Something needs to be done about the irrepressible desire of humans to own companion animals that are substitutes for human babies. This innate desire in humans to nurture a baby but not a genuine human is expressed in the dramatic … Continue reading →
Tigons are very real. Charles Darwin (British naturalist and biologist famous for his theory of evolution) referred to them in 1861. There’s been a lot of breeding between male tigers and lionesses in captivity. Tigons are rarer than ligers (the … Continue reading →
It is instructional to remind ourselves what a badly bred purebred cat looks like. Here we have an Exotic Shorthair, the shorthaired version of the Persian. The facial anatomy has been distorted by poor selective breeding. The eyes bulge and … Continue reading →
Some general principles of responsible cat breeding are nicely set out in a couple of European documents. These are the “European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals” of 13 November 1987 and the “Resolution on the Breeding of Pet … Continue reading →
When did Breeding start? It started in the United Kingdom (specifically England) in the late 1800s and the first cat show was in 1871 at the Crystal Palace in South London. It was organised by the father of the Cat … Continue reading →
I realise that I am hammering away at the same old problem but we have to because change is needed and it’s not happening. I feel sorry for the cat of course. The coat is far too long for the … Continue reading →
A woman in America, April Arguin, has created two new hairless breeds of cat by turning two existing breeds, the Bambino and the Sphynx into cats with no tail (bobtailed). They are hybrids. The Bambino is a dwarf hairless cat. … Continue reading →
Comparing purebred and hybrid could apply to many species but I’ll use cats as an example. Purebred cats have a pedigree which means that the cat’s father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, great grandfather and great grandmother and so on … Continue reading →
In relation to domestic cat body shape, cobby is the opposite to slender (‘oriental’ in the cat world). It describes a shape which is stocky, sturdy, rounded, short legged, short muzzle etc.. The best way to visualise a cobby cat … Continue reading →
There is so much that is crappy about this example of human behaviour in relation to pets. Bad breeding of both cats and dogs can produce some pretty distressing anatomical distortions. For cats Persians get the accolade: overshot jaws and … Continue reading →
