I only know as much about the history of the gene as Estelle Sandford (Alpha Centauri Stud) wrote in her 2005 article about it, along with what was written on the Hawthorn Rat Varieties site.
If you have any further articles on the emergence and history of the gene, please shoot me an email at: [email protected]
Back when I was Figwit Rattery and my fiancé was Mimizuku Rattery, I fell for Shaded rats - and it had taken a long time! Call it teenage obstinance, being turned off by the sheer amount of them around - whatever it was, I never really had the itch to breed any until I met a Mimizuku litter.
From that litter I was allowed to have 2 bucks: Mimizuku Dooom (with 3 o's), a Burmese Dumbo, and Mimizuku Lickachu, a Wheaten Dumbo Rex. I knew they were lovely bucks in temperament but they also turned out to have lovely type (well, we'll ignore Lickachu's ears).
Around the same time, I was given Halcyon Himalia (BE/very pale Golden Himalayan) and her sister Aysel (RE Siamese). I was going to breed for Wheatens.
Himalia was mated to Dooom and in August 2013, a litter of 13 kittens of various Shaded flavours were born - including this oddity:
A not very good photo of a 16 day old Golden Siamese buck
I'd never seen a Golden Siamese kitten in the fur before; nor had I expected him to be so hard to distinguish from the Wheatens in the litter at that age! But he was a Golden Siamese, and we called him Gordon Golden Wyatt.
Shortly after this litter we took a break from breeding for a few years, so Gordon never really got shown (Golden Siamese was - I think - in New Varieties (now known as Provisional Standard) back then?
In 2016, now a partnership rattery, we decided to jump back into Shaded. Initially we were interested in Wheaten and Russian Wheaten, however we soon had Goldens falling out and I really took to them. By 2018/2019 we were actively breeding for Goldens and now, in 2021, have dropped the Wheatens altogether.
(NFRS Standards)
Body colour to be a pale golden cream, with points a medium sepia. Eyes black.
Body colour to be a rich golden cream, points (face, feet, tail and tail root), to be a rich dark sepia, gradually and evenly shading into the body. There should be no sudden demarcation of shading nor large areas of the body devoid of the shading effect. Belly colour pale cream, eyes black.