What is a Good Cat?

[Ivy Norsk]

What is a Good Cat?

There’s been a thread on pricing which is old and has bits of useful information but it’s not current. A lot of new people have joined KittyCats with the release of the new SweetCats Collection and the Birthday Cats. A lot of people are poking around and asking questions - about pricing, about traits, about the cats in general. One of the perennial questions that pops up in the Addicts chat is “Is this a good cat?”

That question can be answered in many ways, largely because people do the KittyCats hobby in different ways. You can say “all cat are good cats”. They are charmingly animated and come in a multitudinous array of traits. But most people are really asking “Is this a cat worth breeding and how much can I get for it?”

This is not intended to be the start of a pricing thread. But it is intended to show what is the sort of cat that people spend months developing - cats that take well over 1000L to develop - over (kitty) generations of careful mixing of traits and attention to aesthetic detail - and also breeding games based on trait names that KittyCats and the community have developed over the years. Please note that putting in 1000 lindens does not mean that you will get 1000 lindens out. Breeders of highly-bred cats will tell you, it’s a labor of love. You put in way more lindens than you get out - but the cats are gorgeous.

In the early days of KittyCats there weren’t as many traits available and the mechanisms of how to breed were just being discovered. In the early days, the pinnacle of breeding was the Quadruple Mysterious cat. You may have noticed that there are Mysterious ears, Mysterious tail, Mysterious whisker shape, and also the recessive eye shape is called “Mysterious”. Figuring out how to put all four traits on one cat showed that you understood what was going on. I regret that I do not have a picture of a Quadruple Mysterious to show you.

In our current days, I know one breeder who has done up a Quadruple Dreamy. Lady Magick (MsMagick) has a line of cats that have Dreamy tail, Dreamy whiskers (and maybe some with DoubleDreamy?), Dreamy Fold ears, and Sparkle or Crystal Dream eyes.


(The Bengal Black is a triple dreamy with tail, whisker and Sparkle Dream eyes. The Aussie Snow is the quad featuring Crystal Dream eyes and the Dreamy Fold ears.)

In between the Quad Mysterious and the Quad Dreamy, KittyCats themselves introduced the Triple Tiger with their Menagerie Tiger line. A Triple Tiger has Wild Tiger ears, a Tiger Curl tail, and your choice of 2 limited edition eyes that came out with the Menagerie Tigers: jade or blushquartz. These are often shown on bengal furs (for bonus points) but can be on any fur.

With the introduction of the Tiger! furs (based on the original Menagerie tiger furs) and the Tiger Fold ear, we now have an expanded range of Tiger cats. In the chat I have seen a number of people popping in to show off their Quadruple Tigers: Tiger! fur, Tiger Curl tail, one of the Tiger ears, and jade or blushquartz eyes.

Mind you, once the form has been developed, it gets easier to reproduce it by buying somebody else’s. It used to be really hard to get a Triple Tiger. Not so much anymore. But developing one through breeding, in whole or in part, does help to teach you how to breed.

Also the forms go together. It becomes apparent, if you spend any time looking at the cats, that Callie made certain traits to match each other.
This is my cat Camden:


Look at how precisely the Chocolate-Tipped whiskers match the Burmilla Blue-Shaded fur. That didn’t happen by accident. As you work with whiskers you will realize that the colors are Not the same on all shapes of whiskers: a Blonde-streaked Fussy whisker is Not the same color as the Blonde-streaked DoubleDreamy, which is not the same color as a Blonde-streaked Mysterious. Dark chocolate DoublePlush whiskers are burgundy shaded(!) but in DoubleSnappy they look more like a chocolate bar (with less prominent shading).



(Look at how the line of the DoubleSnappy whisker doubles the stripe on the toyger’s cheek.)

Auctioneers routinely tout cats that are “Matchy”. They are worth more money. They are cats where when you look at them, you say “that cat is perfect just the way it is”. They come from breeders who know the traits well and have put in the breeding kibble to develop the cat. The traits all come out onto the grid in starters as 1T, 2T, or 3T etc. Sometimes Headquarters helps: a lot of Toyger Snows were released in starters alongside Cream whiskers, for example. Here’s a Bubblegum Tiger! with Serendipity Glow eyes. The pink on both is the same. That’s not an accident.




Breeders often think of wonderful combinations from traits old and new that make for a superlative cat. This is a cat by Mirsoul Macbeth (Mirsoul):




Look at those whiskers! Those are Sassy whiskers in Butterscotch Tipped-black. The Sassy form highlights the tips at the end, and the tips perfectly match the rim in the Tapestry Royale eyes. Put it on the retired Burmese Sable fur and the combination sings. That took work. It took work even if Burmese Sable is dominant because it’s easy to lose a dominant trait. Sassy whiskers are mid-range; it’s hard to keep them on a cat line through the generations because so many whiskers are more dominant and will cover them up, and so much DoublePlush, DoubleDreamy, and indeed SwankyLite are lurking or showing on so many cats in the grid. Do not underestimate the mid-range traits. Many of them, like Sassy whiskers, are very nice indeed.

As this thread goes forward, I would hope that people would post pictures of well-thought-out cats and why they look special. We have the Showroom section of the forum for people to post pictures of their own cats to promote them and so I ask that this thread not be used for sales. This is ultimately meant to be a Discussion thread with illustrations.

What are the great cats you have seen? Also forms like Bastets (foxie ears, tiger curl on a russian black). Foxy Foxies. Amazing matchys.