Taking this concept to its extreme one would now be under the impression that all that the past European forefathers have passed on all their acquired traits to the younger generations following them. The reasoning powers of the great philosophers, the valour of Crusading knights should have been endowed in all rather than a meagre few. According to this theory of evolution descendants could one day attain the heights Europeans had already scaled. The Lamarckian evolution had only one crucial defect, it was entirely untrue. One could cut off a rat's tail, but its offspring would have normal tails. The rules of genetics were not known in Lamarck's day, and were not known until long after Darwin's, when the pioneering work of Mendel was rediscovered at the turn of the twentieth century. But animal breeders had long since discovered certain principles of breeding for desired characteristics, and acquired characteristics played no part in this process
Based on the appearance of the two founding females, Baker split their progeny into two groups: Fugianna's kittens were termed "the Light Side"; Buckwheat's kittens were termed "the Dark Side". Ann Baker formulated a strict breeding policy to preserve the purity of the Ragdoll and charged other breeders (franchisees) a royalty fee for every kitten they sold. She also made wild claims about the cats: their docility was due to changes in Josephine after she was hit by a car (a long-discredited Lamarckian theory), that while Josephine was being treated for injuries she was infused experimentally with skunk and/or racoon and/or human genes (even if done, these genes would not have entered the egg cells in the ovaries), that Ragdolls were immune to pain (they have normal pain thresholds but are remarkably tolerant cats) and even that they are a link between us and space aliens! A more plausible suggestion was that
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