(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.
