Watch your language – cat education November 20, 2011

I was updating my jewelry site tonight by adding my newly created rosaries (check it out: www.infinitelyspiritual.com) and as I struggled with finding the right words to describe them, I thought it would be interesting to post a quick blurb here on the blog about some of the phrases that cat breeders use and seem to confuse the general public:

• “This cat/kitten is typey” -  conforms to the breed standard.  This generally means that the cat/kitten looks like the breed should look and usually applies to the structure of the head and mostly the placement of the nose.  Show quality.

• “Pet quality” – this cat/kitten is not show quality and doesn’t have enough good genetic qualities to be used for producing show quality kittens. Normally, if the cat/kitten has one or more of the following less than favorable qualities, it is considered to be a pet: long nose bridge, too much of a muzzle, ears are too large and/or set too high, eyes not being round or large enough, body is too long, or the legs are too long.

• “Breeder quality” – breeder quality cats can have some of the qualities of pets, but they will then have other qualities that balance the lack of greatness in those areas. For instance, a breeder may keep a pet quality kitten that has a long nose because it has perfect eye color. Selectively breeding it will put that perfect eye color into the gene pool and eventually improve the eye color of the entire bloodline as offspring are produced from that one cat. When this quality of perfect eye color is seen in better typed offspring, the original long nosed cat is no longer bred.  It is then spayed and petted out with the hopes that its less than desirable qualities  were not embedded into the gene pool along with the perfect eye color. This is known as “selective breeding” or breeding for specific qualities.

• “This cat/kitten is nice” – we’re not saying the cat/kitten is sweet – they’re all sweet. We mean is – nice quality (show quality).

• “Show quality” – meets the written CFA Show Standard for a particular breed of cat.

• “Champion” – a cat that has been successfully shown in front of 6 judges without having been disqualified for faults or insufficient merit.

• “Premier” – a spayed/neutered cat that has been successfully shown in front of 6 judges without having been disqualified for faults or insufficient merit.

• “Grand Champion” – a cat that has been successfully Championed and then been selected as being better than 200 other cats in competition.

• “Grand Premier” – a spayed/neutered cat that has been successfully Premiered and then been selected as being better than 75 other spayed/neutered cats in competition.

• “Kittens on the ground” – kittens are born. I have no idea where this statement comes from.  I’ll Google it – BRB . . . I’m back and found no historical  information on “kittens or puppies on the ground.” Let me know if you can find the origin of this statement and we’ll post it here on the blog. You must give reference for your findings.

• “Cat show” – a black hole for your money where 200 – 300 extremely competitive people drive and fly to far away places with their cats to compete for 10 coveted placements 6 -8 times in one weekend.  Now look who’s crazy . . .

picture from cheezeburger.com