order to know with 100% certainty what colors his offspring would be. Statistically speaking, when bred to a black smoke female, 50% of his kittens would be white, unless he is homozygous for white. In this case, 100% of his kittens would be white regardless of what color the female is. With your girl being a smoke, you'll also get smokes and solids other than solid white, if the white male is heterozygous for white. Again, the actual colors of the kittens would depend on what color the white male masks. Based on the color preferences you mentioned, a good choice in my opinion would be either a solid black or solid blue male or a black smoke or blue smoke male to breed your girl to. Blacks and blues are fairly common while smokes are harder to come by, especially the blue smokes.

Here is a very good article on Persian genetics that I commonly refer those who are new to the cat fancy to...

http://www.cacaocattery.com/colorgenetics.html

As for showing advice, I will leave that entirely up to the "show" breeders here. Try posting your questions under the Show section or possibly over on the Persian Talk board as we do not have a section specifically dedicated to breeding and genetics anymore. That way, more breeders are likely to see your questions and you'll get more responses.

I wish you the very best of luck in your breeding/showing endeavors.

Thank you for your reply!

She will be one on Halloween, and has been in heat twice. I had figured 18 months was ideal, and I was looking at older kittens figuring she'd be ready to be bred in the spring. Unfortunately, I cannot get a young adult cat as I have a very cranky 16 year old Russian Blue that loves babies, but if they don't grow up with her she won't tolerate them as adults. Chloe was 4 months, almost 5 months, old when we introduced them and she did fine, but I'd be afraid to go much older than that.

I know that she isn't show quality, it was her color & personality that made me fall in love with her. I am looking at higher end kittens for a male though, without a doubt.

Thank you for the color explanation! Exactly what I needed to know!

You're very welcome... I'm glad I was able to answer your questions.

Your Chloe is beautiful, show quality or not.

There are many things that need to be considered before breeding a cat, but the first thing I would ask you is do you have breeding rights on your female? Breeding Rights is not something that is just automatically given to the buyer, especially when that cat was originally intended to be sold as a pet. Your girl is a Pet Quality Persian, and there is a very good chance that the breeder you bought her from did not want her to be bred for this reason alone. If the person you bought her from gave you breeding rights, the next thing you need to consider is the genetic health of the cat. Has this cat been DNA tested negative for PKD- or have her parents been DNA tested negative. You will need to have that information in front of you before proceeding, as I am sure you wouldn't want to breed unhealthy kittens. The next thing to consider is the quality of the girl herself. She may have a great personality, but she does not fit the show standard for Persians. I know this may be hard to hear, but if you have any hope of breeding show quality Persians, you should not consider breeding this cat. The chances of her producing a show quality offspring, even if you put her with a show quality male are very slim- unless she has ancesters who were show quality. Do you have her pedigree from her original breeder? That information would be useful.
The other thing that concerns me is something Tracy already mentioned: Your girl is ready to be bred now and if you get a kitten you are putting that off for at least another year- maybe more if your male can't figure things out quickly. That is actually dangerous for your female's health and should not be tried. You should realize that breeding cats are not pets and they have to be treated differently than your pets, even if you only have a few. A large percentage of whole breeding males spray or mark- especially when they only have one female to breed with. Chances are, you won't want your male to have free run of your house once he starts breeding, as male spray is very foul smelling. If your Russian won't tolerate another cat, then you should keep him seperated from your breeding cats.

You will hear many opinions on when it is "ideal" to breed a female- but the rule of thumb would be no more than 3 heat cycles. More than that and you are putting your girl at risk for Pyometra- a life threatening situation.

I don't want to discourage you from starting a breeding program, but there is a right way to go about it and a wrong way. The wrong way will cost you thousands of dollars and much wasted time correcting mistakes. The right way requires that you do a lot of research and ideally enlisting the help of an expereinced mentor who also actively shows. If you would like to see what a show quality Smoke looks like, please visit my website.

Just wanted to say your persian is absolutely beautiful!

I will leave the breeding questions to the experts on the board.

I agree with most of what Tracy B. said. The only thing I disagree with is whether your girl should be bred or not. All the show breeders here are going to tell you no, she definitely should not be bred. I say as long as you do have breeding rights on her, she's 100% healthy, FeLV/FIV negative, and has been DNA tested for PKD and found to be negative, if you want to breed her, that decision is entirely up to you. To me, it's not about show quality, breeder quality or pet quality, it's about health and personality, first and foremost. In my opinion, all Persians are beautiful, regardless of whether they are destined for the show halls or not. However, if your primary goal is to breed AND produce show quality kittens, then yes, this girl should be spayed and you should find a mentor as Tracy B. suggested to assist you in your breeding/showing endeavors.

Just my two cents.

Most of the good points have already been addressed. Ideally breeders want to wait till the females are much older than a year. However, often the females are cycling long before. The 3rd cycle is a make it or break it time because of the health risk of going un-bred. There are pills that can be used to stop or put off cycles, however it's never encouraged as you can also cause additional harm to the female. My personal opinion is never to breed a cat for the production of more pets. If your going to breed, breed for show quality as then your bettering the breed and not just populating the world with more pet cats. It's a long and difficult haul your looking to venture into. I encourage you to join the CFA world of breeding and showing purebred cats. Just starting where you are at this time, with the female you have makes things a bit of a rush. What I'd suggest is this...
Spay your current female.
Join the CFA Mentor Program.
Join pandecats.com
Join CFA and sign up for a Cattery name.
Begin traveling to CFA shows and meeting breeders and take as many cattery tours as possible.
Begin learning genetics and pedigree research.
Find yourself a lovely lovely top show quality purebred to show in premiership.
Once you've accomplished your show goals and learned as much as possible along the way, then consider the breeding program.
In my opinion this is always the best advice and the advice most newbies don't want to hear.
I firmly believe in planing. Even the best laid plans have glitches along the way, however I hate to see any newbie start off on the wrong foot like most so often do. If your out there showing, your going to meet some wonderful breeders along the way to guide you. You'll find yourself learning more than you ever imagined. Through your learning process you'll also gain a new perspective than you likely have at this time. Through all of this journey you'll find the offers of the best cats/kittens can and will often come your way to then begin your breeding program with. It's all very time consuming, but anything worth having is worth the investment don't you think?
I hope I've been of some assistance and I wish you the very best!

Such good advice from Ceylon! One of the main reasons she has been able to get as far as she has in such a short amount of time is because she started out the right way! I wish I had been as smart when I started out, but sadly, I wasn't and I wasted ALOT of time, went through ALOT of heartache and made many mistakes. Now I can finally say after more than 20 years of breeding that I have a program that I am proud of! I also don't breed for the sole purpose of producing pets. I think there are enough of those that need homes in our shelters. I do of course get pets and I place those in pet homes, but in this economy that is becoming more difficult for people who are just starting out. You should think about that if your primary goal is to produce pets.

Thank you all for your advice. To answer the earlier questions, yes, I have breeding rights on Chloe. Yes, she has been tested and is negative for everything.

We ended up getting a beautiful silver shaded male kitten and a very pregnant cream and white female last night from a breeder that is scaling back/preparing to retire. She is a Cattery of Excellence and we were very pleased with our purchases. I'm confident she will help us along the way to make the right choices. We'll decide what to do with Chloe, and Chloe will be visiting with this breeder on our next visit for her to see her first hand and give us further advice.