About Anson Road - Pixie Bob Breeder

Anson Road purchased its first breeding pair of Pixie Bob cats in spring 2004 and is one of the first to breed these delightful creatures here in the UK.

When it comes to Pixie Bobs, we like ours as large and wild looking as possible, so our breeding strategy takes this into account. We breed from carefully selected, high quality and Supreme Grand Champion, rare old lines that have produced some of the largest cats and which have good fertility running through the dam lines. Our foundation cats have been tested negative for the HCM DNA gene or come from lines which have been tested HCM DNA negative.

Our cats are fed a diet of bone and raw meat (BARF diet), supplemented with a high quality, dry cat foot. A raw diet improves our cats' coat, teeth and general health, as well as improves muscle tone and overal size.

We do not dock naturally long tails and do not declaw our cats.

Anson Road is a TICA registered breeder.

We live with our cats in a big, rambling mansion block apartment in central London.

Occasionally, we have litters and aim to grow large, wild looking, sweet, relaxed cats.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM)

HCM is one of the most common heart diseases in domestic cats and is fatal to the cat. The absence of the mutation in a cat, DOES NOT mean that it will never develop the disease. It means that it does not have the only known mutation that can cause this disease in the cat at this time. However, mating cats who both have the HCM DNA gene significantly increases the risk for their offspring of developing the disease.

To reduce this risk in our cats, we currently breed only from cats and foundation lines which have been tested negative for the HCM DNA gene.

Spinae Bifida and Scoliosis

In breeds with short tails, there is always an increased risk of problems with a cat's spine. From harmless kinks and bends in the tail, to fatal leaking of spinal fluid from the base of the spine, it is clear that it is important to manage the risk of these problems developing in the future generations of the Pixie Bob.

We do this by ensuring that we have in our breeding program a high number of long-tailed cats (tail to the foot), and cats whose short tails show no kinks or fusions. Although we will breed short tail to short tail, we will always ensure that every other generation we bring in a long-tailed cat.

Personally, I love the longer tailed Pixie Bobs. They are usually significantly larger than their short-tailed litter mates.

Risk of leg deformities in polydactyl cats

Although many people love the big paws on the polydactyl Pixie Bobs, it is important to avoid breeding poly to poly for more than one generation. Successive 100% poly generations increase the risk of leg deformities in the kittens. Similar to the management of the tail mutation, we avoid breeding poly to poly.