Request for new shade... something close to natural

[Kayla Woodrunner]

Since natural is a perfectly good shade and people like it, what people should do, instead of buying into the 9-trait is stop counting the traits and actually look at the traits. I'm with Ivy, some things look better in combinations so a trait is not good or bad by itself. And if you buy a natural shade because you like it on the white fur or whatever -- announce that loudly if you are at an auction. Enough people do that, people will bring in cats with natural shades to sell and auctioneers will tout natural shade like it's a good thing.

I've seen the same thing for pupils -- people show a pic of a real cat with certain pupils and say we should get a recessive like that -- but the pupils look just like curious/small or mysterious/big so we already have them.

There was an auction where the folks who came actually looked at the cats (rather than just read the traits) and people were buying natural shades for good prices as well as eyes with curious/small or mysterious/big although the other traits were very varied and if dominant tended to be retired-- cats with white mysterious whiskers were very few and far between for example. However, Midnight Snack auction closed and I have yet to find another auction that put more emphasis on the looks of the cat than the trait count. Most auctions have too many cats with very dominant traits like mysterious or plush and count it as part of the 9-count. Honestly, a mysterious tail is just as hard to get rid of as a genesis tail. And white mysterious whiskers - don't ven get me started on those. (well, ok, since I got started on them -- it takes 2-3 generations to get rid of them usually -- royal pain!) Midnight Snack auction started like most auctions, though -- even that auction took time for it to develop a clientale with varied tastes and part of it was that there were 3 regulars who started to say they didn't like certain shades. So a few of the sellers brought in cats that had natural shades which sold and things began to change. I loved that auction. Even in the summer, 90% of the cats always sold. So if you like natural, speak up. Things can change even if they don't last.