Sophrani's meme

[rowyn]

Sophrani developed a meme, "MindWorks" to do on Fridays in lieu of the "Friday Five". The idea is to trace back the links to a current thought. I'm not much good at doing a specific thing on every Friday, so I'll just give it a shot now while I'm thinking about it.

Thought: There's a lot more specialized breeding of cats than I realized.

Back to the Source:
1) I was browsing this page on "ultra typing", or the creation of increasingly extreme and inbred versions of cats to get cats that conform more closely to open-ended breeding standards. (By "open-ended", I mean standards such as "ears should be large and wide-spaced" without saying how large is too large, or how far apart is too far apart.)

2) I had found this link through Google, while looking for information on breeds of large domestic cats.

3) I'd heard about "Ragdoll" cats as being especially large housecats (up to 20lbs for a normal-weight cat) but couldn't remember the breed name, and was trying to track it down.

4) I was thinking about big cats because while I was at LochHart, feychildthe had told me about two of her pet Maine Coon cats, another breed of larger-than-normal housecats.

5) I'd been reflecting on that because I was thinking about the trip while I was petting my own cat, Ash, and once again considering whether or not I wanted to get a second cat.

And that's the meme. :)

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

That's a different meme...

As to cats, it's my understanding that in breeding and the like has made "pure breds" more prone to birth defects and health problems. The article you linked to confirmed that.

Dogs seem much less prone to health problems from radical breeding practices than cats, although they don't escape entirely (hip dysplasia in some breeds, like German shepherds, is a genetic) and "pug" breeds can have really bad breathing problems.

Interesting stuff, thanks for the link...

CYa!
Mako

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Whee! Maine Coon cats! There's so much of them to love! =D

(I only saw one briefly, a couple of times. There was a pet store at a mall in the area, and there was a maine coon cat that was allowed to roam the store freely. It knew all the hidey-holes to duck into to avoid annoying kids, but it was nice enough to let friendly people pet it - like me! =) Unfortunately, the store didn't stay around for very long. =P )

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Hey, you used my meme! Verra cool. My thought was to complete one every Friday...but I've missed two out of the past four Fridays. Ooops. I need to get better about this. ;-)

[tkurogrym.livejournal.com]

Yay, Ragdolls! Kamots and I thought seriously about getting one some years ago (before the advent of our current 80 lb "landshark" of a German Shepherd). We visited one local breeder and met some truly beautiful, sweet-tempered felines. The males can get quite large - which was one of the attractions, frankly. That and their innate cuddliness... (she says, generalizing. Temperament is, of course, a wide-ranging thing within any breed.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

And that is a darn pretty user icon picture!

[rowyn]

Yah, I'm not so good with regularly-scheduled things, myself. Anything I'm not getting paid to do, I like to do whenever it suits me, rather than on a particular day or at a specific time. This is probably why I'm always scheduling the next game for a different time from the last game .... :)

[rowyn]

Ragdolls sound pretty cool. I'll probably do some more investigation if I ever do decide to get a purebred cat of some sort. I don't want to inadvertantly support one of the dysfunctional breeds.

The miniature cats have a certain appeal, too -- mainly because I know small dogs live much longer than big dogs (at the extreme ends, as much as three times as long! O.o ) If that were true of miniature cats, I'd certainly be interested. I don't like it when my pets die. :(

[rowyn]

Why, thank you! I think I look a bit too stern in it, but it's a good picture. :)