Curiosity compells this question - why are reg cats not parentage verified? It seems to me the margin for error with sire is pretty great??
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Definition of "purebred"
- Thread starter snake_lady
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Just a slight correction, Ocis are still outcrossed to Abys to widen our gene pool.
Sincere apologies!
I didn't realize it was still an option for the breeders. Is there a deadline on the outcrosses? For example, some breeds have until 2015 before they have to again ask for permission from the CFA board to continue to use their approved outcrosesses.
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I do know there are currently no first generations here (gen 2 is the earliest), but in New Zealand there are several breeders outcrossing. NZ does not appear to have a cut off date.
Missy is right- Abys are the only allowable outcross in Ocicats and that's soon to expire in the next few years.
This is all so interesting..thank you for your posts! I hadn't thought of it that way. I guess even those breeds that claim to exist for thousands of years can't really be documented since they have not been kept track of for as long as say an equivalent dog breed. I STILL would think (and this is just my take on the term, coming from dogs) that purebred would refer to cats whose traits breed true over a few generations. I guess that's a lot harder to determine in the cat!Originally Posted by FerrisCat
In cats, you can outcross to other breeds depending on the type of breed you have. Tonkinese were created from Burmese and Siamese cats. Ocicats were created from Siamese, American Shorthairs, and Abys. While both of these breeds no longer cross to their parent breeds, they are hybrid breeds and technically not pure. Many breeds can even outcross to cats from the domestic population, such as the American Curl and the LaPerm. Egyptian Maus, Japanese Bobtails, and Turkish Vans can outcross to domestics from very specific parts of the world. Considering the rarity of some of these breeds, these outcrosses are essential lest the gene pool becomes self limiting.
If you go back far enough in the pedigrees, all cat breeds can be traced back to the domestic population. There is no purity, just pedigrees. This is why CFA registers pedigreed cats, not purebred cats. And as one of my favorite judges has said, "all cats have pedigrees, but some are known only to god!"
Using that logic, you could say the same exact thing about dogs -there are no real "purebred" dogs cause all of them trace back to dogs/wolves that were domesticated.
