Expert: Marcia Owen - 3/23/2011

Question
Hi, Could you please tell me if it is best to mate only Blood Type A cats together, or Blood Type B together, or what is the safest combination to produce healthy kittens.
I have BSH Black Tipped & BSH Blue queens that are to be mated this year.
many thanks...

Answer
Dear Anna

You are obviously aware of the two blood groups.  It is really a personal preference as to what to mate what to.  If you are novice and have never hand reared kittens then I would suggest you mate two cats of the same blood group or mate a Blood Group A girl to a Group B boy which will not cause any problems.  If you feel you are up to hand feeding for approx 18 hours after birth then you could consider mating a Group B girl to a Group A boy.

If you do the last option then you need to ensure the kittens do not feed AT ALL from Mum for the first 18 hours which means you will need to hand feed.  You will have to consider how best to manage this but breeders tend to put a body stocking on Mum and need to make sure there are no gaps where a kitten could wriggle in to get to a teat, and believe me, they can be quite clever at doing this.

You can find more information at this website http://www.dr-addie.com/Blood%20groups.htm which will also tell you what could happen if one of your kittens is a Blood Group A feeding from a Group B Mum if she is mated to a Group A boy.

I hope that is not too confusing but if you need to speak again then let me know.

Marcia.