Need a second opinion

[ShannonSpoonhunter Resident]

Vanilla, a starter, was bred to Burnie. Their kitten, Ronald, has Soul Whisper eyes. I got really excited, thinking that from the pedigree it's obvious those are Burnie's hidden and therefore Vanilla might be hiding something more interesting. So I backbred Ronald to Vanilla... and they've had three kittens with Soul Whisper eyes. (sigh)

What would you do if you were me? Go out and buy (sigh) a cat that has Marble Magic eyes so I could at least get a definitive answer on whether I just got weirdly lucky and Vanilla and Burnie both happened to have the same hidden? Or just keep these two partnered for a few more rounds and cross my fingers?

[AngharadTruthsayer Resident]

(09-08-2018 10:51 PM)ShannonSpoonhunter Resident Wrote:  

Vanilla, a starter, was bred to Burnie. Their kitten, Ronald, has Soul Whisper eyes. I got really excited, thinking that from the pedigree it's obvious those are Burnie's hidden and therefore Vanilla might be hiding something more interesting. So I backbred Ronald to Vanilla... and they've had three kittens with Soul Whisper eyes. (sigh)

What would you do if you were me? Go out and buy (sigh) a cat that has Marble Magic eyes so I could at least get a definitive answer on whether I just got weirdly lucky and Vanilla and Burnie both happened to have the same hidden? Or just keep these two partnered for a few more rounds and cross my fingers?

If you want to pair them another time or two to wait until my MM cats produce, we can work out something for science and breed one of mine to yours to see what you get.

[Ivy Norsk]

This situation is less rare than you may think.
Vanilla is already 73 days old, and you need to make hiders with that eye. If you have a Marble Magic cat at hand, sure do a quickie one week with the Marble Magic cat. But your priority at this point is to mate Vanilla with a cat with a DOMINANT eye. You need to fork the traits.

Vanilla is Genesis Bronze shown, Soul Whisper or better hidden. You have the whole eye chart between the gens and the bottom to work with, so feel free to pick a mate that has other traits that you would want to uptrait the chartreuse. But you must pick a mate that is showing (and hiding) an eye that will show everytime Vanilla throws the hidden instead of the genesis bronze. Ideally you would like to create a sibling pair male and female from this eye, which is why you really mustn't dally about this, in case Vanilla decides to throw gen bronze all the time or all girls.

You're trying to create hiders which will then be able to replace Vanilla in the quest for the hidden eye. You want them to be as flexible as possible for future forking as well - I hope I'm explaining the forking well enough. You're wedging traits in between the shown and hidden of your cat to isolate and capture the hidden. Part of what you're doing is buying yourself time, creating a hider replacement for Vanilla (with better traits). But most of what you're doing is getting yourself out of the Super Recessive trap, where you Can't tell who's throwing what and you have no space on the chart to do any pulls.

Now I did say that the cat you choose should be both showing AND HIDING an eye above (WAY above) soul whisper. I hope you can see why. If your target mate ALSO hides soul whisper you are right back in the Super Recessive Trap with no way to know what's going on.
This is why experienced breeders like to have a few dominant lines. This is why it helps to have some cats around where you can feel pretty sure that this trait or the other is pure. And honestly, this is why it would not be crazy to use a quality box that is older than the release of soul whisper. This is also why retired traits are especially valuable - because you know that they didn't come from the starter, and why creating lines with retired traits are really really useful. (And yet, few people do this. I, myself started creating a line of snowshoe creams that would serve this function but the project broke down.)
If I was unclear in any of this, please ask and I'll elaborate.
Now go forth and pick a 9T cat with a DOMINANT eye.

[ShannonSpoonhunter Resident]

Ivy, that's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered.

I happened to have this guy hanging out, partnered to someone else, so I switched them (notice age of parents) -- I'm like 90% sure he's hiding Onyx.

[Arwen Swordthain]

I agree with Ivy, if your starter was younger then by all means use a more recessive eye, but given her age I'd also look to make a sibling pair from a nice 9T cat with a dominant eye and try to get her to pass it as hidden then breed the siblings together. She certainly seems happy enough to pass it though so hopefully won't be too long before you get something you can breed. You can always pop the first hider straight away and pop with a MM then if it hasn't passed by the time a sibling is ready to breed swap to a sibling breed and get yourself a pure eye