SAVANNAH CATS

A Savannah cat in habitat

If you want to make a Savannah cat of your very own, here's how you do it:

1.  Get a male African serval cat.
2.  Get a female domestic cat that is an Egyptian Mau, an Ocicat, an Oriental Shorthair, or a Domestic Shorthair.
3.  Mate the two cats together.
4.  Hope you get kittens.

A serval in habitat in Tanzania

As you can see from this process, the Savannah is a hybrid breed of cat.  The first litter of Savannahs was bred by Judee Frank in 1986, using a Siamese named Savannah as the mother cat.  So this is where the name of the breed came from.  After a while, some other cat breeders got interested in this new hybrid, and they started breeding Savannah cats, too.  The original version of the breed standard was written in 1996, and it was sent to the board of The International Cat Association.  TICA officially accepted the breed for registration in 2001.

Savannahs are one of the biggest breeds of domestic cats.  They can weigh anywhere from 7 to 30 pounds.  The first litter of kittens that you get from crossing a serval with a domestic cat is called the F1 generation.  Then when those kittens grow up and have kittens of their own, that is the F2 generation.  The males in the first few generations can't make kittens, just like mules can't make mule babies.  It's some kind of thing that happens with hybrids.

Anyway, by the F5 generation, the males can start being fathers, but by then the kittens don't look as much like the breed standard as the earlier generations do.  So at that point, it's best to start over with a male serval and make another F1 generation.

It's harder than you might think to get Savannah kittens, and this is because serval males are sometimes very picky about what girl they want to mate with.  And then if they do mate, there could be problems with the kittens because the gestation period for a serval is 75 days, and for a domestic cat, it's 65 days.  Which means that sometimes the kittens are absorbed or aborted or are born too early.  So if you want to buy a Savannah kitten instead of breeding your own, you will have to pay a bunch of money.  An F1 male could cost between $7,500 and $22,000, and an F2 male between $4,500 and $16,000.  An F1 female might cost from $6,000 to $22,000, and an F2 from $4,500 to $14,000.  With prices like these, I think you should seriously consider buying a basenji puppy instead!

Savannah cats have a small head, long neck, rounded ears, hooded eyes, long legs, and a short tail with black rings and a solid black tip.  On the backs of the ears, there are markings called ocelli, which look kind of like eyes.  Some animals such as fish or moths have ocelli, and these have the purpose of fooling their predators.  But I'm not sure why Savannahs have them.  Maybe it's just for decoration.

The color of a Savannah depends on what breed its mother was.  The breed standard allows a brown spotted tabby, silver spotted tabby, black (with black spots), and black smoke.

A lot of people say that Savannahs are like dogs because they are loyal, and they follow their owners around the house like a dog would.  They can be taught to fetch and even to walk on a leash.  If a Savannah has been socialized when it was a kitten, it is usually very friendly.  Savannahs are smart and curious, and they figure out how to open cabinets and get into all sorts of things.  Also they can jump really high, like to the top of a refrigerator or the top of a door.  Some of them can jump 8 feet high from a standing position.

Many Savannahs like water, and they will splash all the water out of their dishes or get in the shower with their humans.  The early generations often make chirping sounds, like servals.  Or they might also meow, like a domestic cat.  Sometimes they hiss like a serval, which is a different sort of hissing than other cats make, and it sounds more like a snake hissing.

So now you know all about Savannah cats, and if you want one, you can pay Big Bucks to get it, or else you can make your own, like I told you at the start.  Personally, I think having a cat that big in the house would be kind of scary, especially if it started hissing at me, so I am not even going to suggest to Mom that we get one!