Catting around on the Web

Got allergies to cats? Got five thousand bucks and a lot of patience?

You, too, could own a hypoallergenic cat…not. And thereby hangs one of the nicest examples I’ve seen in awhile of how the Web can make things tougher for con men. The Web is most certainly rife with fraud, but if you take the time to do a little online research, it’s also one of the best ways to spread the word on crooks.

Mom and I googled “hypoallergenic cats” last night and Allerca/Lifestyle Pets came up second in the search standings. The site promises to sell you a “designer” kitten or puppy, with modifications to a protein thought to trigger most pet allergies. A genuine allergist certified that highly allergic individuals can be around these animals without suffering ill effects.

Plain old garden-variety Allerca kitties are on sale right now for $4,950 (marked down from $6,950). If you want something a bit more exotic-looking, they offer an “Ashera,” said to be a cross between domestic and wild cats, for between $27,000 and $125,000, depending on markings. It takes one or two years for your kitten to arrive, unless you sweeten the pot with another 50 percent of the purchase price.

The site, by the way, looks well-produced, with very scientific-looking test results, talk-show videos showing the cats not causing sneezes, and kudos from Time Magazine.

I don’t plan on dropping the price of a new car (or maybe a house) on a cat anytime soon, but it was intriguing. My mom is allergic to cats, and couldn’t live with their beloved cat despite replacing carpet with hardwood floors, installing new HVAC equipment and lots of medications for both my mom and the cat. It came down to, literally, breathing or not breathing.

The issue, though, was less having AN hypoallergenic cat than figuring out a way to live with the cat they already had. Simply ringing up and ordering a cat, then taking whatever kitten lands on the doorstep a year later…well, that just doesn’t ring true.

Allerca’s “patent-pending” methods aren’t particularly clear–they say they use gene sequencing to identify cats with lower concentrations of allergens, and then:

Using sophisticated bioinformatics to manage our breeding programs, the result was cats and dogs with a naturally occurring divergent gene that  produces a different version of the relevant protein – and one that the human body does not recognize as an allergen.

The explanation raises more questions than it answers, kinda like a cake recipe that simply says “Assemble ingredients. Serve.” The word “clone” isn’t anywhere on the site; it reads as if they test the animals for this particular protein and breed the ones that have less of it. That’s certainly an accepted method of hybridization, but doing it effectively probably requires many years and a kitten mill the size of a Fosters Farm broiler factory.

The testimonial pictures add to the mystery: Apparently this genetic modification has been made in LOTS of cat breeds; grateful owners have sent in pictures of what are clearly Siamese, Abyssinian, Bombay, Burmese, Persian, Egyptian Mau, Bengal/Savannah and “domestic shorthair” kitties. Apparently Allerca has done in less than two years what’s taken cat breeders more than a century to accomplish.

While the site doesn’t tell you much about exactly WHAT you’re buying, it does threaten to slap you silly if you diss the company via blog, broadcast, print or obscene phone call. It’s one reason, the site says, that the company doesn’t share more information about its pets.

Hmmm. I headed over to the US Patent and Trademark Office and couldn’t find a record of a patent, pending or otherwise, on behalf of Allerca, Lifestyle Pets or founder Simon Brodie. Or Cerentis, GeneSentinel, Geneticas or Cyntegra, other companies affiliated with Brodie. There are patents applied for under another Brodie-related company, IntegraAssociates, and many deal with genetics-related processes but none appear to be associated with feline allergen prevention.

Doesn’t mean there aren’t such patents, just that I couldn’t find any. But this is getting a bit dicey-looking.

Brodie’s website, which comes up on Google as “This website aims to provide updated information about Simon Brodie, best known as the inventor of the hypoallergenic cat and the developer of …”, is now dead, a parked site with GoDaddy.com.

So…back to Google. A search noted that Brodie was convicted of fraud in the UK for a franchise swindle. Apparently Brodie sold $200K franchises in Cloudhoppers, a hot-air balloon business and was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison. He’s also been associated with several genetics-related schemes and a plan to harness the power of hundreds of PCs to create the world’s most powerful supercomputer (that was under the name Simon Campbell).

Hmmmm again. There’s an excellent article in The Scientist that expresses many of my skepticisms concerning the development of allergen-free cats. The reporter does a good job of backing those concerns with interviews with geneticists, former Brodie partners and public records. Their conclusion: Developing such a cat may be possible, but there’s no proof that anybody, including Allerca, has done it.

In addition, three Ashera kittens were confiscated at Schipol airport in Europe after a Savannah cat breeder contended that Allerca purchased three Savannah kittens from him and resold them as Asheras at four times the price. Postscripts on several blogs and bulletin boards say US Fish and Wildlife service tested the cats’ DNA and confirmed this.

And Simon Brodie, now Simon Carradan, is selling skis. I hope skiiers know how to google.

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