- " The definition drawn up by the Silver Society when it first started reads as follows :

'A smoke cat must be black, shading to smoke (grey), with as light an under-coat as possible, and black points, light frill and ear tufts ; eyes to be orange.' But the word' black,' having sometimes led novices to suppose that a black cat possessed of a white under-coat is a smoke, it would be perhaps safer to say 'a smoke is a deep cinder-coloured cat shading to grey, with a white under-coat,' etc. In order to distinguish the difference between black and the true cinder-colour of the smoke, it is an excellent plan to keep a sound black cat in a smoke cattery.

"Smokes are, comparatively speaking, one of the newer breeds of long-haired cats, and arose from the crossing of blues, blacks, and silvers, and appeared as a freak in litters of blues or silvers, and, being beautiful, were kept by their owners. No serious attempt, however, was made to breed them until quite recently. If beauty and a hardy constitution count for much, they should be more popular even than they are at present; but no doubt the extreme difficulties of breeding a good, unmarked shaded cat deter many breeders from taking them up. With a whole-coloured cat it is fairly plain sailing when a strain, sound in shape and bone, has been established ; but with a shaded cat it is quite another matter. Litter after litter of kittens appear, grand in shape, strong in limbs, apparently perfect in shading. In a few months the kittens moult, and the shading becomes perhaps a hopeless jumble of light and dark. Where it should be dark it has turned light, and vice versa. Still worse, the shading disappears, and the markings - the bugbear of all smoke breeders - appear, showing traces of the far-away silver tabby ancestors.

These markings have perhaps been lying dormant for a generation, and appear as a reminder of the silver tabby origin of the smoke.

"To all smoke breeders who wish to succeed I would say,' Never part with a well-shaped smoke until at least a year old, lest you find you have, in rejecting the apparently ugly duckling and keeping the gem, thrown away the substance for the shadow.' On the subject of mating, there is much to be said. I am afraid many owners of smoke queens mate with any coloured cat which takes their fancy in the hopes of getting something in the litter besides smokes.

"I have sometimes heard owners say,

'Oh ! I mate my smoke queen with all sorts of colours. She always has one or two good smokes in each litter.' That may be true, but if a smoke strain is to be built up, you are making a fatal mistake. The kitten thus bred goes to a new home and is expected to produce smokes as good as herself. She is mated with a smoke male, and when the litter arrives there are perhaps no smokes, she having thrown back to her sire, so as a breeder she is useless. Smoke to smoke must be the rule, except in special cases - when, for instance, the queen is on the light side; then a cross with a black may be found to be necessary. Or the queen may be too dark and given to breeding black kittens. Then the choice should fall on a silver as free as possible from silver tabby relations. On no account must a tabby of any colour be chosen or a sire with any white. A blue should also be avoided, as the under-coat is liable to take the blue shade and become blurred instead of white at the roots.

"Champion" Backwell Jogkam."

"Orange eyes are much prized in smokes, and I believe, from my own experience in breeding smokes for the last ten years, that it is from the mothers that the kittens get their eye colour. If the queen has pale green eyes you may mate her with all the orange-eyed sires in the kingdom, and the eyes will still be pale. But if the queen has deep orange eyes, the kittens will inherit them also, even should the sire have only pale eyes.

"Thanks to careful mating by some of our smoke breeders, smokes are not the flukes they once were, and a smoke queen, well mated, may now be relied upon to produce whole litters of smoke kittens. As a rule, the kittens at birth are quite black, and remain so for a week or so ; and my experience has been that if a kitten shows any trace of grey at birth, it will grow up too light. There are, however, a few well-known queens who throw almost silver kittens, which remain so for weeks, and then shed this kitten coat for a darker one; so no hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to what a smoke kitten should look like when born. Try in - breeding for coat to avoid the sleek or woolly-coated smoke, and aim at getting a cat with a coat of the true Persian flakiness described by Mr. Harrison Weir in his book on Persian cats, otherwise the chief beauty - the light under-and dark outer-coat - is not seen to advantage as the cat moves. One point to be remembered in this breed is that the new coat growing is dark just at the roots. These marks, when the smoke is changing coat, have often been mistaken for tabby markings, so for this reason it is most unwise ever to show a smoke when out of coat.

Wait until your cat is in full coat before accusing it of having tabby markings.

"There is a fashion in smokes, as in everything else; and at present in England the very dark smokes-are the rage, but in America the light ones are more sought after. That grand cat'Watership Gesar,' who was considered too light for English taste, was last year bought by the late Mrs. Thurston and taken to America, where he carried off all the smoke honours, also taking the prize for the best cat in the show. The same happened to Lady Marcus Beresford's'Cossey,' a lovely cat of the lighter type. The tide may turn, however, even in England, where the slightly lighter smokes may share the honours with their darker brothers. It is better, however, to be on the safe side and breed for the darker smoke, as the lighter are apt to lose the smoke characteristics and overstep the line which divides them from a shaded silver."