Fel d 1 – Pain In The Bud

Pet site listicles name the Ashera cat as “luxurious,” one of the most expensive and rare breeds ever. Videos show surprisingly large, exotic-looking felines with leopard-like rosettes and a calm demeanor.

In media reports a man named Simon Brodie talks the breed up, presenting himself as the CEO of a biotechnology company that “developed” the Ashera through careful genetic manipulation, selecting only the most positive traits. For a few thousand dollars more, Brodie promises, they come in hypoallergenic versions too.

Brodie often sounded like he was describing the newest iteration of a tech product rather than a cat, calling the Ashera “a status symbol” and listing its optional features the way a car salesman talks about leather and heated seats.

“It’s exotic, but under the skin it’s a domestic house cat, very easy to take care of and extremely friendly,” he told Reuters. “Everybody has thought at one time, wouldn’t it be great to have a leopard at home, or a tiger? Obviously, you can’t and this is about the nearest thing to it.”

Brodie conjured images of engineers poring over genetic data and working with gene-editing equipment in a laboratory to create the perfect pet.

“Anybody can throw the ingredients in, but unless you know what ingredients are the best ingredients in the best percentages, you’re not going to produce the same final product,” Brodie told the U.K. wire service.

The problem? The Ashera doesn’t actually exist, and there’s no evidence Brodie has ever been in a lab, let alone spearheaded the creation of a new breed of feline.

Not an Ashera cat — A Savannah cat with clear Serval lineage is shown as an example of an “Ashera cat” on several websites about the fictional breed.

Sadly, people might not realize that right away because of the publish-now, verify-never nature of web publications. Catster maintains a current page for the “breed,” citing its “outstanding lineage” and its supposed status as “one of the rarest and most expensive cats in the world,” potentially setting back its owners $100,000 or more per cat. You have to scroll down before the site warns about the “controversy and skepticism regarding the breed’s origins,” as if there’s still a debate whether the Ashera is a real breed.

Sites I’d rather not link to include the Ashera in their lists of “most exclusive” and “rare” breeds, and recent Reddit threads claim their price owes partly to their rarity because the company “only breeds about 100 cats a year.” When’s the last time you heard cats didn’t breed enough?

There are even “Ashera cat communities” designed to make it look like there are large online groups of happy owners, and Youtube channels featuring videos of Savannahs labeled as Asheras.

A sketchy operation

But dig a little deeper and you’ll find the truth. The Savannah Cat Association calls the Ashera a hoax, says the cats are Savannahs with fancy marketing, and details experiences people have allegedly had with Brodie. His company appeared to be a one-man operation with a voice mailbox, and people who purchased the pets said they were told to wire down payments to an account in the United Arab Emirates.

There are even claims Brodie was drop-shipping the cats, with customers saying they were delivered directly from an Oklahoma breeder of Savannahs.

And the people who saw an opportunity to have a pet cat despite severe allergies? They weren’t happy either, even those who negotiated deep “discounts” with Brodie.

“I don’t think any cat is worth $4,000,” a customer named Mike Sela told Columbia Journalism review, “but this seemed like a magical opportunity, especially with parents trying to get something for kids. You never thought you could get a cat and this is your chance.”

A group of angry customers who were promised hypoallergenic pets contacted ABC News, whose Lookout team enlisted the help of a biotechnology company to test cats purchased from Allerca, Brodie’s company. The tests showed the Ashera cats had the same amount of Fel d 1, the primary allergen in feline saliva, as the typical cat and could find no evidence of Brodie’s claims that he’d engineered an exotic cat sans allergens.

CJR took mainstream and legacy press outlets to task for reporting uncritically on Brodie’s claims despite the lack of any documentation, peer-review studies proving gene-edited hypoallergenic cats are possible, and for a complete lack of due diligence on the man himself. Per CJR:

“What Time, National Geographic, and other major outlets, including The New York Times, missed was that Brodie has no background in genetics—but he does have a well-recorded background in running scams. He was arrested in England, his native country, for selling shares in a non-existent hot-air balloon company. In the United States, he has left a wake of evictions, unpaid loans, and suits by unpaid employees. One judgment against him that stands out is by a company called Felix Pets, founded about a year before Allerca with the same goal of breeding hypoallergenic cats by eliminating the Fel-D-1 gene.”

Indeed, as the complaints piled up and Brodie’s deceptions began to catch up with him, the San Diego Union Tribune reported Allerca had been evicted from its “offices” — Brodie’s home address.

Ashera cats scam — A listing for an Ashera cat and a second listing for Ashera kittens, bottom left.

News stories say Brodie has changed his name numerous times and if he’s still out there, he’s almost certainly not Simon Brodie anymore. But the Ashera cat scam isn’t dead.

We found dozens of sites offering “Ashera kittens,” and online marketplaces for animals still have regularly-updated listings from people claiming they’re selling “genuine” Ashera cats in 2024. There’s also at least one group claiming they’re “officially licensed Ashera cat breeders,” touting a lofty “mission” not only of providing cats for people with allergies, but also “preserving exotic wildlife.”

The myth of hypoallergenic cats

Although there have been recent efforts to neutralize Fel d 1, they come from actual scientists who have published their work for peer review, or from public pet food companies that have paired with scientists to create kibble they claim reduces the Fel d 1 allergen in cats who eat it. They’re also focused on attacking the protein, not breeding or creating cats that lack it in the first place.

People with allergies should understand that despite what they may read online, hypoallergenic cats do not exist. No one has been able to “engineer” a feline without the Fel d 1 protein.

There’s serious debate among geneticists about whether trying it is ethical, as no one knows exactly what function Fel d 1 serves or what the potential consequences may be for editing it out of feline genetic code.

So if you’re looking for a “luxury cat” or you just want a cat that won’t trigger your allergies, beware before you’re separated from your hard-earned cash. As always, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

On paper, the promise of “hypoallergenic cats” sounds great.

For the first time, people who love cats but are allergic to the furry little guys would be able to open up their homes to them. More cat lovers and more homes for cats is always a good thing, right?

Maybe not in this case.

The quest to create cats who do not trigger allergies depends on CRISPR gene editing, a method that allows scientists to edit, delete and replace sections of the genome. In this case, Virginia-based biotech company InBio wants to edit the genome of domestic felines to block Fel d 1 (Felis domesticus allergen I), a protein produced in cat saliva and in tiny subdermal exocrine glands, which secrete the protein via the same ducts that allow a cat’s fur to grow out from its skin.

Since cats are fastidious neat freaks and groom themselves constantly, the Fel d 1-carrying saliva is applied to their coats several times a day. When it dries, it contaminates a cat’s living space by flaking off the fur as dander or by shedding.

That’s why people who are allergic to cats can suffer symptoms like sneezing, itching and watery eyes not only from petting them, but also from spending time in homes where cats live.

What does Fel d 1 do, and why do cats need it?

The problem is that no one knows why cats produce Fel d 1 and what purpose it serves. Other proteins, like Fel d 4 found in pheromones and Fel d 2, help cats communicate by scent and prevent certain fluids from leaving the bloodstream, respectively.

Take a look at this quote from Nicole Brackett, a geneticist at InBio: (The emphasis on certain words is ours)

“The gene sequences don’t appear to be that well conserved over the course of evolution, which suggest things about whether or not the gene is essential,” Brackett told BioSpace, a life sciences publication. “An essential gene, one that would be required for survival or viability, generally doesn’t change much over evolution, and we’re seeing change between the exotic and domestic cat that suggests that maybe those sequences are not conserved, and maybe the protein is not essential.”

While we understand scientists have to be circumspect, especially regarding research that breaks new ground, that’s a lot of hedging and a lot of uncertainty. (It’s also not clear if Brackett is comparing domestic feline Fel d 1 levels to wild cats — felis sylvestris and lybica — wild felids in general, or hybrids like Bengals and Savannah cats, which are more commonly called exotics.)

cute cat lying on pillow — Credit: cottonbro/Pexels

The team members developing the allergen gene edit assume Fel d 1 doesn’t have a critical function because individual domestic cats and other species of felids may produce different quantities of the protein.

But that’s a huge assumption, and it’s also presumptuous to assume we humans would know whether the gene edits have a major impact on felines. After all, we still don’t always know when cats are in pain or the reasons for many of their behaviors, and we don’t know what sort of cascade effect can be triggered by shutting down the production of a protein.

The race to make cats hypoallergenic

Companies see a huge opportunity for profit in the cat allergy alleviation market. Last year, Purina announced to much fanfare the availability of a new kind of cat food the company claimed would drastically reduce allergens after about three weeks of putting kitties on the new grub.

The claims haven’t been independently verified, and most press coverage is either credulous or consists of marketing masquerading as news coverage, like this advertisement from Purina that is presented like a news story in USA Today.

Back when a company called HypoCat announced it had conducted successful trials of a “vaccine” that would “neutralize’ Fel d 1, we spoke with immunologist Kamal Tirumalai, who pointed out that humans making such profound changes to companion animals for the sake of human convenience “passes neither the scientific nor the moral smell test.”

Like others, Tirumalai said she worried about unintended consequences.

“A vaccine given to cats to reduce their allergenicity for humans burdens them unnecessarily when human allergy to cats is primarily a human problem and should have a human solution in the form of reducing people’s cat allergies,” Tirumalai told PITB at the time. “Cats are perfect as they are. Why should they be the ones forced to change in order to be accommodated by a human whose immune system happens to have a problem with one of their proteins? This solution just doesn’t pass the moral smell test.”

HypoCat uses an injection to “induce anti-Fel d 1 antibodies in the cat,” while the CRISPR technique would snip the relevant DNA out entirely.

“Come now, let us not be absurd. Do you really think a designer kitten could be as handsome as I am?” Credit: Big Buddy

So far, Brackett and her colleagues have deleted one of two cat cells that produce Fel d 1 in samples in a petri dish, and have not made any changes to live animals. The experiments yielded a “55 percent knockout rate” for the Fel d 1 allergen, Brackett said, “which we were really happy with.”

Designer kittens: Gattaca for cats

If subsequent attempts are successful and the company sees commercial promise in editing feline genes, the process could be used to create “designer kittens” or to alter the genomes of existing cats. Brackett told Smithsonian magazine that the goal is to accomplish the latter.

But if it turns out the edits don’t work for existing cats, or the designer kitten trend becomes a thing, there’s another major moral concern similar to the objections to cat cloning. If people buy designer kittens, they’re not opening their homes to the millions of cats who need them.

Manipulating feline DNA isn’t a novel idea. A decade ago, a research team spliced genes from jellyfish using a different method to create cats who glow in UV light as part of a study into feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV).

Ultimately it comes down to what we’re willing to do for the sake of our own convenience. At a time when declawing has finally been outlawed in two states and dozens of cities, and people are more conscientious than ever with regard to their pets, do we want to risk their health so we don’t have to pop a few Benadryl?