Devaluing problem within selling kittycats

[Theodore Nacht]

Lazy, samey breeding leads to market crashes and steep drops in trait value. I don't wish to criticize anyone in our wonderful community, but this is (and always has been) a potential problem in KittyCatS.

If you sell cats from your line, your line may be replicated. The profit you make off the cat you sell is weighed against the potential for losses as time goes on and more cats from your line are replicated and sold by others. People who buy from you, especially if it's a large investment in a new, expensive trait, may feel entitled to sell every offspring they get to recoup their investment.

We especially see this with Most Recessive Traits, that will eventually become "default" in a given line as more dominant traits pass the hidden and are lost from the gene pool--Anyone remember seeing hundreds of Bengal Snows with Odyssey Rainbow eyes, Abyssinian Dark Chocolates without count with Odyssey Bellini?--but not exclusively: Foxie Salt and Pepper legions all bearing identical Apple eyes, anyone?

What you may realize at once when considering those examples is that all those combinations are devalued now. People get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, no matter how recessive, useful, or objectively pretty the combination is. After a dozen, they want to see something new.

Hence the common wisdom in KittyCatS has always been to breed one established line with a different established line to yield new combinations of traits. This makes the most money, keeps the traits viable longer, and is objectively more interesting. Despite this, many people will simply put two nearly identical cats together--or cats from a single established line--and replicate them, cloning them if you will. Instead of breeding for interesting traits (as the common wisdom holds responsible breeders do) they churn out identical kittens like an assembly line and flood the market with samey kittens that devalue the traits they carry.

I've never smiled on this. Now and then, as an auctioneer and a busy human, an incidence will get past me. I won't realize until I'm in the pedigree in front of an audience that a cat I'm promoting is a clone, someone making money off someone else's work and aesthetic. That always bothers me. It's not the culture I want to cultivate around Late Nacht Auction or the breeding philosophy I personally adhere to.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in KittyCatS to envision their perfect kitty and try to make it happen. When you achieve it, don't keep breeding indefinitely for the same thing... Move on to the next perfect cat you can dream up.

Don't rely on recessiveness to make your cats saleable--focus on cuteness. On uniqueness. Chasing the new "hot" trait and riding it into the ground gets old fast. If you love a new trait, buy it. Splash out. Treat yourself. But think critically about how you want to use it instead of just buying a breeding pair and churning it out.

That's my two cents anyway, for anyone who cares.

--Theo, who's been here a damn long time