(U-WIRE) PROVO, Utah – Allerca kittens are nothing to sneeze at. A San Diego-based biotechnology company, Allerca, has responded to the special needs of household allergy-sufferers by breeding a line of hypoallergenic house cats.

Although Allerca officials are protective of their scientific research, they said their cats are not genetically modified. Rather, the cats are bred for specific genetic variations that control allergens.

Megan Young, Allerca’s CEO, said the company has just “taken selective breeding to the next level.”

Leslie Lyons, an assistant professor in the veterinary medicine school at the University of California-Davis, said Allerca’s claims are built on a long-lived feline phenomenon.

“Siberian cats have been touted by breeders as being hypoallergenic for a long time,” she said.

Lyons specializes in research on domestic cat genetics. Some cats naturally produce fewer allergens than others, she said. Allerca’s practice of identifying certain desirable gene variations is called “marker assisted selection.” They identify cats whose genes produce little or none of the allergen Fel d 1 and breed those cats to establish a breeding pool. Marker-assisted selection is also common in livestock production.

Although Allerca will not reveal how they developed the hypoallergenic cats, Lyons said if a low allergen-producing breed were used in Allerca’s breed development, she expects a hypoallergenic breed could have been achieved within one or two cross-breedings.

Allerca officials said Siberians were not used in the development of the new breed but various other breeds were used to establish the appropriate breeding pool.

Allerca’s research and development have moved quickly enough that the company is presently taking orders for their special cats. The price for an Allerca cat is $3,950 with approximately $1,000 more for processing and transportation.

Each cat comes with complete vaccinations, a one-year guarantee, a microchip identifier implant, one year of veterinary health insurance, a starter kit and other benefits. The cats themselves arrive by private jet to the customer’s local veterinarian.

Cats love string, so it’s little surprise this deal comes with some of its own. One of the strings attached to purchasing a hypoallergenic cat is that Allerca requires all of their felines be spayed or neutered. This prevents owners from breeding hypoallergenic cats on their own.

Another company, Felix Pets, has taken a separate approach to hypoallergenic house cats. Their technique, which is currently under development, involves genetic modification at the point of conception. Their process, called the “knockout” technique, is a complete removal of the genes that cause Fel d 1 production.

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