what if I just made my profile picture a male calico cat or something. hurm
Could I suggest a picture of Dawntreader Texas Calboy? He is a beautiful male calico cat who is a chimera. He's also somewhat controversial among some cat fancy associations since he is a male cat with female colors, and some people are strangely transphobic towards him, despite him being a cat? There was even a rule implemented to keep him from competing in a cat show. If you look up his name, he made a few news articles.
Oh my god?????
Yeah you're right about beautiful I'm squeezing him until he pops!!!!! I love this guy I think I'm going to make an edit real quickly Calboy I love you I'm so sorry people are calling you a freak??????
This is funnier than it should be. He's so angry about it. WHY ARE YOU MISGENDERING THE CAT.
To be fair, I don't think he was referring to the cat (who wasn't there) but to the cat's owner (who is a woman and who the author had been asking if anyone could point them in her direction).
Still hilarious that they're pitching a fit over a boy cat being calico, tho. Like idk man maybe your cat show rules are stupid if you're going to gender-lock coloring? /shrugs just me, maybe.
also, hang on - why DON'T they allow three-legged cats? You mean to tell me if an absolutely perfect show cat has some sort of tragic accident resulting in losing a limb (obviously incredibly unlikely considering how pampered these animals are but like WHAT IF), that could no longer be shown?
So I'm not sure about what happens if a show cat has an accident (like if it was hit by a car or something) but limb difference due to genetics or something like cancer is a DQ from pedigree competition because it can indicate something bad you don't want in your preservation breeding gene pool (i.e. it could lead to unhealthy offspring if you were to breed the cat). This is especially true for issues that can be considered "desirable" (like dwarfism), because breeding those on purpose is not considered by CFA to be good for the cat or its offspring, and drives demand for unscrupulous backyard breeding.
Three legged cats to my understanding are allowed in Household Pet 😊
Edit to add: @ruffboi-mags it's not the color itself that's the problem. Calico gene expression is a sex-linked trait associated with female cats, which in a male cat indicates an abnormality in the cat's genetics. While that isn't an inherently bad thing for the cat, assuming no other health problems arise from it, it's likely a disqualification from pedigree judging because CFA doesn't want to encourage the breeding of cats that are genetically abnormal for novelty purposes.
So that should be the only response they give. "Because we do not want to encourage intentional breeding of genetic abnormalities that could be harmful to the cats, we do not allow this trait in pedigree competitions."
Pretty easy.
I mean that said i think a large amount of pedigree standards (and the people creating/upholding them) are not nearly as concerned about the health of an animal's genetics as you or they would like us to believe, considering THIS is the first face you see on the CFA's page on Persians
there are ways to breed persians without such extreme brachycephalic traits, but then they generally don't meet pedigree breed standards bc their noses aren't short enough. And since they're the most low-hanging fruit for argument if they try to say they're excluding something to not encourage breeding that could be genetically detrimental to the animals, I'd guess their clear hypocrisy is probably why they don't just say that. Because it's not true, it's just their justification.
Also, if you think Persians aren't the same thing because it was just the result of long intentional breeding rather than a genetic abnormality, fine: you want to know what breed is entirely based on a genetic abnormality that is provably tied to actual detrimental health issues that the CFA DOES recognize (and thus contributes to the continued novelty breeding of)?
Scottish Folds.
So yeaaaaah, I'm much more inclined to believe that certain people did not want a BOY cat with a GIRL coat coloring winning a title than there being any actual concern about novelty breeding (or frankly the health and overall well-being of the cat or his offspring) when they made that ruling.
You do pretty well sum up my problems with CFA (and the breeds in question, specifically). I'm not saying it's a perfect organization, it's far from it and we have a long way to go. I'm just trying to be as informative as possible since this is making the rounds and thought people would appreciate the context/clarification since it happens to be a field of interest for me. Ultimately it's a problem with the conduct CFA seems to allow from its members and judges, and I feel news about this didn't do a good job explaining the details.
For those who don't know and in the interest of transparency: the Scottish Fold is another mutation breed - if I remember correctly, a collagen defect - whose ears are folded over due to the tissue deficiency. The same issue also leads directly to arthritis for the vast majority of Scottish Folds at some point in their lives, which is why I am personally against them being allowed in CFA and don't believe they should be bred.
The peke-faced Persian (with the golf ball eyes, above) looks like that because they have brachycephalic skulls, much like pugs or bulldogs. While the effect can be less extreme than in dogs (because they're losing less of a nose), I would like to see the breed standard expand to be more stringent about nare width and respiratory ability and expand the skull shape allowance. It's a whole can of worms I don't want to get into but I have a lot of criticisms about Persian and Exotic (short-haired Persian) facial standards.
I do have a generally favorable view of cat showing and I enjoy it immensely, but I'm man enough to admit that these breeds do likely get a pass for being an established breed (and because peke-faced Persians are massively popular), and that CFA is not without its double standards.
