Don’t ask me why I’m doing this. It’s not like I don’t have enough time-consuming and expensive animal breeding projects going on already. However the mad scientist within me said, “wouldn’t it be cool to have a really large cat that looked kinda like a snow leopard?”
So, I thought, why not create one?
Why not indeed. Believe it or not, I’ve convinced a few people around the US who are breeding exotic cats to work with me in creating a new cat breed. Not quite sure what the name will be, (Rappahannock Spotted Cat, Blue Ridge Mouser, Virginia Frankencat, etc, – let me know if you think of a good one), but I have a fairly good idea of what I want them to look like.
Basically, the idea is to create a BIG heavily boned and wild-looking cat that has a thick snow-leopard type pelt, but with a domestic cat temperament and habits. I’m still working on a breed standard for these super-sized kitties, but it involves crossing three large domestic breeds (Maine Coons, American bobtails, and Pixie Bobs) with three wild cat species – the Asian Leopard Cat (Felis bengalis), the Jungle Cat (Felis chaus) and the Serval (Felis serval). The resulting hybrids have some, but limited fertility, but they’re all fairly nifty cats. The trick is to breed these hybrid kitties so that they retain the wild leopard spotting and larger size, while still keeping domestic temperament and behavior.
I’ve made some progress this years, but there’s still a long way to go. The latest generation of cats are slowly getting the color and coat pattern that I’m looking for, but it will take several years (perhaps decades) to get really good spotting, tufted ears, wild faces, and the large size (almost double regular domestic cat size) that I want. Personality-wise they’re all great already. They actually have some dog-like traits (they fetch and love water) and are fun to play with. I hope to have a website devoted to these cats sometime in the coming year, so if for some conceivable reason you actually want to follow this project you’ll be able to.
Here are some of the cats I’m working with right now. Bede came from Texas this past September, but Nike, Alfie, and Callisto were born right here on the farm.
Take three of these:
And cross with 3 of these:
To get these! Warning! Don’t try this at home!
