I just adopted MC kitten and was wondering why the MCBFA doesn't recognize the American Cat Association? Is this going to be a problem if I want to breed her later on?

-- Anonymous, April 08, 1999

Answers

Ricky,

you've asked a short question with a long answer! Please bear with me...

First off, whether MCBFA recognizes a registry matters to you, as a possible breeder-to-be, if you wish to become a breeder member (and it may be that you don't now, but you might later). Part of the process of moving from provisional breeder member to full breeder member is breeding two litters which are registered with an MCBFA-approved registry.

So if you have no ambition of breeding or joining MCBFA as a breeder member, then this doesn't matter a bit. But your question was why doesn't MCBFA recognize ACA, which is one of the older registries? The answer to /that/ is that a few years ago, ACA re-opened its "foundation registry". That means that I could pick up a pair of unpedigreed MC- alikes at a shelter and register them with ACA as "foundation Maine Coons". Then I could register their offspring, and their offspring, and eventually have fully registered "Maine Coons" that didn't owe anything to the generations of selection that shaped the current pool of registered MCs.

Anyway, MCBFA's voting membership agreed that this was not in the best interests of the breed at that time, and so MCBFA voted to not recognize ACA-registered cats.

But back to your possible ambitions to breed and show -- as a rule, if you may want to breed, you want to make sure that your cat is registered in CFA, because it is the largest of the organizations. If your cat has a CFA registration, you can get her registered in any of the other organizations (and you may well choose to show in another, like TICA or ACFA). But if your cat only came with an ACA registration, it may be that it's not possible to register her with CFA -- possibly she traces back to a cat in the "foundation registry" that I describe above? So if you think you may want to breed at all, you should check that out first.

Regards,

Ambar

-- Anonymous, May 20, 1999