Cheetahsden Gryphon

Ch Millwood Butter Brickle x Cheetahsden's Tikal

During the same visit to Montana that resulted in Annette and us buying Frost, I met Gryphon for the first time. Living with Stacy Camba of Rocky Meountain Bengals, he was still a very young boy, with a veeery long body, a long narrow head and a dark colour. Not a boy that would attract me generally, but Gryphon had something extra: a perfectly horizontally aligned pattern of very regularly shaped and sized rosettes.

I've never been against rosetting in Bengals, but I just very rarely see a rosetted Bengal that I truly admire. Most have little type, a lot of stripes and blotched tabby alignment, a messy pattern with a mixture of smaller and larger spots, striped legs, and low contrast. And when I do see a boy or girl I like, he or she is a favoured breeding cat, and getting hold of a kitten is hard because everybody wants one. Or he or she never inherits the pattern that I admire so much, either because they are an end product, or because the cats they are used with are not suitable to my purposes.

Gryphon proved me wrong in several ways: not only did he give his fabulous horizontal alignment to most of his offspring, he also gave some of them his rosettes, and the wilder type of his mom. Still, I was afraid we'd never get a kitten like him, for of course his owners Pam and Stacy kept his best sons and daughters for further breeding. I was silently dreaming we would have flowing rosettes out of him one day, but I couldn't believe it would come true. But one day the best news ever came: we would get Gryphon himself! I couldn't really believe it yet, but day after day, as Frost's and Strider's kittens were born and grew up, the dreams of Gryphons kittens became more solid.

And nearly one year later the dream has really come true: Gryphon is here! Looking very much like his pictures, only with better contrast than I imagined, and his head 'Gryphoned out'. In Cheetahsden idiom this means jowled out. Still, even his head has qualities we can use: a well developed backskull, a very firm chin, and a longer forehead than usual on a jowled out glittered stud. And the qualities we wanted are still there, the long body, and the magnificent pattern of flowing rosettes.

We can hardly wait to see his first kittens with our girls who were selected especially for him: black spotted wild typed Frost daughters Frosties and Shivers, black rosetted Florijn, inbred on Rama, and light coloured, wild faced and lovely rosetted Volcania, daughter of my favourite boy of all, Mountainpark Strider. Wild faced, yellow coloured Electraglide is with Gryphon even as I'm writing this, so hopefully we will not have to wait long for little Gryphons!

Until then we'll just have to settle for admiring Gryphon himself, counting the rosettes, watch them flow as he walks, cuddle him like the soft teddybear he resembles, with his big head and incredibly soft coat. Still, there is something of the wild lurking in there in that long body covered in rosettes, just waiting to come out with the right girl!