The SnowShoe Cat: Snowshoe cats

» Ganymedestx - Snowshoe cats

I am the person who took over where Vikki Olander left off with the Snowshoe cat and was the person responsible for getting enough other people interested in the breed to get them recognized in CFF, ACFA and TICA. Maia joined our efforts in the early 1980's and was part of the cross-country entourage that traveled to our first TICA show. She and I struggled trying to get enough constant breeders to meet the CFA requirements for championship. I finally had to drop out of the show circuit in 1989 due to work constraints, but continued working with the breed until 1995. (Yes, I was also playing the politics of the cat fancy by becoming a master clerk in both CFF and CFA, and a clerk in ACFA and TICA, woking on getting the judges interested in the breed.)
One change that should be made in your description.....the face is not more "square" than a Siamese.....it is "broader", an equilateral triangle in shape is the way we first described it in the CFF standards. I finally dropped out of the program in 1995, when I decided to leave Ohio for my new homeland of St. Croix US Virgin Islands. For some reason this evening, I started doing a search on the breed to see what was happening with it, and came across this site. Good luck to those still working with keeping the breed alive, although I'm not happy with colorpoints being added in TICA......I fought aganist that the whole time we were working on the TICA standard. James A. Hoffman, LMT

btw, mother nature has been producing the Snowshow for many decades, long before we officially named the breed in the early 1960's and began the active promotion of it in 1977. That is why you find them all the time in animal shelters. The problem for breeders is the control of the white spotting factors (yes, according to one geneticist we worked with, we were dealing with 3 different factors) to keep the white within the strict spotting standards of the breed.

-- posted by Ganymedestx