Rosie helping

[davidc4430]

so to keep my mind occupied i'm having a once in 10 years cleanup and my little helper is,

helping.

she loves rolled up sticky tape.

[katistrophik]

Rosie is very unusually coloured, quite striking actually, how old is she david?

[davidc4430]

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@katistrophik wrote:

Rosie is very unusually coloured, quite striking actually, how old is she david?

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shes 9 years old

she is a cream chocolate tortie i believe is the term burmese

her base coat is white cream with chocolate tips

she actually looks like shes been rolled in chocolate powder

she is the latest in a run of burmese ive had, first was a blue, then a chocolate

interspersed with 2 scottish folds

sadly they are getting too expensive so she may well be my last

[zanadoo_56]

Rosie would be called a Chocolate Tortie Burmese (or less frequently a Chololate Cream).

The cream colouring isn't mentioned in the breed name as it is the common denominator in all tortie Burmese - Brown, Blue, Chocolate and Lilac.  These four colours are the base coats of tortie Burmese, not the cream.  It's the addition of cream that makes them torties....and there is a lot of variety in how much is the contrast and colour content between the base colour and cream.  Burmese coats can also darken with age.

Tortoiseshell colouring is sex linked in cats - 99% of them are female.  Not 100% because male tortoiseshell cats - rare as they are - have occurred though often the males are sterile.

 Many many years ago I saw a male Brown Tortie Burmese at a cat show.  His name was Briama Fantastik (pet name Tassie) and he was able to sire kittens.  He had a lot more cream in his colouring than brown torties would usually have, which might have been considered a fault....if he hadn't been so rare. 🙂

I used to breed Burmese and I had a lovely Blue Tortie girl who was very sweet and very pretty.  She also had some superb tortie kittens (brown and blue) of her own.  Burmese are wonderful cats!

[davidc4430]

thank you for the information, the lady i got rosie from explained it to me at the time but i really didnt understand it all

my last cat (scottish fold) had recenrly passed away and i just wanted a burmese kitten asap. any colour i didnt care.

as shes just a pet, even though shes pure breed, no papers.

burmese have the best traits i know of, not a huge cat, reasonably quiet and very much a lap cat.

happy to be indoors all the time

[zanadoo_56]

No worries.  Happy to help.

Though Burmese aren't big cats the males are surprisingly heavy compared to the females.  They can be very heavy even when they don't look it.

I found cat genetics with regard to colours fascinating.  At the time I was involved in cat breeding and showing there was a definitive book on Burmese cat care that had a chart on what coloured kittens to expect based on the parents' colour and if they also carried the genes for other colours. I used to spend ages studying it. LOL

There's an order of dominance in the colours - brown, blue, chocolate then lilac. None of my three Burmese were chocolate or lilac or carried the genes for those colours which are quite recessive.  When I had my three cats, chocolate and lilac Burmese were very uncommon where I lived so I find your photos of Rosie very interesting.

My Brown Burmese male had a blue mother and a brown (carrying blue) father.....so he had a 50/50 chance of carrying the blue gene.  Brown is dominant over blue so if he wasn't carrying the blue gene, mated to a blue female the result was likely to be all brown kittens (some of which would be carrying the blue gene).  It was rather exciting to find that the first litter of kittens he sired to a blue female were a mix of brown and blue.  He was carrying the blue gene!

Mating him to my Blue Tortie queen had even more interesting results - the possibilities were: brown (male and female), brown carrying blue (ditto), blue (male and female), brown tortie (female), blue tortie (female), red (male) and cream (male).  No looking under the tails was necessary for the torties, reds and creams to know whether they were girls or boys. LOL

Ahh, it was so long ago that I had these wonderful cats and I still remember the coat colour breeding charts, and what lovely pets they were (my cats were ALWAYS pets first).  In fact I didn't do showing and breeding for very long.  Some cats don't like shows and my brown male was one of them.  For the last show he was entered into he didn't get past the vet examination when he promptly sunk his teeth into the vet's arm, so I withdrew him from the show.  And as for my sweet tortie girl, she was better behaved but she got tired of being stuck in a cage for the public viewing so she hissed at anyone who came near her.

Their happiness was more important than a show career so I stopped.  There were a couple more litters of kittens around the house, then I had all three cats desexed.  It was much less stressful to just have them being themselves around the house.

[davidc4430]

i showed my first burmese in about 3 shows, she won a ribbon for coat colour in her first show.

but i soon discovered shows were very stressful for her, and the win at all cost attitudes didnt sit well with me, so i stopped.

much better to have happy cats at home

sadly in my opinion its like the greyhound racing, i hate what they do to the dogs.

but without the racing i would never have a lovely placid boy here to keep me company.

i suspect without the lure of the show bench and the ribbons n trophys there would be little or no breeding of beautiful cats

i learned even when you pay a small fortune for a pure breed kitten what you were actually getting was a reject, the breeders know if a kitten is a likely winner. they do not sell them to just anyone. again just my opinion.

all my pure breeds were lovely cats, but show winners never likely. all had faults.

and believe me charging $750 for a kitten knowing its only ever going to be a pet grade, is shocking.

that was 9 years ago so i have no idea how much a burmese sell for today.

my first burmese cost me $200 in the late 80's

i had had many 'strays' before then, they allways were ok but never lap cats. very much feed me and leave me alone cats lol

having a cat actually want to sleep on my lap was quite new to me back then

rosie can be a little too 'i wanna be near you' at times.

in bed trying to watch some telly with her sitting on my chest her tail in my face....a pretty regular thing

[dopri_9793]

a nice cat

[dopri_9793]

a cute cat

[zanadoo_56]

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@davidc4430 wrote:

i showed my first burmese in about 3 shows, she won a ribbon for coat colour in her first show.

but i soon discovered shows were very stressful for her, and the win at all cost attitudes didnt sit well with me, so i stopped.

I still have the ribbons and certificates my cats won.  I still have all the pedigree papers as well.  I find they are something I cannot bring myself to throw out. They hold a lot of memories.

The cat clubs are something else.  Some members are very competitive and can be pretty nasty if their cats don't win...like it's some dastardly conspiracy to keep their cat from becoming a champion. LOL  So I met some lovely breeders in the Burmese world.....and some horrible ones. 

i suspect without the lure of the show bench and the ribbons n trophys there would be little or no breeding of beautiful cats

I'm not so sure. Sometimes it's the show bench, sometimes it is all about the breeding for specific colours or traits, and some times I'll bet it is about the prestige to creating a new breed with all the resultant publicity.  But also sometimes it's an accidental mating between a pedigreed cat and a moggy.....and the resultant kittens are so interesting the decision might be made to incorporate the new colours or patterns into the show world.  Humans love to tinker with nature and cats are part of it.  Think of the origins of the artifically created Australian Mist breed.  It's ancestry is half Burmese, and a quarter each Abyssinian and Australian Moggy and it took over NINE YEARS to develop the breed to registration status.  This is not a task you'd want to undertake lightly!

i learned even when you pay a small fortune for a pure breed kitten what you were actually getting was a reject, the breeders know if a kitten is a likely winner. they do not sell them to just anyone. again just my opinion.

I was a small time breeder with cats that were unknown on the show circuit when we moved interstate.  And in those days Burmese cats didn't cost anywhere near $750 or more.  Even $200-$250 was unusual unless the kitten had a really top pedigree to go with those good looks.  I wasn't in it for the money.  My kittens - even the show quality ones - sold for less than $100.

There were breeders who were rather exclusive.....and it was even more important if you had a champion stud male to make sure he was only mated to the best females.  Not all breeders were like that though.

all my pure breeds were lovely cats, but show winners never likely. all had faults.

Actually even good show cats can have (minor) faults.  It's a matter of balance with hopefully the good points far outweighing the not-so-perfect ones.  Some cats might consistently produce wonderful kittens that are better than their sire or dam.  I don't know what the situation is like now but show faults that used to cause a lot of angst were: incorrect eye colour (when you are buying a kitten the eye colour is still changing from the blue it was born with so it was always a bit of a lottery what the final eye colour would be), barring (slight stripes in the fur which hopefully the kitten will grow out of), ears too big, ears too small, a kink in the tail, in profile the cat doesn't have the typical 'bend' in the nose that Burmese have (Siamese for instance have a straight profile with no bend).  And so it went on......  Experience teaches you to assess a kitten or an adult cat almost in a matter of seconds on whether it is 'right' for the show bench or not.  It's not just how the cat looks, it's almost a feeling in your gut...that tells you this kitten or cat has 'it' to go far in the show world or would be good for breeding.  I really can't define it any other way.

and believe me charging $750 for a kitten knowing its only ever going to be a pet grade, is shocking.  that was 9 years ago so i have no idea how much a burmese sell for today.

I agree 100% !  That's a ridiculous amount to pay for a pet quality kitten.

I have no idea either and I'm almost scared to look.

having a cat actually want to sleep on my lap was quite new to me back then

rosie can be a little too 'i wanna be near you' at times.

in bed trying to watch some telly with her sitting on my chest her tail in my face....a pretty regular thing

I had moggies that were quite affectionate and were happy to sit on me.  But I soon discovered Burmese took it to a whole new level!  You couldn't go anywhere without them following you.  They were prepared to squabble with each other over who got to sit on the human. Any closed door was viewed as a challenge.  They love you, you love them....but they can drive you crazy. LOL

BTW....if you think Burmese are a challenge in the 'I love you human and will never leave you' stakes, some years later I discovered that Abyssinians can be even more demanding!

[katistrophik]

You're welcome 😀