are "Shades" completely random?

[Dianne Mechanique]

Hello, old Second Lifer but new to KittyCats and new to the forum ...

I have been trying to breed a plain, realistic looking black cat, because realism in Second Life is my main thing, but it's not working out so far.

I got a bunch of black cats that are as close to what I wanted as I could find and now I'm breeding them to try and accentuate the traits I want and de-emphasise or weed out the traits that I *don't* want.

I understand the basic rules of heredity, but the problem is that my first attempt seems to have violated those rules specifically in the area of "Shades." Since Shades aren't talked about much in terms of breeding, and aren't included in the KittyCat generator, I'm left wondering ... can Shades be bred for at all? Or are they completely random "gotchas"?

Example:

I bred two Russian Blacks with a "natural" shade, knowing full well that one of the parents of each had the same natural shade and one of the parents of each had a "fancy shade." The mother's mother was a "Glitter" and the father's father was a "Blush." Everything else in the family tree is just Natural shading all the way.

What I was expecting was that my two "Natural" parents could possibly have a recessive "Blush" or "Glitter" but that the odds were good that it would be a Natural anyway. Based on what I understand about the rules of heredity in KittyCats, it's impossible for the the recessive trait, if it showed up at all, to be anything other than "Glitter" or "Blush" but what I got was a "Flash."

"Flash" shows up nowhere in the family tree at all and I can go back for generations without seeing anything but 90% "Naturals." So while I'm extremely suspicious that anything other than "Natural" showed up in the first place (the odds would seem to be against it), it also seems quite impossible for it to be a "Flash."

What's going on here? Are Shades hereditary at all or are they just some kind of random flaw in the process?

All I want is a black cat that looks like a black cat and doesn't have a shine or a tint applied to it.

Thanks for reading this far (if you did, lol),

Dianne Mechanique

[HikariItsumo Resident]

Hi,

Shades are like all other breedable / passable traits.

The mother is hiding the flash shade, as the father has blush, which is recessive to flash.

Keep on breeding them, you'll end up having kittens with natural shade showing, as hidden traits
don't always pass as visible or pass at all.

That's what I do, I am not a fan of shades either, I have a breeding pair of Black Bengals that throw
their hidden twinkle shade now and then, but not all the time, they also sometimes pass another hidden
fur that can't be seen at all on the pedigree, but hiddens can hide for generations.

Hikari

[Dianne Mechanique]

(04-30-2018 09:50 AM)HikariItsumo Resident Wrote:  Hi,

Shades are like all other breedable / passable traits.

The mother is hiding the flash shade, as the father has blush, which is recessive to flash.

Keep on breeding them, you'll end up having kittens with natural shade showing, as hidden traits
don't always pass as visible or pass at all.

That's what I do, I am not a fan of shades either, I have a breeding pair of Black Bengals that throw
their hidden twinkle shade now and then, but not all the time, they also sometimes pass another hidden
fur that can't be seen at all on the pedigree, but hiddens can hide for generations.

Hikari

Thanks, but I still don't understand how the mother could be hiding the Flash shade as (as far as I understand) her only choices for a recessive trait wold come from one or the other of her parents, neither of which have the Flash trait.

Wouldn't the mother (who has the natural shade) only have one or the other of her parents non-hidden traits for her hidden trait? The manual suggests that if her visible fur trait ("Natural") comes from one of her parents, (and her father is a "Natural") then her hidden trait in the same category has to be her mothers *visible* trait (her mother was a "Glitter").

The manual is very confusingly written though, lol.

Is there anything at all that's recessive to Natural? Based on RL, Natural should be dominant to everything else really.

[Arella Ohmai]

Cats can hide traits for generations, heck they can hide traits all the way back to the starter cats.

When it comes to what traits pass to an offspring: Each parent goes down the list of traits and makes the choice to pass the shown or hidden for each. The offspring gathers all the traits each parent has passed and will always show which ever of the 2 choices is dominate and hide the other choice.
So what has happened here with the mother cat is her father passed it's shown natural shade and her mother passed her hidden flash shade.
Thus making her show Natural shade and hide Flash shade.

I do hope that makes sense to you.

Natural is the most dominate shade.

[HikariItsumo Resident]

Then the mother is not hiding glitter but flash which is not necessarily shown on the pedigree because it is... hidden and can be for generations.

[Dianne Mechanique]

(04-30-2018 01:41 PM)HikariItsumo Resident Wrote:  Then the mother is not hiding glitter but flash which is not necessarily shown on the pedigree because it is... hidden and can be for generations.

Thanks again, I misread the manual.

More questions (for anyone here) though ...

What's the best procedure for trying to weed out the Flash, the Illume, & the Porcelains, etc.?

I have other male "Naturals" in the box that I could breed the mother with, but all of them have the potential for hidden traits of course.

How do I know if I should try again with this same pair, or try a different male? Is it all just guesswork and trial and error, or is there something I should be looking for in the parents?

I only have the one female at the moment, although the one just born in the box might be a female I suppose. Is there any way to tell if a kitten in a box is male or female? And even if it is, does the fact that it's visible trait is Flash mean that it's more likely to have Flashy offspring anyway?

It seems to me I should just stick to what's visible and keep putting different Naturals together, hoping that eventually the hidden non-natural furs dissapear?

[Dianne Mechanique]

(04-30-2018 12:53 PM)Arella Ohmai Wrote:  Cats can hide traits for generations, heck they can hide traits all the way back to the starter cats.

When it comes to what traits pass to an offspring: Each parent goes down the list of traits and makes the choice to pass the shown or hidden for each. The offspring gathers all the traits each parent has passed and will always show which ever of the 2 choices is dominate and hide the other choice.
So what has happened here with the mother cat is her father passed it's shown natural shade and her mother passed her hidden flash shade.
Thus making her show Natural shade and hide Flash shade.

I do hope that makes sense to you.

Natural is the most dominate shade.

Thanks,

Yes, I got it wrong. When I first read the manual it seemed to suggest that if a cat got it's visible shade from one parent, that it's hidden shade would be the hidden shade of the other parent.

It's good to know that Natural is dominant at least. given a few hundred generations I could possibly get the "normal black cat" that I'm after, lol.

[Arwen Swordthain]

Keep trying you will eventually get a cat with Natural shade, the cats do seem to like to frustrate us though. Unfortunately because you can't "hide" the natural shade it will be nigh on impossible to know for sure if you manage to ever breed a pure one, in your case you will still likely have a blush or a flash lurking back there. As you are breeding 2 Naturals then you do stand a chance at getting a cat with natural passed from both parents but as I said no way of knowing, although breeding 2 natural offspring from this current pairing and only getting Natural would certainly indicate one of the cats might be pure, this is why many of us line breed, it solidifys the traits we want to keep and reduces our chances at random hiddens popping back out, but as the others have said a recessive can pass unseen for generations, 8 is the record for me, I'm sure others can track back even further

[Fire Sabretooth]

(04-30-2018 09:36 AM)Dianne Mechanique Wrote:  Hello, old Second Lifer but new to KittyCats and new to the forum ...

I have been trying to breed a plain, realistic looking black cat, because realism in Second Life is my main thing, but it's not working out so far.

I got a bunch of black cats that are as close to what I wanted as I could find and now I'm breeding them to try and accentuate the traits I want and de-emphasise or weed out the traits that I *don't* want.

I understand the basic rules of heredity, but the problem is that my first attempt seems to have violated those rules specifically in the area of "Shades." Since Shades aren't talked about much in terms of breeding, and aren't included in the KittyCat generator, I'm left wondering ... can Shades be bred for at all? Or are they completely random "gotchas"?

Example:

I bred two Russian Blacks with a "natural" shade, knowing full well that one of the parents of each had the same natural shade and one of the parents of each had a "fancy shade." The mother's mother was a "Glitter" and the father's father was a "Blush." Everything else in the family tree is just Natural shading all the way.

What I was expecting was that my two "Natural" parents could possibly have a recessive "Blush" or "Glitter" but that the odds were good that it would be a Natural anyway. Based on what I understand about the rules of heredity in KittyCats, it's impossible for the the recessive trait, if it showed up at all, to be anything other than "Glitter" or "Blush" but what I got was a "Flash."

"Flash" shows up nowhere in the family tree at all and I can go back for generations without seeing anything but 90% "Naturals." So while I'm extremely suspicious that anything other than "Natural" showed up in the first place (the odds would seem to be against it), it also seems quite impossible for it to be a "Flash."

What's going on here? Are Shades hereditary at all or are they just some kind of random flaw in the process?

All I want is a black cat that looks like a black cat and doesn't have a shine or a tint applied to it.

Thanks for reading this far (if you did, lol),

Dianne Mechanique

Okay, I prefer a natural shade as well, and that shade happens to be BLUSH, which is the most recessive shade to date. I work to breed that shade into all my cats.

You mention a possible BLUSH shade being hidden by the grandfather and a possible GLITTER being hidden by the grandmother. You got a baby showing FLASH, which can't hide behind the grandfather's BLUSH, so the FLASH had to come from the grandmother's side. The mother did not inherit her mother's shown GLITTER, she inherited her mother's hidden FLASH.

What happened was the grandfather's hidden BLUSH passed down and then pulled the grandmother's passed down hidden FLASH. That baby showing FLASH now hides BLUSH. If that FLASH baby is the right sex, you can pair it to the cat hiding BLUSH, and, eventually, both cats will pass their hidden BLUSH onto a baby that will show the natural-looking BLUSH shade.

If not the right sex, keep trying until you get another baby of the right sex that shows FLASH and hides BLUSH and you can mate parent and child until they both pass the hidden BLUSH.

I hope this helps.

You can tell what sex the baby is by clicking on the box, and, in the pop-up menu, you can click IMAGE, which will then turn the box into a picture of the cat inside, which will have a male or female symbol on it.

[Dianne Mechanique]

(05-01-2018 08:03 AM)Fire Sabretooth Wrote:  

(04-30-2018 09:36 AM)Dianne Mechanique Wrote:  Hello, old Second Lifer but new to KittyCats and new to the forum ...

I have been trying to breed a plain, realistic looking black cat, because realism in Second Life is my main thing, but it's not working out so far.

I got a bunch of black cats that are as close to what I wanted as I could find and now I'm breeding them to try and accentuate the traits I want and de-emphasise or weed out the traits that I *don't* want.

I understand the basic rules of heredity, but the problem is that my first attempt seems to have violated those rules specifically in the area of "Shades." Since Shades aren't talked about much in terms of breeding, and aren't included in the KittyCat generator, I'm left wondering ... can Shades be bred for at all? Or are they completely random "gotchas"?

Example:

I bred two Russian Blacks with a "natural" shade, knowing full well that one of the parents of each had the same natural shade and one of the parents of each had a "fancy shade." The mother's mother was a "Glitter" and the father's father was a "Blush." Everything else in the family tree is just Natural shading all the way.

What I was expecting was that my two "Natural" parents could possibly have a recessive "Blush" or "Glitter" but that the odds were good that it would be a Natural anyway. Based on what I understand about the rules of heredity in KittyCats, it's impossible for the the recessive trait, if it showed up at all, to be anything other than "Glitter" or "Blush" but what I got was a "Flash."

"Flash" shows up nowhere in the family tree at all and I can go back for generations without seeing anything but 90% "Naturals." So while I'm extremely suspicious that anything other than "Natural" showed up in the first place (the odds would seem to be against it), it also seems quite impossible for it to be a "Flash."

What's going on here? Are Shades hereditary at all or are they just some kind of random flaw in the process?

All I want is a black cat that looks like a black cat and doesn't have a shine or a tint applied to it.

Thanks for reading this far (if you did, lol),

Dianne Mechanique

Okay, I prefer a natural shade as well, and that shade happens to be BLUSH, which is the most recessive shade to date. I work to breed that shade into all my cats.

You mention a possible BLUSH shade being hidden by the grandfather and a possible GLITTER being hidden by the grandmother. You got a baby showing FLASH, which can't hide behind the grandfather's BLUSH, so the FLASH had to come from the grandmother's side. The mother did not inherit her mother's shown GLITTER, she inherited her mother's hidden FLASH.

What happened was the grandfather's hidden BLUSH passed down and then pulled the grandmother's passed down hidden FLASH. That baby showing FLASH now hides BLUSH. If that FLASH baby is the right sex, you can pair it to the cat hiding BLUSH, and, eventually, both cats will pass their hidden BLUSH onto a baby that will show the natural-looking BLUSH shade.

If not the right sex, keep trying until you get another baby of the right sex that shows FLASH and hides BLUSH and you can mate parent and child until they both pass the hidden BLUSH.

I hope this helps.

You can tell what sex the baby is by clicking on the box, and, in the pop-up menu, you can click IMAGE, which will then turn the box into a picture of the cat inside, which will have a male or female symbol on it.

thanks,

All this info is super helpful. I didn't mean to suggest "blush" isn't Natural because unlike the others it's really a tint, and natural coats can have tints of course.

However I'm exclusively breeding "black cats" (Russians), so in that context a blush shade is "un-natural" in that a black Russian with a rosy tint is no longer a "black Russian" or a "black cat." In any case, it's not what I'm after.

Your analysis of the kitten just birthed is super helpful though in that I know that it's not worth breeding it because it's showing Flash and hiding Blush, neither of which I want. So if I'm reading you correctly, and given that I *don't* want a Blush or a Flash etc., it would seem that that particular kitten should just be sent to the Cattery right away (unless anyone wants it).

Dianne