Frustration in the Cattery! (Let's rant ;))

[Saga Felix]

Warning: This is a rant. Nothing more, nothing less... Just a little glimpse into my personal kitty-frustration just now ;-)

Yesterday, I unboxed 2 kittens. They were both female, and I cried Why? Well, here goes:

Many of you know who Ozzy is - he is an 8-traited Ocicat Tawny with Odyssey Rainbow eyes, rounded ears and full of cuteness. The only trait he lacks to have them all is a shade. But the week after I had Ozzy, I also had his cousin - a NINE-traited tawny with all that Ozzy has + shade.
Ozzy was my first "near-perfect" Ocicat Tawny, and he is now 150 days old - that means I have been near "perfection" in my Tawny-breeding for FIVE months. Ozzy's grand-dad, with whom it all started, is 210 days old. So, for 7 months I have been breeding for this, and 5 months ago, I had it!

Since then, I have obviously bred out numerous 8- and 9-traited Ocicat Tawnies with these traits. The pedigrees are a bit confusing because I no longer own half of those cats, but I estimate that I had roughly 12-15 9-traited Tawnies in this time - maybe even more.

And here's why I cry: THEY ARE ALL GIRLS!!!! Each and every damn kitten is a girl! EACH ONE! *cries again*
-So when both my tawny-pairs made 9-traiters yesterday and I unboxed them both - yes, I cried when I saw they were girls.
I had all kinds of plans with these tawnies - add better shade, better whiskers, odyssey no. 2 ears etc.... But I juuuust wanted a breeding pair of 9-traiters first. Shouldn't be so hard, right? Well, it turns out it is - and yes, now I have no less than 3 absolutely awesome, but utterly useless girls sitting around - again. One from last week, two from this week.
When will it end? Will it ever? IF I ever get a boy, will my girls be near retiring? -And will I then get ONLY boys? Should I save one or more of these younger girls, in case I never get a girl again? -And then what to do with the "semi-old" girls? Kick a 9-traited Tawny to menagerie at the age of 65? Seems like quite a bit of a waste... Heck, I could also just give up on the entire project and kick them ALL to menagerie. Keep Ozzy, of course, as a bitter-sweet memory of back when my tawnies still gave me fun & joy

The speculation and frustration sees no end these days - especially because my tawnies are far from the only problem. My aby. black silver are BOYS only - I have 8- and 9-traiters by now, all boys. Only girl ever is a poorly traited one with genesis eyes... And my porcelain-bengals are boys only, too - etc.etc. - same problem with many families + pairs in my cattery. They make nothing but wrong genders these days, and have been for weeks and months.

Only bright side in my gender-frustration these days are my Choco Lynxes. They made girl + boy, whoa! But while that made me happy, I must admit that the endless number of kittens with "wrong" genders outweigh it these days. By far.
I seriously need some good news in my cattery - gender-wise.

I still really wish we get genders on boxes some time. Sure, I'd still get wrong genders here and there, but they wouldn't eat food and take prims and be source of QUITE this amount of frustration. Right now, I have at least 65 prims and a food-cost of 1-1½ k per month of USELESS cats... Juuust in case I get the right gender next week... Argh!! Been saying that too long now....

So there... this was my rant - what is YOUR big frustration these days? Let out the steam - maybe it helps ;-)

Saga

[Malicia Python]

Saga, I know your pain, in my cattery some traits just seem glued to the gender, all fancie eyed are female, all perfect eyed too, and so are the shorty tailed and the ody booboo eared.
This is so slowing and when not willing to get every wrong gender into sales (because I am still breeding them) decent mating becomes harder.
I heard about this gender jinx from a lot of friends and when you are not lucky to have a friend breeding compaable cats but getting the opposite gender, your are virtually doomed.
One more chance to cry out for a gender change potion, I guess

[Kayleigh McMillan]

I recognise this frustration and I gave up fighting it or let it get me down.
And this gender topic numbed me out to the point I don't care anymore.
I don't believe there ever will be gender on the box and I also think we have to continue bringing good project cats to menagerie because they are too unfinished to sell and feeding the wrong gender is a waste.
Not sure what to think but together with the 14 days growing and breeding cycle and having to open boxes to know the gender which is often the wrong one can make breeding pretty hard.
I decided though I like KittyCatS too much to quit at this point so I stopped battling it or let it get under my skin.
Otherwise I better find an other hobby.
I felt my only two options were to accept these handicaps or quit KittyCatS and so far I decided to accept it and laugh at too many same genders in a row.
But yeah I see what you mean.

[Liriel Garnet]

Saga,
I'm with you 100%

While I've had a bit more luck lately, I gave up on two lines I was working because I was sick and tired of never getting anything but one sex, so ruling out the possibility of either sibling or back-breeds.

I'll be honest, part of the reason I've had more luck recently is that I've got two good friends who I do a fair bit of cross-breeding with, and that helps. It's almost as if when one of us is on a streak, the other is on the opposite.

There are many possible explanations for the streaks, but no matter what the 'reason' is that they occur, they're still incredibly frustrating and honestly, I think this is just going to keep getting worse until a) they decide to give us a way to see the sex or b) they figure out a way to stop the out-of-control streaks we all see.

I hesitate to mention the third possibility that comes to mind, and that would be the whole market going away except for pets and a few breeders who can afford to keep sinking large amounts of real-life dollars into it because they will be able to keep enough cats that the streaks aren't going to be as problematic, simply because they're birthing so many.

Large scale 'well the numbers are even overall' doesn't mean anything when they're even because all your boxes from one line are girls, and all the boxes from another line are boys.

[Malicia Python]

Quote Liriel:
I hesitate to mention the third possibility that comes to mind, and that would be the whole market going away except for pets and a few breeders who can afford to keep sinking large amounts of real-life dollars into it because they will be able to keep enough cats that the streaks aren't going to be as problematic, simply because they're birthing so many.


Well I have seen a tendency towards this for some time now, esp those who buy the newest traits off whoever gotten them first are an example. Of course it is up to them what they do with their pocketmoney XD. "The market" (i.e. OUR buying behaviour!) is as tough as any other now, with a lot of competition because the supply exceeds the demand by far.

So, the gender mess (and I mean it where it is way beyond statistics) is just another nail in the coffin of many smaller breeders who try to breed special cats instead of doing the rat race for new traits. If your prognosis comes true, Kittyland will lose variety :/

[Nocshadue Balbozar]

I would love to see gender on boxes. Sure we still have no clue what we will get but it would save sooo much frustration. I for one don't like to have to menagarie a perfectly good cat because its the wrong sex. So you can try to sell it..but so does everybody else..and the market floods. Whereas if you knew the sex before opening, you could keep for later projects or sell at your leisure..since you're not feeding it or taking many prim to have it out. Sales wold improve on boxes as buyers could get the gender they need without birthing before hand. I firmly believe that have gender on boxes would help KittyCats all around, ease frustration for all breeders, but especially new breeders who may just be dipping their toes in the water and never take a plunge because of this kind of thing. I have seen posts from KittyCats where they quote the overall balance of male to female...what they don't take into consideration..that a girl from my chateau stubby line and a boy from my Aby Silver Line..may not be the pairing I am looking for atm. So that argument is a moot point. Overall balance doesn't mean anything to a breeder working several lines and trying to breed a very specific cat.

[anna Acanthus]

Apparently there is some future release which showing gender on boxes interfere with.
It'll have to be pretty awesome to outweigh this very real need to know the sex.
We've had the explanations in detail of how the random works for this but still no solution.
People are spending lots of money to try to develop a certain line and as we can see many are getting dangerously fed up with the downsides mentioned here. Not to mention being at the mercy of the caprices of the random trait generator. As someone said in another thread recently one can get weeks of getting mostly the lowest possible trait render.
We all adore our kitties and want to carry on breeding for a long while but the frustration on a few levels is getting too high and people do just give up in desperation you know ...

And with a declining secondary market maybe it's time to consider more seriously what most of us have been asking for for months now.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(05-08-2012 01:14 AM)Nocshadue Balbozar Wrote:  I would love to see gender on boxes. Sure we still have no clue what we will get but it would save sooo much frustration. I for one don't like to have to menagarie a perfectly good cat because its the wrong sex.

I wish this was true because the problematic part seems to be the fact we have to menagerie wrong genders as we can't feed them all.
This gives a huge discouragement because it are good cats.
And we are obligated to unbox kittens to know the gender, a bring kitty back in the box option (a rewrap button in the dialoge for kittens with the age 0 only?), would be cool ROFL
Can you believe I have over 20K K$ just from bringing wrong genders to ever joy & quit projects for this reason the last couple of months?
I hope the menagerie K$ shop is to become good LOL
I believe the gender on the box is not to come as Callie confirmed in an other thread about this topic.
So yes I think we have to accept this or find an other hobby, so far I decided the cats are cute enough to continue but having said that I have always hated waste.
Waste of resources, food, money or whatever in this sense I'm pretty conservative.
A solution on this topic would therefore be cool but I learned not to count on it which brings the responsibility back to myself and it is up to me if I want to continue on this terms or not in the long run
And I think KittyCatS can do what ever they want with their product and we customers have a free choice if and how long we agree with this.
And they clearly don't want gender on the box and I can think of some reasons why they don't such as the fear the market will be stuffed with boxes instead of live cats and this will not have a good outcome of their product.
I investigated the compittion M**roos and the sad thing is I rarely find a live Roo and these markets are so sad to walk through.
And since KittyCatS has no involvement with the secondary market their interest is not the same as ours but yes I noticed some secondary market problems as well and this is an understatement

[Sisch Firecaster]

(05-08-2012 06:39 AM)Kayleigh McMillan Wrote:  And since KittyCatS has no involvement with the secondary market their interest is not the same as ours but yes I noticed some secondary market problems as well and this is an understatement

Secondary market? What secondary market? It's death valley at the moment, and has been for quite a while...

I too have noticed that especially cats of one "family" - siblings- tend to be, once unboxed, of the same sex. My latest apple-eyes project for example - 2 boxes of the same parents, both boys. Or all the 9 traits offspring of my first self-bred 9 traits boy - all girls.

So yes, I too would love love love sex on boxes. I'm perfectly aware that the cats are just prims, but still I hate to menagerie them. I can't sell them, because the market is down. And because I have set myself a limit of how many cats I have running around, it's even worse when I unbox the wrong sex. I too have been thinking on giving up.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(05-08-2012 08:16 AM)Sisch Firecaster Wrote:  Secondary market? What secondary market? It's death valley at the moment, and has been for quite a while...

Good to know I'm not the only one who noticed this ...

(05-08-2012 08:16 AM)Sisch Firecaster Wrote:  So yes, I too would love love love sex on boxes. I'm perfectly aware that the cats are just prims, but still I hate to menagerie them. I can't sell them, because the market is down. And because I have set myself a limit of how many cats I have running around, it's even worse when I unbox the wrong sex. I too have been thinking on giving up.

Ironically I sell mainly boxes due to this as they don't expire or eat.