ECOSISTEMA

Gordon Meridith had obtained some of Bill's stock earlier for his little zoo in the Mojave desert, but in 1980, was in the hospital, struck down with cancer. He asked Bill to place his cats for him. Bill and I 'rescued' five of Bill's original hybrids (now adult), which I named Praline, Pennybank, Rorschach (greyish charcoal), Raisin Sunday (she was partially leopard spotted but with large snow white spotting blazes face, legs, and lower half), and Wine Vinegar (who ate her only litter). Gordon had bred them to an Abysinnian tom and had some of the F2s, but I didn't know then how difficult F2s are to obtain from F1 queens. Disdaining the 'peppered' look and cramped for space, I didn't take them. Gordon's records were lost, but from his deathbed he described the cats to me and what he could recall about their history. It now fell to me to provide them with appropriate mates if we were to build a new breed of domestic cat. But what would be appropriate?? Which genes would be useful? or dominant? or would trash the bloodline? It seemed too bad to use the genetically frail

traditional Maus, Burmese, British Shorthairs,Abys, or other purebred breeds in my new bloodline. On a trip to India in 1982, the curator of the New Delhi zoo took us to a small shed to see a beautifully spotted but untouchable littletailless domestic kitten under a sick rhinoceros. The turbaned caretaker insisted that it had originally had a tail, but as rhinos are neither sharp eyed nor light-footed, the tail had been squashed. It arrived at the Los Angeles airport in a mahogany box from the zoo curator, with the words, "SAID TO BE A DOMESTICCAT" written below the tiny air holes. It was several days before we caught a glimpse of its sex, fortunately a male. I worried lest he b genetically tail faulted, but Millwood Tory of

Delhi never produced a tail faulted kitten. He was the perfect answer to my needs for theF1 queens, with his small, distinct, all-over spots on a thick, shiny golden-orange coat such as I had never seen in our domestic cats.

Because he had no documented ancestry, CFA registered him as a transfer Mau from ACA. I offered him at stud to both the Ocicat breeders and the Mau breeders who needed better spotting. But the Ocicat people didn't want his blood, nor did a few Mau breeders who fought viciously to keep him and me out. A few visionary Egyptian Mau breeders, however, welcomed his beautiful, fresh 'Indian Mau' genes to improve upon the weak, inbred, poor tempered, poor producing bloodlines. Meanwhile, I needed to plan mates for the following generation outcrosses, for there was no assurance that ANY hybrid males would be fertile. Also I needed wetnurse queens to rear my precious hybrid kittens as the himmy had done in the 1960s. I didn't want to fill the world with mutt, unwanted kittens and , so I imported several more domestics from India to make beautiful Indian Mau babies while nursing my hybrids. Rumors spred that I was putting wild blood into the Maus (as if I would call the precious few hybrids common Maus!!) and in 1985, antagonists convinced CFA not to accept the Bengals and to retract my domestic Indian line Mau registrations. Eventually my Maus were all reinstated and the bloodline is now used extensively in modern Maus, but the damage to my reputation was far reaching.