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A lovely litter of 8 kittens, 6 boys and 2 girls, from Aalspotz Jimmy Choo and Aalspotz Happy-Go-Lucky. Beautifully marked, lovely type and temperament, some of these boys have the potential to be future studs. They come from well established, fertile lines, of healthy kittens, produced over many years, They are in Norfolk - please contact Rita Leggett on yessocats@talktalk.net for further details and to meet these beautiful kittens.

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If you're looking for a superb F2 boy, who will make a large adult with the "wow" factor, a very well socialised kitten who will make an amazing addition to your family, then contact my good friend Rosanne Boyle of HotspotExotics on rosanneboyle57@gmail.com. She has just one boy left from a lovely litter of four, and he is now ready for his new home

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If you are looking for a beautiful later generation girl, I can highly recommend a lovely litter from Aalspotz Jimmy Choo and Aalspotz Dancing In The Dark. Four super sisters, ready at the end of August, raised in the home, they have lovely type and markings, as well as super temperaments, Bred by my good friend, Rita Leggett, based in Norfolk, please contact her on yessocats@talktalk.net for further details. Sensibly priced, with a discount for taking two sisters together :-)

Aalspotz Savannah Cats and Kittens UK

Although I have no kittens of my own at the moment I have just updated my website with details of two litters bred by good friends of mine and highly recommended :-) www.aalspotz.co.uk

BASIC FELINE GENETICS I recently realised, following a question on another group, that not everyone understands basic genetics. So I thought I would do a short article covering the common colour and pattern genes, whether they are dominant or recessive, and their effect on the expected offspring from a mating. The first gene I will look at is the Agouti gene – this controls ticking. There are 2 allele; the first is the agouti allele, or A, it is dominant, and produces a banded, or ticked (agouti) hair, which in turn produces a tabby pattern. The non-agouti allele, or a, is recessive and suppresses ticking, producing hairs of a single colour, which leads to a self (or solid) coloured cat. I’ll try to explain how this gene works in simple English. Each cat will inherit one Agouti gene from each of its parents. If both parents are AA they can only pass on an A to their kittens, therefore all the offspring will be AAtoo - ticked cats with a tabby pattern. If the sire is AA, but the dam is Aa, then all the kittens will get an A from Dad, but only half will get an A from Mum, the other half receiving an a. Although these kittens will differ genetically, they will look exactly the same – still all ticked cats with a tabby pattern. This is because the effect of the Ais dominant to a – however, the cats that receive the a gene will have the potential to pass that on to their offspring, and are therefore said to be “carrying self”. Another possibility is two Aa parents – theoretically, the kittens will be either AA, Aa, aA or aa, depending on which gene they receive from each parent. Aa and aAare the same, as the dominant letter is always written first. As AA and Aaare both tabby cats, and aa is a self coloured cat, theoretically in a mating between two tabby cats, both carrying self, and having a litter of four kittens, there will be 3 tabby kittens and 1 self. The numbers rarely work out so perfectly, but if you imagine tossing a coin 20 times you should get Heads, Tails, Heads, Tails, etc – but would be far more likely to get maybe 5 Heads, followed by 3 Tails, followed by 2 Heads, then 4 Tails, etc; the probability would work out over a long period, but not necessarily for each individual litter. The last three examples are easy. You may have an AA and an aa parent, each kitten inheriting an A and an a, therefore all being Aa, or tabbys carrying self. Or you may have an Aa and an aa parent – all kittens will receive an afrom the aa parent, with half receiving A and half receiving a from the other parent, therefore the litter will be half Aa and half aa, or half tabbys carrying self and half self coloured cats. The last example is a mating between 2 aa (or self) cats, where all the kittens will receive an a from each parent, and will therefore all be aa, or self coloured cats. I’m sorry this has been a long explanation – I won’t need to repeat it to this extent again. It is simply necessary to understand that a cat that shows the dominant effect of any gene (in this case a ticked cat with a tabby pattern) can be carrying the recessive gene, whereas a cat that shows the recessive effect of any gene (in this case a self coloured cat) cannot be carrying the dominant gene. For example, you can mate up two Brown Spotted Cats and have Black kittens, but you could never mate up two Black cats and have Brown Spotted kittens. Theoretically, the recessive gene could be passed down indefinitely, over many, many generations, without ever showing itself – until eventually a suitable mating takes place and a kitten receives the recessive gene from each parent and an unexpected surprise appears! Next is the B gene – this controls the Black/Brown colour. This time there are 3 allele; the first is B, Brown/Black, the dominant one producing either a tabby with Black spots(black pads and tail tip) or a self Black cat. Then there is b, Chocolate, producing either a tabby with dark brown spots(brown pads and tail tip) or a self Chocolate. Lastly there is bc, , Cinnamon, producing a tabby with light brown spots(pink pads) or a self Cinnamon. BB, Bb and Bbc all look identical – a brown background colour, black spots, black pads and black tail tip. The background colour can vary from a pale gold to a very grey/brown, but the pads will always be black. bb or bbc also look the same, as chocolate is dominant to cinnamon. bcbc is cinnamon, with pink pads, and rarely seen in Savannahs as we are actually breeding for the BST’s which are one of the standard colours and can be shown. Next is the C gene – this is known as the full colour gene. The dominant gene is C, with full expression of colour over the body. Then there are chand cb, the Siamese and Burmese patterns. I haven’t seen a Savannah with Burmese colouring, but chch gives us the snow Savannah, with blue eyes. It works exactly like the A gene, If two copies of the Siamese gene are combined with aa, you will get a Siamese with a pale body and solid coloured points. A snow Savannah will ideally be A- B- chch to give the best definition between background and spots. In all animals cc gives you a true albino, with no colour pigment and pink eyes, I have never seen an albino cat. D is the Dilute gene, another recessive, and works exactly the same as A, DD and Dd have no effect on the colour, but dd gives you a dilute colour. B- dd (dilute black) is a Blue, bbdd (dilute chocolate) is Lilac and bcbcdd (dilute cinnamon) is Fawn. I is the Inhibitor gene, but this time it’s a dominant. II and Ii both produce a silver cat, whilst ii has no effect on colour. This means that you can only produce a silver kitten if at least one of the parents is silver. Two non-silver parents can never produce a silver kitten. The colour we generally refer to as Silver is a silver tabby, with a silver background colour and black/brown/blue spots depending on other genes being carried. However, the solid version of a silver tabby is the Smoke, generically I- aa which again comes in a variety of colours, but in the Savannah it is usually the Black Smoke we see. Some people seem to have difficulty in telling a Smoke from a Melanistic. Remember the Smoke must have a silver parent, and you can generally see the difference clearly after a few weeks, with the Smoke only having colour on the top part of each hair, the lower part being silver. The best silvers occur after several generations of breeding silver to silver. These have lovely clear pale silver backgrounds, with no tarnishing (the brown colouration that silvers often have around their faces, feet, etc) and are almost always II. The silvers born from one silver parent and one brown parent are Ii and are often quite a “dirty” silver colour. If you have a silver who is II then all of their kittens will be silver as they will all inherit an I.The strange thing that happens is if you mate two silvers that are both Ii, then around one in four of their kittens will be non-silver, inheriting an ifrom each parent. M is the gene affecting coat length. Another recessive, it works like A, but there does seem another, as yet unknown, factor in play. When I started getting the occasional longhaired kitten I tested some of my cats. I found that one boy, with a very short coat, actually had two copies of the longhair gene. Langfords were very surprised, and actually repeated his test with a new swab, free of charge, but got the same result. The only logical answer is that you not only need two of the recessive genes but also another gene to allow the coat length to be expressed. Langfords are investigating, The final gene we really see in the Savannahs is T, the tabby gene. There are four of them, and in order of dominance we have Ticked, Mackerel, Spotted and Classic (Marble). All cats have tabby genes, but in the solid coloured cats the background colour is the same colour as the markings. You can generally see the markings in a very young self-coloured kitten, so if you are keeping one for breeding check as soon after birth as possible. It is no use keeping a black with excellent type, and then finding you’ve added stripes to your Savannahs! As we need the Spotted gene for Savannahs, you need to choose the best markings you can. Mackerel is dominant, and spots will always try to join together to form stripes instead. Mate two cats with vertical stripes together and it will be extremely difficult to breed it back out – Savannahs shouldn’t look like Tigers. Some breeders occasionally add a cat with the Classic pattern, said to increase the size of the spots – just be aware that you will then start to produce classic (marble) kittens too. There are only 4 standardised colours recognised by TICA. The Brown/Black Spotted Tabby - A- B- C- D- ii The Black - aa B- C- D- ii The Black Silver Spotted Tabby - A- B- C- D- I- The Black Smoke - aa B- C- D- I- However, with the wide gene pool used to create the Savannah, and with the fact that recessives can be carried for many many generations, you could mate up two Brown/Black Spotted Tabby cats, and produce kittens ranging from self coloureds in black, chocolate, cinnamon, blue, lilac and fawn, you could find snows with points of any colour, you could have Chocolate, Cinnamon, Blue, Lilac or Fawn spotted, or Classics, all with long or short hair – and yet from looking at the parents you would never guess. And as all of these genes occur independently, you could have all of those kittens in the same litter – theoretically. When you then remember that these are only the colour genes, and that you have the same happening with every aspect of type, character, health, size, etc it is not surprising that such a new breed as the Savannah still has so many possibilities. It takes decades of serious breeding before litters start to be clones of their parents. Just remember not to use a parent with any undesirable attribute – don’t risk breeding the cat that has health issues, the timid cat, the cat with the long thin tail, a cat that shows any signs of aggression, the cat with short legs, the cat that reacted badly to its vaccinations, etc, etc. It will only reappear in later generations. If you want the best, only breed from the best!

Thank you all for your support over the last 13 years, I have enjoyed every minute. Aalspotz is now taking a break, whilst I move from the UK to Spain. I hope to continue breeding my beautiful Savannahs in 2019, but based in Andalusia. :-)

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GOOD NEWS - THE FAMILY NOW HAVE A HOME ALL TOGETHER :-) It has been a very emotional time over the last 18 months, and Paul and I have decided to bring forward our plans to move abroad at some point in the future. Our house is sold, and most of my cats are either rehomed or being fostered by friends until we are settled in Spain and can have the cats come out to join us. We were originally aiming to move towards the end of September, but our house sold within 24 hours of going on the market and the buyers are pushing for an early completion. This has left me with a problem - a young queen, Aalspotz Taloolah (Tally) had 2 kittens a few weeks ago and they are not going to be ready to leave home before we set out for Spain in 3 weeks time. They are very sweet, very outgoing kittens, registered with TICA, but life threw me one last curve ball when I realised both kittens were not losing their kitten fluff. A DNA test has shown that they are long haired, a recessive I knew was in my lines, but I normally manage to avoid mating 2 carriers together. So I have Mum, a lovely young queen, available, either as a lovely pet or she could become part of someone's program if they fancied a litter - she will only have short-haired kittens with a boy that doesn't carry the long-hair gene. If someone did fancy trying a litter from her, and she does have lovely type, it would be perfect if the 2 kittens could go with her and stay with her until they are 13 weeks. Alternatively, if someone is willing to take on a young kitten (around 11 weeks, after one vaccination) I will let the kittens go for half price to the right homes. The girl is very fluffy, and her coat is incredibly soft, perfect for someone who wants a mischievous Savannah that is incredibly relaxing to sit and stroke The boy is beautifully marked and his coat is only slightly longer than normal. Please contact me for further details on any of the family

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A quick show brag - just received Aalspotz Beauty and A Beast's "Award of Excellence" for being the Best Savannah Kitten in Western Europe last season. He was also the Third Best Savannah Kitten in the World. He really is a beast - now 9 months old, he was stood next to one of my F1 girls today and he has already equalled her in size. Not bad for an F7 :-)

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This beautiful, very affectionate boy is unexpectedly re-available. He is a real "velcro-kitten", never far from you, always wanting fuss and to be cuddled. and is going to be a lovely addition to a family. I took him out in the sun yesterday, and the picture of him saying "Hello" to the dog is the first time they had met - as you can see, he is a very confident, fearless boy :-) I would like him to be settled into his new home as soon as possible, as he deserves lots of attention, love and playtime - he will repay you with non-stop purrs and cuddles! He is very reasonable priced as I've already had a deposit from the people that had to drop out. He is just 15 weeks old.

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I love this pretty girl, daughter of Aalspotz Walking On Air and Aalspotz Never A Dull Moment. Lovely head and profile, long long legs, beautiful markings - and those ears!! :-)

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Huge F2 boy, available in a couple of weeks, still available. Stunning boy, will make a very large adult cat :-)

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Imari's kittens are now 9 weeks old and looking more like Savannahs, rather than bundles of fluff :-) One F2 girl still available