THE BOOK OF THE CAT. 



Miss Beal's male orange " Minotaur " is one 

 of the most beautiful cats of this breed now 

 exhibited, and has quite the best round head 

 and face, with sweetest expression. These are 

 qualities too often lacking in orange cats. 



Miss Beal's name is, perhaps, more closely 

 associated in the cat world with cream cats, 

 and in my next chapter on this breed she has 

 kindly supplied some notes. 



Another fancier of both orange and cream 

 cats is Mrs. D'Arcy-Hildyard, and to her I 

 am indebted for the following notes on orange 

 Persian cats : 



" Until comparatively lately I confined my- 

 self entirely to the breeding of creams, and my 

 efforts were attended with considerable success, 

 both in multiplying the number of cats of 

 that colour I bred thirteen one year and in 

 filling the classes given for cream females. I 

 was particularly lucky in breeding many 

 creams of the gentler sex. 



" The birth of the Orange and Tortoiseshell 

 Society fired me with ambition to start breed- 

 ing oranges. I was much fascinated with the 

 colour, though I hate their being penned beside 

 the creams at shows, as they completely take 

 all colour out of the lighter animals and give 

 them a washed-out appearance. I started by 

 crossing my cream queen 'Josephine of the Dur- 

 hams ' with Mrs. Neate's famous ' The King's 

 Own.' This proved a most satisfactory cross, 

 the results being three rich-coloured unmarked 

 orange kittens, one male and two females. I 

 sold one female to Miss Scratton, of Prittlewell 

 Priory, and it has, I hear, grown into a very 

 handsome cat ; the other two I kept, and they 

 won all before them at Manchester Kitten Show, 

 1901, and were shown at Slough after, where 

 the male was claimed. The remaining one, 

 ' Mehitabel of the Durhams,' I kept, and she 

 won me many prizes last winter, and being 

 mated this year to ' Champion Romaldkirk 

 Admiral ' has presented me witli a litter of 

 two creams and an orange. Certainly creams 

 and oranges cross well, and often I think 

 produce a brighter and deeper tone of colour 

 than is obtained from other shades. I have 

 lately purchased an orange torn, and by cross- 



ing him with ' Hazeline,' one of my cream 

 queens, have got a splendid litter of seven pure 

 oranges. This, I think, proves that the cream 

 and orange cross is good, and that they breed 

 very true. Oranges bred by crossing other 

 colours seem to me rather spasmodic, if I may 

 use the term. When breeders try crossing 

 an orange and a tortoiseshell they very often 

 get blacks and blues as well as oranges ; on the 

 other hand, from a blue and a tortoiseshell cross 

 sometimes an orange is obtained. But they do 

 not seem able to count exactly on the results. 



" Reliability is what I claim from the cream 

 and orange cross. I emphatically believe in 

 mating creams to creams if you wish to get a 

 good pale colour and few markings, and 

 oranges and creams crossed have certainly 

 produced good specimens of both colours for 

 me. I speak from my own experience. 



" I hope to do great things by trying a 

 cross between my orange torn ' Benjamin ' 

 and ' Mehitabel.' Miss Winifred Beal's ' Mino- 

 taur ' was the result of a cross between a 

 cream and a tortoiseshell. Her well-known 

 ' Garnet ' is the daughter of a cream and a 

 blue. At present there is, to my mind, no 

 orange female on the show bench to compare 

 with the late ' Jael,' owned by Miss Mildred 

 Beal, whose brilliant colour and perfect head 

 with its tiny ears made her hold her own at all 

 the shows up to within two months of her death 

 at quite a venerable age ; but I hope in 

 the future, as oranges become more popular 

 and breeders work hard at producing good 

 specimens, we may see her like again. I was 

 . much taken at Richmond show with Mrs. Sin- 

 gleton's 'Orange Girl,' and also with the kitten 

 of that colour exhibited by the same lady at 

 Manchester. Every year, I think, shows that 

 the general world is becoming more alive to the 

 beauties of orange and cream cats, as proved 

 both by the large increase in entries of these 

 colours at the principal shows and the great 

 demand for kittens when any are offered for 

 sale. Undoubtedly breeders owning creams 

 should stick to them, if they wLh to produce 

 good oranges see the many splendid speci- 

 mens sired by ' Midshipmite ' and ' Admiral.' 



