~ Week 5 Kitten Info ~
(This assumes you've been following the project and have already read everything up to Week 4)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/At...73/189/127
It's Week 5 and we have some more new, interesting discoveries!
Recall that we have 2 kittens this week - one from the sibling breed of the Week2Kitten and Week3Kitten, and one from breeding Poppy and her new partner, Sammy. The bad news is that one kitten was a dud; but the good news is that we've found out a couple more interesting facts, and discovered Poppy's hidden whisker traits!!
Let's look at the bad news first!
1. Sibling Breed: Week2Kitten + Week3Kitten
New Born Kitten
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Big Boo Boo
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Curious)
Size: Normal
MOM: Week2Kitten
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Plush
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Curious)
DAD: Week3Kitten
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Mysterious
Whiskers: White (Shape: Guitar)
So, except for the tail, this kitten is exactly like its Mom. Unfortunately, we don't know if this kitten's hidden fur came from one of the parents' shown or hidden fur, so we have no idea if this kitty is simply hiding Russian black or if it's hiding the Balinese Blue Lynx.
The Big Boo Boo tail comes from dad. When Poppy and Ricky had these kittens, Week2Kitten got Poppy's Plush tail as her shown tail, and her hidden tail came from Dad. Week3Kitten got his Genesis tail from Poppy, so his hidden tail also came from Dad. Recall that Dad shows Big Boo Boo and hides the same, or something more recessive. So Dad must have passed his Big Boo Boo tail to at least one of the kittens (and either the same, or his hidden tail to the other). That's why breeding these two gave us the Big Boo Boo tail.
This new kitten also has the same Curious whiskers as Mom. This is interesting because Dad had Guitar whiskers (so he's hiding Ricky's shown/hidden whiskers [Curious/Frazzled]). So two things could have happened:
a. the new kitten got its shown Curious whiskers from Mom and is hiding Dad's shown or hidden whiskers.
b. the new kitten got Dad's hidden whiskers and is hiding Mom's hidden whisker (Poppy's hidden mystery whisker shape!)
As with the fur, however, we can't tell whether it's A or B
All in all, we learned nothing new from this kitten, and it's not very useful to the rest of the project. You could try to sell it to someone who might like a 6-traited, purple-eyed black Russian (these colours sometimes sell better around Halloween) who's willing to gamble on the hidden fur and/or hidden whisker shape, or hang onto it in your inventory in case you need the fur/whiskers for something, or maybe for KittyCat of the Month, or whatever.
2. Starter and a New Partner: Poppy + Sammy
This is the more exciting of our two kittens!!
New Born Kitten
Fur: Balinese - Seal Lynx
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Stubby)
Size: Normal
MOM: Poppy
Fur: Genesis - Diamond III
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Guitar)
DAD: Sammy
Fur: Balinese - Seal Lynx
Eyes: Fire (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Chop Chop
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: Black (Shape: Wavy)
We've learned three new things with this breeding!! Let's look at each:
a. We now know that Poppy hides the Balinese Blue Lynx. The question last week was, where does Balinese Blue Lynx fit in terms of recessiveness? We knew from Saga's charts that it was dominant to Balinese Flame Lynx and from our own breedings that it was recessive to Russian Black. That's a huge range!! This week, we bred Poppy with a pure Balinese Seal Lynx and got Balinese Seal Lynx back! Go and check Saga's charts - where is Balinese Seal Lynx?
(
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B0_Wqb...iMDhm/edit)
What did you find out? You should have seen that:
Balinese Flame Lynx < Tawny & White Tabby < Balinese Seal Lynx
Wow, this really narrows things down!! We know know that Balinese Blue Lynx falls somewhere between Balinese Flame Lynx and Balinese Seal Lynx... since there's only one fur (at the time of this writing) between those - the Tawny & White Tabby - this means Balinese Blue Lynx is either just above or just below the Tawny & White Tabby.
We've decided that since we have the opportunity to place the newer Balinese Blue Lynx in a more specific position, we're going to do just that. This probably wouldn't be part of a normal breeding project whose purpose is to extract hidden traits from a starter, but in this case it shouldn't be too hard for us to do, and we happen to have a cat we can use to test this (and he's also showing a shade, which will give us an opportunity to keep trying to see if Poppy does hide a shade). Charles has donated Adalbert for this purpose:
Fur: American Shorthair - Tawny & White Tabby
Eyes: Odyssey Bellini (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Illume
Tail: Boo Boo
Ears: Vampire
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Guitar)
Charles is fairly confident Adalbert is pure Tawny and White, which will be a huge help: If Adalbert and Poppy have a Blue Lynx, then Blue Lynx is dominant to Tawny and White Tabby. If Poppy and Adalbert have a Tawny and White Tabby, then Blue Lynx is recessive to Tawny and White Tabby.
I had some Tawny and Whites hiding Flame Lynx, but using one of those might have taken longer:
- if Poppy and the new cat give a Blue Lynx, you won't know if the Blue Lynx came up against the Tawny and White Tabby or the hidden Flame Lynx... if Blue Lynx is dominant to Tawny and White Tabby, then this scenario could happen 50% of the time for each breed, and you'd have to breed these siblings together to find out if they hid Tawny and White fur. Sometimes however, if you don't have a cat with a pure trait, this is your only option. We would simply hope to get lucky and get the Tawny and White fur from the breeding, which would clearly indicate that Blue Lynx is recessive to Tawny and White.
b. We can now confirm that Poppy hides White Whisker Colour.
Poppy's hidden whisker came up against Sammy's shown Black whiskers (Black is more recessive than White), and this confirms that Poppy does hide White whiskers. Recall that we weren't 100% sure if this was true, because Ricky also shows White whiskers - when kittens from Poppy and Ricky had White whiskers, we didn't know if they came from Ricky's shown Whisker Colour trait or Poppy's hidden Whisker Colour trait!
We can now confirm with 100% certainty that Poppy hides White Whiskers.
c. We've discovered Poppy's hidden Whisker Shape!! Poppy hides Stubby whiskers!!
Check Saga's charts - you should see that Stubby whiskers are more dominant than Sammy's Wavy whiskers, so Sammy's Wavy whiskers were able to pull out Poppy's hidden Stubby whiskers!
Note also that Stubby is more recessive than Curious - that's why the kittens born from Ricky and Poppy had Curious Whisker Shape - those Curious whiskers were coming up against the Stubby whiskers, and the more dominant Curious whiskers were showing over the more recessive Stubby whiskers. This is good news - it means that any of the Curious whisker offspring hide the Stubby whiskers!
All in all, another great week!! Next week we'll continue the plan to breed the traity Bailey to our Week2Kitten in an effort to try and create a nice, traity Balinese Blue Lynx, and we'll breed Week3Kitten with Week4Kitten to see if we can pop out anymore Blue Lynx's. Furthermore, we'll breed Adalbert to Poppy and see if we can figure out where the Blue Lynx falls in relation to Tawny and White Tabby, and make a last-ditch effort to see if Poppy hides any kind of shade.
PS Ricky says he's enjoying his time in Vegas. I think we might send Sammy there so they can do some boy stuff and maybe go trolling for some nice girlie cats!
Tune in next week!
Instructional Breeding Project (Week 7 Info: MEGA!)
