The dreaded CURIOUS BIG

[Winter Phoenix]

Got any tricks?
Other than finding the biggest recessive beast you can find
and trying to beat the mysterious small out of that stubborn kitteh!

Never mind, Im looking for MAGIC!
Some eye blinking I DREAM OF JEANNIE $#!T!

I once thought that COCO fur was the bane of my existance,
now its all about the CURIOUS BIG!

Now I'm thinking I should get eye shape out of the way first
before digging myself into some dead end breeding series.

Go ahead, say anything,
thoughts, dreams, spins and angles,
what do the words CURIOUS BIG mean to you!


They make me cringe!!

[Nocshadue Balbozar]

I don't mind Curious/Big and when I breed or buy a kitty with that combo I simply try as much as possible to pair with Myst/Small. The bane of my existance is Gen/Gen mostly ears and tails. When I was hunting for Ody Bellini eyes, most of what I found were all gen tails as far back as the eye can see. I am JUST NOW producing kittens with tails, it took 4 generations of breeding. Now it really shouldn't you say, just breed the gen tail kitty with a nice tail and then you have it hidden and breed sibs. And I did. They would toos the eye...or the tail. And I found that out of an average of 12 breeds, the tail may pop once. So ya. It can happen I know when you are focused on breeding for a certain trait. But for me, I just want kitties with tails, so if a nice eye gets hidden in the process..it'll pop back out eventually, and have a tail to go with it. I know other's would say I'm doing it wrong but hey..I likes what I likes =o)

[Tad Carlucci]

And now you know why I am so adamantly opposed to adding a third trait value to Eye Shape or Pupil Size!

Those two 2-value-only traits are the Gotcha. Here you are, worrying about the "important" traits, working the cross-breeding and back-breeding and all and, now, when you finally decide to pay attention to them, you can't get there from here because, while you were not looking (which is, after all, the required pre-condition for it to happen) Genetic Drift set in and eliminated the genes you need!

MuHaHaHahaHa

[Liriel Garnet]

(05-15-2013 02:11 AM)Nocshadue Balbozar Wrote:  I don't mind Curious/Big and when I breed or buy a kitty with that combo I simply try as much as possible to pair with Myst/Small. The bane of my existance is Gen/Gen mostly ears and tails. When I was hunting for Ody Bellini eyes, most of what I found were all gen tails as far back as the eye can see. I am JUST NOW producing kittens with tails, it took 4 generations of breeding. Now it really shouldn't you say, just breed the gen tail kitty with a nice tail and then you have it hidden and breed sibs. And I did. They would toos the eye...or the tail. And I found that out of an average of 12 breeds, the tail may pop once. So ya. It can happen I know when you are focused on breeding for a certain trait. But for me, I just want kitties with tails, so if a nice eye gets hidden in the process..it'll pop back out eventually, and have a tail to go with it. I know other's would say I'm doing it wrong but hey..I likes what I likes =o)

One thing I found out when I buy a very recessive trait on a low-trait kitten .. i don't sibling breed. I take the cat with the trait i bought and mate it with a 9t partner with the rest of the traits i want and a very dominant trait in the slot i'm trying to work in. Let's use your example, Ody Bellini. I take a 9T cat with great traits and a reasonably dominant eye (let's use Oceania).

Breed those, you know YOUR trait is hiding, and the kitten is 9T capable. Take that box, mate it with a *different* 9t partner with a more recessive eye than your first choice (let's say Morning Glory). Mate the new cat with your 9T Morning Glory -- as soon as you get a cat with Morning Glory (and hopefully a few more shown traits), you know it's hiding your Ody Bellini and you can move forward again.

It can take a couple of generations, but I don't sibling breed til I have at least at least a pair of 8T cats (preferably with *different* traits missing) to sibling breed and pull the hidden Bellini back out.

Doing it this way, you work the trait into YOUR favorite lines and trait it up without wasting time pulling a double hidden out at each stage, you only need to do that at the very end. It also helps that you don't have to wait for a pair each time, sex doesn't even matter as long as you have a partner for the box that is of the opposite sex at each stage. It's saved me *tons* of time in getting the kitties I want doing it this way.

[GhostCollective Resident]

for me I find that sometimes the Curious/Big makes the eyes and thus the kitty cuter, almost like Puss in Boots during Shrek. Then again for me I'm not too terribly worried about it because I mainly breed for fur, the rest of the traits are a bonus to me.

[Nocshadue Balbozar]

(05-15-2013 08:28 AM)Liriel Garnet Wrote:  One thing I found out when I buy a very recessive trait on a low-trait kitten .. i don't sibling breed. I take the cat with the trait i bought and mate it with a 9t partner with the rest of the traits i want and a very dominant trait in the slot i'm trying to work in.

That's kind of what I did. I took the bellini cat and bred with a nice 9T with blueberry. Then I did try sibling breeding also smooshing with other 8 to 9 traiters, it still took at least 4 generations of opening gen tail boxes to get a cat with the eye and a tail showing. I know trait throwing is supposed to be a 50/50 proposition but it *seems* to me that if you have a cat that has been bred gen on gen for a long time it gets very 'sticky'. May be just my perception but I try to avoid it myself and am very leery of buying cats with all gen in a certain trait slot in pedi. Now I've had a few great surprises from cats like that too, but I kinda groan still when I see it because I know how much work it will be to get the trait combo I'm after.

But I know it happens at times. I have a couple cats now that I bred for the organica eyes that have all gen tails. I'm now working to get tails back in that line, but to begin with, I was just excited about the eyes and wanted THEM to show so... there ya go lol.

I learned a lot trying to breed out those eyes, and am a lot more willing to let a trait be hidden now.

Now with the curious/big eyes..I seem to have better luck. I seem to get at least one box here and there with perfect out of the blue or at least myst or small. I open that one when I can and try to put with perfect eyes or at least the missing trait for perfect.

The conclusion I've some to though after two years of breeding is this; Cats are just stubborn little buggers *nods*.

[Liriel Garnet]

(05-15-2013 11:03 AM)Nocshadue Balbozar Wrote:  [

The conclusion I've some to though after two years of breeding is this; Cats are just stubborn little buggers *nods*.

AMEN!!!!

[dakillakm Resident]

I'm the same as some of the above, I don't seem to have nearly as much trouble with curious/mysterious & big/small as I do with say....silver guitar whiskers! If I have those on a kitty that I'm breeding out I find myself getting stuck with them for several gens.

For me, the shape/size of the eye isn't always ideally myst/small. I like the perfect eye on a really elegant looking kitty, the curious/small can look nice on an eye color that's really pretty and looks nice large with just a small pupil. My favorite combo by far is mysterious/big though; I love the way it makes the eye seem shapely and big at the same time somehow...

[Sanura Snowpaw]

Personally I prefer to have mysterious eye shape big pupil. Not everyone needs 9 traits. One of my favorite lines was 7 traits because it didn't have a shade or the small pupil and I simply adore that line.

[Winter Phoenix]

But whats the story on eye sizes and shapes?
Is curious more recessive than mysterious?
Is small more dom than big?
Is it random?
What are the laws of genetics regarding eye shapes and pupil sizes?

I think the next new eye size should be gigantic anime eyes,
we could call them FISH EYES.