WSU, Of Cougar Fame, Houses Safari Cats

Patty, Annie and Karen are truly a different breed of cat.

They have huge eyes and wide, sloping skulls with short, rounded ears set far back. They have long, lithe, muscular bodies, and they play with an intensity that is striking.

Probably as recently as 15 years ago, there was nothing like them on Earth.

They are Safari cats, the hybrid cross between a domestic female cat and a male Geoffroy's cat, a small, wild cat native to South America. And they are part of a unique breeding project at Washington State University, the only university in the country raising Safari cats.

Safari cats are unique in having 37 pairs of chromosomes. The Geoffroy cat typically has 36 chromosomes and the domestic cat and most other animals 38.

Safari females also have a glucose-producing gene with an enzyme similar to that found in Geoffroys. These are a valuable means of identifying tumors as single or multi-celled, says Chuck Schramm, a WSU graduate veterinary student. If a tumor originates in a single cell, only one glucose enzyme will be present. If a tumor results from a number of cells multiplying simultaneously, both enzymes will be evident.

Project director Richard Ott has been breeding the cats at WSU about 10 years for the National Cancer Institute and researchers at the University of Washington Medical School. Safari cats have only been in existence since the mid-1970s, Schramm says.

Cats are prey to a form of leukemia, and Ott says interest in the Safaris, with their double-enzymed gene, now is centered on examining the effects of bone-marrow transplants in stimulating red-blood-cell production in cats suffering from the disease.

Also, so little is known about the hybrid with its odd number of chromosomes that basic genetic information is eagerly sought, Schramm says.

That is what got him interested in this project three years ago as an undergraduate. His research interest is animal reproduction. Over time, he has become something of a cat fancier, too.

``I enjoy the cats so much. They've got their own personalities. They're more individual than a lot of animals are. They're all independent, and each is completely different than the one next to it,'' Schramm says.

Only the female Safaris possess the oddly configured gene with two enzymes and are useful in research. The males all appear to be sterile, which means that from time to time WSU has some surplus Safari cats to sell.

Cat fanciers across the nation line up to get them. ``I've got a waiting list of several hundred people long to get one,'' Ott says. The current selling price is $500.