Ann Baker Interview
Transcript – Part 3: Hybrid Cat / Skunk Breeding
Ann Baker Cat-Skunk Breeding – Interview Transcript: Part 3. She describes how she raised a mixed breed of cat and skunk.
Now one day I had a knock at the door. But I had been through hell first I’ll tell ya with the ragdolls because uh it appeared in all the books and magazines that they’re crossbreeds n you mate two or three breeds n mate them together and all this kinds of stuff n and uh and so I had investigators running out my ears and they said, “You shouldn’t say about the cat gettin run over because you couldn’t do it this way; Nature don’t work that way.” I said, “I didn’t say that.” I said, “Somebody else put that in the books and magazines.” She said, “You got what you say you got but it didn’t happen from the accident.” I said, “I know it.” So my I had to send about 5 of my cats to research and they gave their lives to prove that it did not have that it was not caused by the accident.
There is an important detail here:
Ann claims here that she didn’t attribute the unique characteristics of the Ragdoll breed (in particular the mild temperament) to genetic changes caused by Josephine getting hit by a car and almost dying from the injuries.
Okay. Now when I had this knock at the door and this lady said she was from the university over here. And she said, “I got this cat that’s gonna have babies in two days.” And she said, “They told me to come over and bring it and bring it over and give it to you. Now it’s a present for you. You can do whatever you want to with it but they will not give ya any information. Government stuff they can’t give you any information whatsoever.” And uh so but she said, “You can do whatever you want.” Well, she started cryin like her heart would break. And I said, “Well, Honey, you didn’t take care of this kitten, that cat for two months and when it’s ready to have a baby, they say you gotta bring it over here.” She said, “Well the university isn’t allowed to get in on the breeding program and so that” um they didn’t know I had the cats when they found out I had the cats her husband works over there so she had to give it to me. So two days later it had its babies. And they look just like skunks. And all I’d been through with the Dayton and he’d say, “Don’t go down to Ann Baker’s tour cuz she tell ya this real weird way out story and everything”,and I thought, “My golly, I know you can’t mate a cat and a skunk and if I say this I’ll just end up a Patton for sure.” So, I just sold em around Riverside and San Bernadino for about 150 dollars. Well I didn’t intend to do anything. Well, two years later I got three of em back. And they uh one lady was movin back east and she couldn’t take the cat and somebody else was movin in from an apartment that had two and they weren’t allowed to have animals. And so I had the eaten they uh uh the uh At that time they lay on the floor with all fours like out like this and there was just a head layin there and that’s where I got like a bear rug that’s where I got the name of Bear in their thing. Now this is one of the first ones I got and that’s white is baby fuzz is born is white and turns black and that’s baby fuzz comin off the white. Now over here when you read that they’re part skunk I got an arrow that tells ya to see National Geographic magazine. So if you forget what magazine you can look at that right there.
Now when it first came out in magazines and everything what happened was up in Bethesda, Maryland they said you take the genes from one animal put it in bacteria and shoot it in another animal. Well, when they used the word, ‘bacteria’, and newspapers were just full of stuff because they had demonstrations of all kinds uh because of using the word ‘bacteria’. They thought they would get all kinds of diseases and everything and I remember one article the woman said, “We might be walking down the street and somebody shoot us with a hyponeedle and we’ll have monsters for children.” And just everything so for about 8 years you couldn’t get any information. From anybody on this kind of stuff. At that time all the universities in the United States were working on it. Then when they came out they used a whole bunch of big words you didn’t understand or they had the words genetical engineering and DNA and all that kind of stuff. So when I got the cats back at that same time news was coming out all over and somebody got this. Now it was cat on one end and rabbit on the other. So because it was rabbit on that end the guy thought he could to mate it to a rabbit and he tried to mate it and it would not mate. So he mated it to a cat and he got some more. Now if somebody had wanted to mate it to a rabbit they have had to take a rabbit and put cat genes in the rabbit. But they took the cat and put rabbit genes in. So you see they put genes in it and then they mated it to a cat and it came out this way. Now God said, “I made cats and I made rabbits and you can do anything you want to but you can’t change the part I made.” So when I started studying up on how to gonna be to try to do something to cows and pigs to bypass all of this great big line breeding like I had to do. So I kinda got the giggles because they said they had another 30 years to go and just like about ironin out the tree let’s say this here. Say some joker gets smart he goes and he sticks some dog genes in that cat. Well you mate the cat to a cat but it came out dog on this end and rabbit on that end how’s anybody gonna know they gotta mate it to a cat if they wanna half dog and half rabbit? See what I think?
Now the thing of it is when we came up something on pigs. Now say we’re all pig farmers and something happens to your daddy pig you can’t use one of your little piglets because he’d be matin brother and sister and back to his mother. You just have to go over to get somebody who had a different line than you had and you could get one of their piglets and put with yours and your breeding the same thing they’re breeding. But if theirs dies they have to go get somebody else they can’t come back to you and get it because they have to get something that’s unrelated. Now this seems real simple when they say there’s only five of us pig farmers. But let’s say there’s hundreds of pig farmers and they’ve died they’ve mixed em all up and sometimes maybe somebody had two or three lines in their cattery when this one died off their their play plate when this one died off and they got another. Now a new man wants to start breeding. He’s gotta do all this research and this background to find out where he can get some to breed that’s not related. It’s the same thing with the cats but you have to somebody’s got to keep books down the line so that 15 to 20 years you know what to do because you’re gonna run into 15 to 10 years down the line. See that’s where their program they have to do so much research on the program they can do this stuff now and that’s fine there’s no problem. It’s when you get like say like our cats all get mixed up or something like that then what do you do about it see?
