The Epic Tale of Mike & Angelica

[NellyGlitter Resident]

(Posting here because it's the closest fit on subject matter. Originally posted in notices at Kitty Haven just a few minutes ago. Complete with Gyazo pictures for your viewing pleasure.)

The Epic Tale of Mike & Angelica
To start this story off, I wanted to move a malachite eye onto a red tabby with oddyssey bellini eyes (Mike https://gyazo.com/64f8ea042d7a0743a9794876bdba91d2 ). I had been successful on a previous breeding to a black russian with malachite eyes (Angelica https://gyazo.com/53c950a5a52b3308f4f21f039373ad19 ), so I repeated the partnering. As we all know happens, I ran short of money and cattery food at the same time, but had bowls on the ground, so I moved some cats down, 2D’d them and let them eat in the house till I restocked the cattery.

I have no idea how I missed it, or maybe it was right at the beginning, but while I was returning cats to the cattery, I clicked on Angelica and sent her off, then I clicked on Mike, hit cattery, hit yes and his text turned red. Copy - Delete Me. OMG. So I look in the cattery pairs and there is poor old Angelica, paired to a blank This Cat Is Not In Your Cattery. I checked my inv. I did an area search. Nada. I go into the group and tell my story to the CSR, who told me to delete the copy and file a ticket. What we did not know was at that time the server issues were beginning and a flood tide of missing cats had started.

Red Letter Mike looked so pitiful there, I could not delete him. So I filed a ticket. Was told the cat was in my cattery. I gyazo’d the blank in my cattery. They requested the Red Letter Mike be sent in, along with his ID, his parents IDs, all his partner’s IDs and all his offsprings’ IDs. All available in the cattery records. So my obsessive record back ups on my hard drive were not needed, just some extended copy paste. Off he went in a folder with his pile of documentation notecard.

I must commend the KittyCatS! staff for their persistence during the server breakdown. And their patience with us. My experience with all CSRs has been kind and positive. I made a note in Red Letter Mike’s documentation that he was partnered to an aging cat and I was concerned that she would age out before he came home, or that his stats might change because I’d had them all lined up.

After a couple days of watching Angelica age, I woke up in the morning to find and email that Mike had been delivered to me. I logged into SL even while the coffee was dripping, which I never do, to collect him. He arrived at 100% Love, very happy, well rested and a little hungry from sitting in my inventory for several hours. I immediately called Angelica down and gave them both the run of the house, and a pillow to share for their napping home spot. What a relief, even had about 2 days to spare on the kittening. https://gyazo.com/0ec465c3d0abad12a97323490a482660

The yeehaw I got the message from Angelica that she’d dropped a box in my house.

PLOT TWIST

So I tp directly home to the spot where the box was miraculously on the floor and not under it. I clicked the box and OMFG WTF? This is their kitten: https://gyazo.com/3edf810a84e1cf934dd9982ae1f2a601. So a Red Tabby bred to a Black Russian produced a salt & pepper Foxie with Full Moon eyes. How the hell did that happen? If it were rl I’d swear my girl got out and cheated on Mike. Not pixel possible. This is her pedigree https://gyazo.com/0ec465c3d0abad12a97323490a482660

Now during all the missing cat trauma, my cat sim friends Arella, xtralovin and I were talking about dominant/recessives in breeding and what to expect. We had out the Saga charts and discussed predictability. And then I opened my mouth and jinxed myself. “And then 3 or 4 gens down some completely unexpected oddball will show up between what should be two totally predictable cats.”

So I yelled at both cats for a bit, and they ignored me. Since I had bred all 4 of the grandparents I had easy access to the now working database. and this is what I found. The kitten’s maternal grandfather’s mother was Foxy Lady, a Foxie S&P with Full Moon eyes. https://gyazo.com/18f688f6bec7f8b3a55a9e33acb44259 . My intent at the time was to preserve a limited edition eye and move it onto my Chat 2 G&Ws. Which it did. I got two blue eyed kittens out of Parnell, and a couple of Foxies. Bred to a gen Bandit who’s mother was a Russian Black, I got RB with his malachite eyes more than once, resulting in Angelica.

I’ve sort of made a mission of preserving retired, limited edition and not so popular traits, and move them around in closed breeding pools. Well this was a big oops. I really thought that because Angelica had only produced malachite eyes, and had done so with Mike before, it would happen again. Nope. The gods of pixel genetics laugh. Funny, I just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. If you read it, you’ll get the reference. If you didn’t, it’s not important. But really good book.

So I will ruthlessly close off Parnell’s descendants in my breeding program, maintain a healthy Foxie S&P Full Moon population, and use a different cat to get the malachite eyed red tabby on Mike to mate with the one produced by Mike and Angelica, and also partner Mike to an unrelated malachite eyed female and make a pair.

You may notice in my pedigrees pics that I make use of the menagerie on aged out cats. Yep. I do try to sell them for 100L, but if not, they go off to feed the cattery. I don’t permapet. Lots of my aged out cats have found lovely non breeding pet homes. And lots of them went off the the the menagerie where some fluffy bunny wrote the KittyCatS! equivalent of going off to live on a farm. Your opinion of that is yours, entirely. And if you want my aged out cats, 100L each.

[Theodore Nacht]

That was highly diverting.

Also, American Gods is a fantastic novel.