Young Prospects
The very first rule of every good breeder is starting with good subjects. Then you should improve the bloodline if you want to achieve some awards or enhance the cats' disposition if you want to breed them for families.... or on both! Pretty ambitious, aren't we?
We've started with Crissie and Bono, two excellent subjects. Their offsprings have Crissie's amazing look and minky fur; from the father side, instead, they inherited a slim body, high legs, nice rectangular shape, long and strong tail. We neutered the parents and found a more aggressive-looking and higher-positioned-ears fiancée for Rhum, their son. We made this choice because Rhummy seemed not to want to lose his puppy aspect: with his angelic face, he earned so many nicknames, from Babyface to Leonardo Di Caprio.
Flirty, Rhum's fiancée, doesn't have just that. She has a very long body, so when she toddle along the corridor she is as sinuous as a snake! She has a beautiful fur coat ("Like a Picasso's painting" as once a judge told about her), a marvellous color collection with a lot of white. Rhum has only a little white medallion on his chest, and not all judges like it. As we aspired to grow an exhibition-ready progeny from him, we managed to get the whole offsprings with a lot of white in their fur coat or not at all.
From this couple, we're gonna keep a female cat to work on the first Hic Sunt Leones generation. Perhaps mating her with a son of Jonny and Angel? Of Jonny and Safira? Of Serafino and...?
Certainly, Jonny has to wake up, sooner or later, because he still is a mama's boy. Angel, as well, will have plenty of time to grow up and to become big enough to be a mom.
In the meanwhile we nurture the Hic Sunt Leones bloodline with Safira, who's inherited her grandma Crissie’s elegance and more, and Serafino, who has a slim body, a very long, hairy and fluttering tail, well positioned ears and a beautiful stop.
Then we expect to mix all these features together, following the second important rule of the good breeder: keeping faith in the breeding program by selecting not only beautiful cats and prestigious types, but also those with a good-tempered, tender and playful personality, as a Maine Coon should be.