$25,000 Ashera Cat a Hoax?

There's been lots of interest among our readers, and online in general, generated around the new Ashera cat breed. Maybe it's that it can cost almost $25,000. Maybe it's that they weigh up to 30 pounds. Maybe it's that they look so cool. Maybe it's that they're apparently partially African and Asian serval wildcats. Or maybe, it's because Ashera is a big fat fraud?

I just dug up an old blog post (on a blog that seems to have been abandoned) about the striking similarities between the new Ashera cat (being hawked by Lifestyle Pets) and the well-established Savannah cat, which became a pedigreed breed back in 2000.

The blogger posits that the Ashera is nothing other than a 2nd generation ("F2," 2 generations from serval) Savannah cat that is non-pedigreed. As in, inferior, in the blogger's mind.

So, I dug a bit more and found some other info. The Museum of Hoaxes seems to be convinced it's real, but I think their research was just reading Lifestyle Pets' press release.

I came across several breeder sites and I think their F2 Savannah cats look almost identical to the (admittedly better photographed) Ashera cats on Lifestyle Pets. Is it a coincidence that Lifestyle Pets want to keep the lineage of the Ashera cat secret?

So, at least for now, I think I'm going to say that the Ashera seems to be nothing more than slick marketing of a non-pedigreed Savannah cat. Still neat, but not worth the $22,000+ that Lifestyle Pets is selling them for.