SMOKE PERSIANS. 



183 



it is an excellent plan to keep a sound 

 black cat in a smoke cattery. 



" Smokes are, comparatively speaking, one 

 .of the newer breeds of long-haired cats, and 

 arose from the crossing of blues, blacks, and 

 silvers, and appeared as a freak in litters of 

 blues or silvers, and, being beautiful, were 

 kept by their owners. No serious attempt, 

 however, was made to breed them until 

 quite recently. If beauty and a hardy con- 

 stitution count for much, they should be 

 more popular even than they are at present ; 

 but no doubt the extreme difficulties of 

 breeding a good, unmarked shaded cat deter 

 many breeders from taking them up. With 

 a whole-coloured cat it is fairly plain sailing 

 when a strain, sound in shape and bone, has 

 been established ; but with a shaded cat it 

 is quite another matter. Litter after litter 

 of kittens appear, grand in shape, strong in 

 limbs, apparently perfect in shading. In a 

 few months the kittens moult, and the shading 

 becomes perhaps a hopeless jumble of light 

 and dark. Where it should be dark it has 

 turned light, and vice versa. Still worse, the 

 shading disappears, and the markings the 

 bugbear of all smoke breeders appear, show- 

 ing traces of the far-away silver tabby an- 

 cestors. These markings have perhaps been 

 lying dormant for a generation, and appear 

 as a reminder of the silver tabby origin of 

 the smoke. 



" To all smoke breeders who wish to succeed 

 I would say, ' Never part with a well-shaped 

 smoke until at least a year old, lest you find 

 you have, in rejecting the apparently ugly 

 duckling and keeping the gem, thrown away 

 the substance for the shadow.' On the sub- 

 ject of mating, there is much to be said. 

 I am afraid many owners of smoke queens 

 mate with any coloured cat which takes 

 their fancy in the hopes of getting something 

 in the litter besides smokes. 



" I have sometimes heard owners say, 

 ' Oh ! I mate my smoke queen with all sorts 

 of colours. She always has one or two good 

 smokes in each litter.' That mav be true, 

 but if a smoke strain is to be built up, you 



" CHAMPION 

 BACKWELL JOGKAM. 



are making a fatal mistake. The kitten thus 

 bred goes to a new home and is expected to 

 produce smokes as good as herself. She is 

 mated with a smoke male, and when the 

 litter arrives there are perhaps no smokes, 

 she having thrown back to her sire, so as a 

 breeder she is useless. Smoke to smoke must 

 be the rule, except in special cases when, for 

 instance, the queen is on the light side ; then 

 a cross with a black may be found to be 

 necessary. Or the queen may be too dark 

 and given to breeding black kittens. Then 

 the choice should fall on a silver as free as 

 possible from silver tabby relations. On no 

 account must a tabby of any colour be chosen 

 or a sire with any white. A blue should also 

 be avoided, as the under-coat is liable to take 

 the blue shade and become blurred instead 

 of white at the roots. 



" Orange eyes are much prized in smokes, 

 and I believe, from my own experience in 

 breeding smokes for the last ten years, that it 

 is from the mothers that the kittens get their 

 eye colour. If the queen has pale green eyes 

 you may mate her with all the orange-eyed 

 sires in the kingdom, and the eyes will still 

 be pale. But if the queen has deep orange 

 eyes, the kittens will inherit them also, even 

 should the sire have only pale eyes. 



" Thanks to careful mating by some of our 

 smoke breeders, smokes are not the flukes 

 they once were, and a smoke queen, well 



