20O 



THE BOOK OF THE CAT. 



very popular, and has had a very strong hold upon 

 the American love for colour. But, of course, as is 

 generally the case with the popular ones, the supply 

 has never been too plentiful, and probably never will 

 be as regards the queens, for they only appear once 

 in a while, according to what seems to be one of 

 Nature's rules, that the queens should be tortoise- 

 shells. 



The Orange and Cream Club is probably destined 

 to do a great deal for the variety, which is one of the 

 colours from which it takes its name. Breeding 

 orange cats opens quite a field, for in attaining your 

 end you can at the same time indulge in other colours, 

 for undoubtedly a cross with a tortoiseshell will be 

 found necessary to keep the colour sufficiently 

 intense, and at other times it may be quite as well 

 to throw in a little black. The tendency for the 

 queens to be tortoiseshells may possibly be somewhat 

 overcome in time, but these inherent traits in colours 

 in animals and birds are often so strong that they 

 have a knack of reappearing even after several 

 generations. We occasionally see queens of the 

 orange colour, and these are usually high quality 



ones, both in colour and type ; but the orange 

 queens are not destined to at present make heavy 

 classes by themselves. Though the standard calls 

 for orange eyes, it is a curious coincidence that the 

 most consistently successful cat of recent times has 

 been Miss Beal's " Jael," who had green eyes ; but 

 so good was her colour, so good her type, that she 

 generally won when exhibited. 



The struggle carried on in the British Isles for some 

 years to breed these cats without marks has been 

 hardly a success, and there have not been very many 

 evolved of that colour that were really without marks, 

 and it is a great question if in this craze for absence of 

 marks they have not been passing by a lot of good 

 cats. As far as we personally are concerned in the 

 matter, we see little to be gained by the absence of 

 marks in the orange cats. If the colour had been 

 very prolific in numbers it might have been a good 

 idea to try and split up the classes, but they were 

 never too well filled, and there is room still for plenty 

 more, though we cannot complain so much at th& 

 representation that they have had in America last 

 season, either in numbers or quality. 



HIGHER EDUCATION. 

 (Photo : Mrs. S. F. Clarke.) 



