So please read on...
It's no joke at all when we ask our clients if they have ever been "owned" by a Turkish Angora before. Sure, we laugh as we say this because they truly are smart and silly and totally engaging as they lift our spirits high. But if you never really have been owned by a Turk before, be prepared to pack up your breakables or put them behind secure glass doors. Because I have yet to meet a Turk that doesn't know full well that it's a cat and can jump and climb everywhere and anywhere it wants! And yes they do seem to want to get everywhere - from the tops of doors to the depths of the entertainment center... Unlike dogs who are pretty much stuck to the floor as far as their limited ability to jump goes, these silly felines will in fact help you do dishes and cook and go absolutely everywhere they can to get in on the action.
And even the sweetest of the sweet, the most loving of lap lovers will be irresistably compelled to muck around with your stuff. You just can't keep a Turkish Angora busy all of the time. So they find their own creative ways to entertain themselves. If it moves or can be moved, it's a great new toy. Even with all of those wonderful cat toys you have lying on the floor, common objects like pens, paperclips and even the salt shaker are just too much fun! Cabinet doors and even drawers were meant to be opened and everything inside explored..., better yet thrown out for further inspection. And everything that sparkles or is special to you will be special to them in their own special feline way. But once you have been "owned" by a Turk, and YOUR training is complete, there's no going back! So, if you have a great sense of humor and want a companion who wants to spend time with you, read on...
It helps to understand that white is actually a "mask" that covers color underneath. This is why we often see Kitten Caps, blotches of color, on top of the heads of kittens that are/will be totally white. Those underlying colors are in fact why we can and do get colored kittens even when we breed our white cats to other whites. And so it goes that the colors under the masks of our white Turkish Angoras have a direct effect on what colors their colored kittens will be. Although I could not love my adored Tornado any less even if her fur was GREEN (and she is in fact deaf), we at Gildethros believe that it is more responsible to breed for fewer deaf kittens. By breeding our whites almost exclusively to colored cats, to date we have only produced three deaf kittens EVER. We get a fairly equal 50/50 split of white kittens to colored kittens and the majority of our whites are blue-eyed. So please don't let anyone tell you that you can only get a deaf, blue-eyed white Turkish Angora as a pet!
Nonetheless, the end result of this breeding practice of almost exclusively breeding our white cats to colored cats (to reduce the percentage of deaf white kittens) is that we do get far more colored kittens. Although it would be much easier just to breed for great show type and not worry about what colors we get, we just love the wide array and many different appeals of the silver and smoke colors. From the wolf-like appearance of the black smokes to the dreamy aura of color worn by a shaded cameo, the silver gene comes in every color. Just pick a color in the solid colors, add the silver gene and you've got a smoke. And in the tabby class, you've got everything in silver: what we call a silver tabby in the United States is better called a black silver tabby in most foreign registries, and a cameo is a red silver tabby. Blue silver and cream silver tabbies too. And depending on the amount of silver present in any one cat's coat, you get darker colors like a correctly colored black smoke to those rare shaded colors where the silver gene is expressed so much that the color is only in the tip of the hair. Our shaded cameo male BeauBeau is in fact the first shaded Grand Champion Turkish Angora in the CFA. We've been so lucky in our few short years of breeding to get such great colors on fabulous cats that produce outstanding kittens.
Don't worry though! Nothing will ever replace the exquisite beauty of a blue or odd-eyed Turkish Angora in my eye. But throwing that white mask into the mix when you're working toward new colors means that we still get EVERYTHING for colors. Ultimately we need to have whites that all mask silver colors, better yet shaded silver colors. Yes, to get silver and shaded colors reliably on our colored kittens and get those colors perfected, we need to get our whites to carry those colors as well. Unlike the breeders who work mostly on colors and those who work predominantly with white, it will take us more time to follow our chosen path to the end of the rainbow. But what a beautiful trip it is! And we aren't going anywhere.
So come on in and enjoy our cats and our kittens!