We take part of cat shows from time to time with or without cats to see how judges work, meeting friends and seeing new cats. Though we take part in shows, our principles for breeding lay on a different aspect than shortsihgted breeding of show winners.
We are together, me and my husband, excellent combination (dentist and a physicist). We are keen on genetic diversity, which is the base for Pajujas future generations of Abyssinians.
Continuous training and collaboration with other breeders of pure abyssinians is extremely important for us.
Breeding guidelines
One guideline for us is absolute transparency in our operation. Every cat has and will be registered to Finnish kissaliitto (Finnish association for cats). You can find links to all of our cats from the cats -page. You can find health and show information as well as pedigrees for all of our cats. We will add every litter to E.R.o.S. -database, which is a database created and maintained by Jacques Le Renard. From this combined with information from FiFe or CFA databases, one can determine inbreeding percentage as well as percentage of ancestor loss, which are valuable data when making decisions about future generations in our cattery. Moreover, Pajuja will have purebred abys only in their four basic colours.
Our goal is to have pure abyssinians to be a vibrant breed for the future 50+ years. Narrowing the genepool for any cat breed will have undesired consequences like general decay in immunity, size of the individual cat getting smaller, fertility deteriorates and life expectancy decreases. These are not visible in one or two generations but after several generations.
Right this moment our idea idea is to have a maximum of three litters with each cat, after which they are entitled to enjoy their days in retirement.
At some point in history, Abyssian was decided to be a short haired cat breed. For this objective, a lot of work has been done to eliminate long hair and other undesired characteristics from genepool. We will honour this alignment and we will raise cats with pedigrees without other breeds or other than short hair.
As one of the oldest breeds, abys are also one of the most popular breeds worldwide, so luckily one can find a lot of different lines in pedigrees throughout the World to find pure abyssinians and you are not forced to settle for almost abys. Mutual respect and confidence is a key to get involved with breeders of distinctive lines of pedigree.
For us the merits in shows are not the primary goals of being in this hobby, instead the idea is to find just the right and responsible homes for our kittens. In these homes they can live with loved members of the family and have attention and activity they need.
Health tests
Cats in our cattery will be test for:
- FIV is a Feline immunodeficiency virus
- FeLV stands for Feline leukemia virus
- fungus-infection
- PRA is a hereditary retinal degeneration
- PK deficiency is other hereditary and causes anemia
PRA and PK-anemia are both recessively inherited from parents and can be find from various breeds. So if only one of the parents is carrying the gene, the kitten will not suffer from these illnesses. In recent years PRA and PK has been rooted out in Finnish abyssinians with testing.