In Living Color
by Mary Perfitt-Nelson

We are all posing artists. We yearn to create living wonder; ineffable beauty; extraordinary features that leave us mesmerized and in awe. We want to be moved by the cats we help bring into the world.
We each have our preferences. Brightly painted, non-thermal (self-involved) calicos and lumbering, co-lossal-headed males covered in wrinkles bring me to my knees. Most of us are “all elbows” with a paintbrush, but it sure enriches our lives to be part of creating moving, breathing art.
What are we looking for when we examine the litters we helped create? Who stays and who is fortunate to escape the life of a Queen or Sire? Does our focus change over time? It should.
Growth requires change and flat learning curves are to be avoided in life, generally. Without the experience to know what you are looking at, novice breeders may often lean toward the concrete and well-defined: color and pat-tern. What you see is what you get and the descriptions are carefully written everywhere.
Black is, well…black. Experienced breeders don’t necessarily have a monopoly on knowledge, but they are increasingly precise in articulating what they are after. They know what they want and the desire goes well-beyond color, spending the majority of their breeding career virtually obsessing on everything BUT color. They’d happily tell you about it if you have an hour or so.

Compared to color, other factors on breed standards are nebulous. The words paint impressionistic, blurry pictures. Interpretation is subjectively left to the beholder. Exactly what is: “slight to moderate?” What is weight that is “surprising?” Those unable to moderate their own lives are looking for obvious 90 degree a-gles. Others may be convinced they have moderate when, after a couple of glasses of wine, thought they felt some kind of bump on the nose bridge of their prize cat. If the ride down the bridge is short, it doesn’t matter, I say!

Einstein said: “That’s relativity” meaning your views depend on who you are and the glasses you wear. We will never understand more than our experience dictates. Our first kits most certainly had surprising weight and a slight to moderate stop. It wasn’t until we were four years in that we realized what some of these terms really meant. Bring in solid genetics and lots of luck and experience becomes an invaluable, irreplaceable way to truly know what it means to be surprised by weight!

Color is worth nothing in the standards of the majority of major cat associations or, at max, 2% of overall points. Small potatoes. And eye color isn’t even afforded an honorable mention! Yet one cruise through the lists and web-sites and ye will find that color is quite often given an im-pressive amount of attention…emphasis on often. And people are willing to pay through the nose for the right eye color.

Most of us have had a fetish of one kind or another. I still get excited when a calico comes through the birthing canal. I was subconsciously brainwashed by the first kit born in my home and am willingly enslaved.
Breeders also appear willing to charge more for certain colors/patterns and eyes. The same version of supply and demand that caused the US credit crisis mind you. Young, naïve and enthusiastic breeders willing to give a kidney for blue eyes (and sometimes very poor type) with breeding rights to keep the frivolous merry-go-round twirling. They might even pay thousands with a kitten back to prolong the shenanigans.
The truth is; focusing on color is a sphynx breeder’s faux pas. New breeders learn through trial and error (usually through a rogue post) that it isn’t en vogue to breed for color. It is shunned... whispered about in closed circles, and those with personal preferences learn to keep them to them-selves or risk a scarlet “C” stamped on their forehead.
Why is it that skin or eye color is considered more su-perficial than any other superficial trait? Tall ears? Massive paws? Wrinkles? It’s all the same shallow bag of marbles, isn’t it? Life is life………why would we place value on one superficial trait over another. And can’t we get “type” with a blue-eyed cat? Certainly; but plan on several years and multiple generations to get there, if ever.

The reason for this focus away from color is simple: our breed is in its infancy and our cats come in every possible color. The paint is irrelevant. Focusing on color and pattern can rob attention that should be allocated for more important things, like:

Working through our growing pains, we must get cohesive about type while simultaneously keeping the breed physically viable through stellar immune systems and agreeable temperaments to match. That is where the focus needs to be. We mustn’t get distracted by any-thing else. We specialize in Sphynx, not color. We are a head and skin breed. And judges are color blind, hopefully. We should be, too.

If you focus on anything but temperament and health, you too may be lured into a trap wherein you may compromise what is important for what is not. And it may cost you a purrty penny, too. Passing up a perfect match for your family to get a specific sex or color or pattern won’t be wise in the long haul. I secretly prayed for a kid with red hair, but certainly love my toe-headed offspring no less because they failed to inherit the right genes! Sure we have our favorite colors, but harmony in the home and cattery trumps any paint job.

Building a breeding program and choosing cats is akin to building or buying a house. Before you start hunting, be sure you know your priorities. Realtors would caution you not to be fooled by a pretty shade of paint if the house is built of cards. Check the furnace. Check the roof. Make sure you won’t need to rewire and that there are no leaks. You might take a lesson from the three little pigs that learned the hard way that building a house out of straw was a costly, dead-end road. Once they were able to get the foundation right, they undoubtedly painted their curly tails off in fabulous shades of calico without worrying about the big bad wolf.

Reprint by permission only