mentor

Six chocolate point kittens and one lilac point, healthy kittens reared
by a novice breeder, with help from experienced breeder friends.

The Prestwick-Beresford Old-Style Siamese
Breed Preservation Society
Breeder Mentoring Program

"To respect the breeding of healthy cats is the beginning of aesthetic sense."
—Erasmus Darwin the Cat Breeder

Should You Become an Old-Style Siamese Breeder?

You need to research what is involved before you jump into it. Experience with breeding dogs or horses is not enough. Experience breeding other breeds of cat is not enough. Every domestic species and each breed within the species is different, requiring new knowledge, skills, and different facilities.

Humane, high quality breeding of pedigreed cats such as the Old-Style Siamese is both expensive and hard work. You will never make money from it, and it will occupy most of your free time.

If you've ever raised tomatoes in your back yard, you know that it is not difficult to produce a wonderful crop of tomatoes just once. But if you keep planting tomatoes in the same piece of soil, by the second or third year all of a sudden the tomatoes aren't thriving. With tomatoes, the trouble is a disease that develops in soil when tomatoes have been repeatedly grown in the same spot. A knowledgable tomato gardener knows he must rotate crops and use other good gardening techniques in order to keep raising great crops of tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables year after year.

Likewise, breeding just one litter from one pair of cats is not terribly expensive or demanding, but breeding more than just one litter is another story.

Breeding one litter will not help the breed, and it can be difficult to find good homes for the kittens when you are an unknown breeder. Given that there are so many sweet, deserving stray and abandoned cats in need of good homes, breeding one litter just for kicks is irresponsible.

Keeping several healthy, unneutered, high quality cats in your home as part of a selective breeding program and producing at least one litter of kittens year after year in that home can help the breed survive. However, it also creates conditions in which behavior problems, accidents, and epidemic diseases can flourish. And when you sell kittens to other breeders, the genetic mistakes you have made may mean damage to the entire breed. You will not see it in one year or five, but others may see it in twenty years or thirty. They may not know where it came from. They will probably never know it was your fault, but the damage will be there. Genetic damage to a breed often cannot be undone.

You must create a breeding environment that will allow you to keep breeding limited numbers of high quality, healthy, happy, genetically sound kittens for years. But doing that, breeding ethically for the good of the breed, will require a lot of expertise, time, and money.

~ ~ ~

"A home without an Old-Style Siamese cat, and a well-fed, healthy and properly revered cat, may be the perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?" —Mark Twain the Cat Breeder

How Do You Know Whether You Have What It Takes to Be a Good Old-Style Siamese Breeder?

Do I have a stable lifestyle, with plenty of time and money to spare for a demanding and sometimes stressful new hobby? When a pregnant queen or sick kitten has an emergency, can I take time off from my job in the middle of the day on short notice? Will I have the money to pay vet bills, often large and unexpected vet bills, on a frequent basis?
Do I have the patience to hand-feed little kittens every two to four hours around the clock for days, even for weeks? Will I be able to stand it when queens come into heat a dozen times a year and yowl like banshees for two weeks straight each time? Will my spouse be able to stand it? Will my neighbors hear the noise? Queens in heat and studs spray urine to mark territory and attract mates. Will I be able to deal with it if they urinate on my favorite rug or chair when I'm least expecting it? Will I be ready to scoop multiple litter boxes every day and clean them all thoroughly every week without fail?
Am I an organized person? Can I keep accurate breeding records and medical records month after month?
Am I a good housekeeper? Can I stand to sweep up stray litter every day? Mop and bleach floors and walls several times a year? Launder cat beds, kitten nest rags, towels, and blankets soiled by the cats and kittens every week? Clean up after kittens still learning to use the litter box? How about the many times each year when various cats will spit up hairballs, undigested food, and bile?
Am I willing to study the science of feline husbandry and genetics, to find someone to teach me and sometimes pay for seminars, so that I will know how to select only the most genetically sound cats for breeding and make the right decisions to keep their descendants healthy and happy?
Why do I really want to breed Old-Style Siamese cats? Is it about my own selfish needs, wanting to impress everyone? Is it the greedy child in me? Do I have visions of possessing throngs of gorgeous pedigreed cats without understanding what it will entail? Is it about money? Do I really believe I can make a profit by selling a handful of high quality kittens each year after investing everything I can in their health and welfare? Or is it that I truly care about what happens to the breed? Am I willing to work continually with other people for the benefit of the breed, even if it doesn't help me or my cattery? Breeding pedigreed cats is trickier than most people realize. If my breeding program results in cats that are sick or unhappy, am I prepared to admit it and give up breeding for their sakes and for the sake of the breed?
Am I prepared to learn how to deal honestly and conscientiously with kitten buyers and fellow breeders of all personality types and not always honest motives? Am I prepared to screen them diligently and reject them when necessary?
Am I willing to take lifelong responsibility for the welfare of every kitten I ever produce? Am I willing to take a cat back into my home even after ten years if the owner is no longer able to give him a home? Am I willing to conscientiously prevent my kittens and cats from adding to the homeless pet population by (a) neutering every kitten before he leaves my home; (b) learning about and using microchipping, tattooing, and other forms of permanent identification; and (c) making sure my kittens and cats are well trained before they leave and following up with buyers to help them solve any behavior problems that occur after adoption?

~ ~ ~

"What sort of breed philosophers are ye who know nothing of the origin and
destiny of Old-Style Siamese?"
—Henry David Thoreau the Cat Breeder

But If You Do Have What It Takes, What Next?

Before you buy a breeding cat, before you breed that first litter, the first thing you need to do is get educated about the breed and about the science of breeding. You need a mentor who is an experienced breeder of Old-Style Siamese, and you need to join a breed club. PREOSSIA is a breed club.

You should not buy your first breeding cat until you know what you are doing.

Why is that?

People tend to think that there are large numbers of cats in every breed, and that they are mostly not related to each other. But in fact, the opposite is true. Any Siamese cat you find, no matter where you find that cat, is likely to be closely related to the next Siamese cat you come across. Not only that, but what makes a cat an Old-Style Siamese is more than just appearance. It is the genes that cat carries, including hidden genes inherited from the cat's ancestors, that determine whether the cat is worth breeding or not. Some of the hidden genes may be dangerous defects.

If you find a cat that lacks registration papers, chances are good that the cat is not a purebred Siamese. If so, that cat may carry genes for traits that will be undesirable for Old-Style Siamese cats to have, genes for white spotting, long hair, and more. Worse yet, the unregistered cat may carry genes for personalities that aren't typical of Siamese. Arguably the single most important trait of the Siamese breed is its personality. Any pointed cat off the street can look more or less Siamese, but only a Siamese with all-Siamese ancestors is likely to be keenly intelligent, intensely curious, talkative, and interactive with humans. Only a Siamese with Siamese ancestors is likely to have that almost human quality, that "cat but not just a cat," quality for which the Siamese breed has long been famous.

Alternatviely, many cats you find may look like Old-Style Siamese to you, but may have a great many show-style (modern) Siamese cats among their recent ancestors. If they do, then you may find that many of the kittens produced by this cat will have a more extreme appearance than you would like.

The bottom line is, if you buy and proceed to breed a cat that does not have an authentically Old-Style Siamese pedigree, you will do the Old-Style Siamese breed more harm than good. If you don't learn how to study and evaluate the pedigree of your first breeding cat before you buy her, you probably won't make a good choice.

A final reason to be very careful and learn before you buy that first breeding cat relates to the future of the Old-Style Siamese breed. The Old-Style Siamese breed currently is a very small breed in danger of extinction. In order to survive and remain genetically healthy, the breed needs to have as many cats as possible that are not closely related to each other. If you choose a cat at random for breeding that you don't know much about, even if the cat is an authentic Old-Style Siamese, chances are that the cat will actually be closely related to one of the lineages (families) of Old-Style Siamese that are already being bred by responsible breeders. What you need to do if you want to help the breed is learn how to find a lineage that is not being bred by very many other breeders, or better yet, one that is not being bred by any other responsible breeders at all!

It is just as "Thoreau" said in the quote above: you are not much of a breeder if you don't take the time to learn about the past and the future of the Old-Style Siamese breed. You need to learn about the pedigrees of the past in order to know how to plan the pedigrees of the future.

To learn about pedigrees, to learn how to choose the right cats to breed, you need the help of experienced breeders who already know a lot about those things. PREOSSIA breeders understand the importance of breeders mentoring breeders for the benefit of the breed as a whole. If you are willing to learn, you will find a PREOSSIA breeder who is willing to teach. This is what the PREOSSIA Breeder Mentoring Program is all about. We encourage new breeders to join PREOSSIA, find an experienced breeder willing to serve as the new breeder's principal mentor, and join the club listserv. The club listserv allows new breeders to ask questions of many different breeders in the club, as well as of knowledgable non-breeders in the club. The listserv also allows members of the club to get to know each other, develop contacts and friendships. Responsible breeders will not sell breeding cats to people they don't know and trust. Lastly, PREOSSIA has a pedigree database that is ready at any time to serve new breeders who need to research the pedigrees of cats they are thinking of buying for breeding. We are here to help anyone who is serious about learning how to breed with the welfare of the cats in mind and for the benefit of the breed as a whole.

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