New Styling

It’s been such a long time since I last wrote a post that I thought it might be good to shake things up and create a whole new style for the blog.  To go along with the new background colour and template, I’ve added a new banner with some of our cats and kittens, showing some of the range of colours and patterns within the Asian breed.

Top left is Keeker (GR CH Cagaran Keekers), who, for those of you’ve who’ve followed the blog in the past, is a son of Lhasa and Eiteag’s from one of our 2014 litters.  He is a Burmese pattern chocolate silver shaded.

Below him are Rafa (Cagaran An-Sùlair) and Lainni (Cagaran Asgaidh-Àlainn), two of Katie’s kittens from our very first litter, back in 2010.  They are a black shaded and a black silver shaded.

Above Lainni, and to the right of Keeker, is Orlando (Kagura Orlando), who is currently on loan to us from Steve Crow and Tommy Goss.  He is a cinnamon ticked tabby.

Next to them is Dàrna (I GR CH & GR PR Dayjoy Orla), who is behind a lot of our younger cats: two of our recent litters were her great-great-great grandchildren.  She is a chocolate tortie silver shaded.

Below her chest is Fiona (CH Cagaran Beannachd-Fionn), Dàrna’s daughter from her first litter, in 2010, and now a great-great grandmother herself.  She is an apricot silver shaded.

To her right is her daughter, Ayla (CH Cagaran Eala-Bianach), Fi’s daughter from her first litter, in 2012.  Cascading down the generations, she is a great grandmother.  She is a Burmese pattern chocolate tortie silver shaded.

Above her is Quinn (GR PR Cagaran Dòrlach & GMC Quinn), Dàrna’s daughter from her second litter, in 2011.  She is a brown tortie smoke.

To their right, with front left paw held up, is Lura (Cagaran Lurach), a granddaughter of Eiteag’s through his daughter.  She is a cream shaded.

Above, and to her right, is Tabh (GR PR Cagaran Beinn-Eighe), a litter-brother of Fiona’s.  He is a caramel silver shaded.

Below him is Brodie (GR CH Cagaran Platach), one of Lhasa’s kittens from last year: the litter she was delivering when I wrote my last post.  He was the fifth to be born, so hadn’t actually arrived yet, at the time of my last post.  He is a black smoke.

To his right, at the bottom, is B-B (Cagaran Bramán-Beag), another of Fiona’s litter-brothers.  He is a Burmese pattern chocolate smoke.

Above him are Cheeky and Bru (Cagaran Bragoil and Cagaran Brucach), who are slight imposters here because they’re from one of our Ocicat litters rather an Asian, but they show two more colours in which Asians can be bred: cinnamon classic tabby and black spotted tabby.

To their right is Katie (CH Rushbrooke Airgead Cagaran), who was our first queen, mother of the pair at the bottom left and great-grandmother of the one to her right.  She is a black silver shaded.

Below her is an as yet un-named kitten from our ‘T’ litter out of Fiona and Keeker.  Like his mum, he is an apricot silver shaded.

Finally, at the far right is Niamh (Cagaran Niamh), who is a granddaughter of Dàrna’s, through her son, Donny (Quinn’s litter-brother) and a great-granddaughter of Katie’s through her daughter, Cailin and granddaughter, Tilly.  She is a Burmese pattern chocolate.

I’ll try and get back on in the next few weeks, to do an update and re-introduction to our current cats, but this will have to do you for now.

Love from Heather, Richard and the Cagaran Cats x

 

Even More Kittens

So it turns out that having the app on my phone still doesn’t mean I find time to write regular updates.  Well, it was worth a shot!  It’s almost three months since I last found time to sit and write a post and the only reason I’m finding time now is because I’m sitting in the kitten room, keeping Lhasa company while she delivers her kittens.

We had an AGCS Committee meeting at the end of July, and Lhasa went home with Sarndra Devereux afterwards.  She had been in call when we left home but the journey knocked her off and it took her a couple of weeks to come back on, so instead of getting her back whilst down for the Chester show, we met up with Sarndra at the Teesside (I managed to persuade Richard to do two shows in August, since we wouldn’t be doing one in September).

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Lhasa pinked up a few days later and for the past fortnight has looked about ready to burst.  As always, though, she makes a very happy pregnant cat, with lots of purring and padding.

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The boy she visited was Sarndra’s Tarby (GR CH Rainsong Jolly Jack Tar), who is a Bombay carrying chocolate, Burmese pattern and dilute, though most likely not longhair.  Since he’s a self, this mating can only produce selfs and smokes, which is a first for us.  Black and brown are the most likely colours, with chocolate also possible.  Blue and lilac might also be possibilities, depending whether Lhasa carries the dilute gene.

As it stands at the moment, we have four: two definitely black and the other two probably brown (maybe one self and two smokes but who really knows!).  It’ll be nice to have a Bombay (self black), because we haven’t had one before.

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Tilly and Tia’s kittens both went for their second vaccinations last week (we held Tilly’s back so that they could be done at the same time) and will start going to their new homes shortly.  We’ve just done the DNA tests on Tia’s, so we don’t yet know which of those will be staying (it depends who carries cinnamon), though I know which I’d like to be keeping.

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Tilly’s all turned out to be shorthairs, in spite of three being obviously shorthair and the other three much hairier.  They’re obviously just fluffy shorthairs, much like their daddy, Donny, was.  We’re keeping the girl that I originally thought was lilac, but is actually chocolate BCR, and have called her Niamh (Gaelic for beautiful).

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I haven’t had time to work out where most of the others will be going, but I do know that the black smoke (now called Storm) and the brown (now called Daisy) are going together and will be only about twenty minutes away.  One of Tia’s is reserved for the family who previously had Jock and Mischka from us but Mischka was unfortunately killed on the road last week, so I don’t know what difference that will make to their plans.

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We had the Asian BAC meeting last weekend and Keeker and Hailey represented Tiffanies and Asian classic tabbies at the BAC seminar the weekend before.  I was particularly delighted with Hailey, who had never even been to a show before, but was an absolute superstar, calmly allowing all the seminar attendees to handle her.

Our next outing is to the Supreme, around 10 days from now, where we’re manning the Asian club table and have all five Asian breeds on exhibition.  As far as we can ascertain, that will be a first.  We have one of Jackie McCarten’s Bombays for the selfs, Julie for the Burmillas, Ayla for the Tiffanies, Donny for the Smokes and Zuko for the tabbies.  We’re also taking one in competition but you’ll just have to come and see us at the show if you want to know who it is before I next get a chance to post!

Best in Show and More Kittens

Well, it’s been a busy but interesting few days since my last post!

Bombay & Asian Show

The Bombay & Asian show was back-to-back (sharing a hall, judges, etc.) with both the Eastern Counties and Kensington shows at the Wood Green animal shelter in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.  Since we were going to have to go to the Midlands at some point, in order to drop off the last of Ayla’s kittens and collect Donny from his ‘visiting stud duties’, we decided to combine that with doing the show.

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Keeker and Julie were each entered in both the Kensington and the Bombay & Asian, and both picked up a Grand in one show and Best of Breed in both shows.

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We’d also taken Lura to try for her first CC, but knowing that there was a good chance she wouldn’t get it since she has a tail fault (the whole litter had one so it’s probably environmental or an incompatibility between lines so we kept the one with the least-bad fault and will just need to try a mating and see if she throws it or not).  As expected, she didn’t get the certificate but she did seem to really enjoy herself, which is the most important thing.

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Our final entrant was Lady (we knew her as Secret Tortie), who was entered only in the Bombay & Asian, in the under-six-months kitten class.  She was an absolute poppet, relaxed and comfortable in her pen and loving the cuddles when she was brought out.

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Her owners (Kirsty and James Oxley, who have one of Tia’s kittens from last year – we knew her as Jill but she is now Duchess) came to visit the show in the afternoon and, though they had to leave before the end due to Kirsty having a hen party that night, we re there to see Lady being put in the Best Kitten pen!

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Before they left, I warned Kirsty and James that it was very unlikely that Lady would go any further because the adult and neuter are both so much more mature.  To our immense surprise, however, she was chosen as the Overall Best in Show.  That was our first Overall Best result (our fourth Best Kitten), so particularly exciting.

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After the show, we went straight to the Oxleys, to deliver Lady.  As you might imagine, they were absolutely delighted to be presented with the Best in Show rosette and prizes.  We then enjoyed a cup of tea while we watched Lady start to settle in (and meet her big cousin).  It was also lovely to see Duchess again – she’s developed just as beautifully as we hoped.

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Kittens

Tilly’s kittens are now two weeks old and all are growing well.  The ‘tiny’ kitten is now only 8g behind his next-smallest sibling and just over 40g behind the biggest, so he’s doing really well, and that’s without any supplementation.

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Tia wanted nothing to do with Tilly and her kittens until the day before yesterday, when she suddenly decided to climb into the box with Tilly and share cuddling and cleaning duties.  Initially I was worried that Tilly’s kittens would drink from her and take the colostrum (the antibody-rich first milk), but they showed no interest at all in drinking from her, sticking to cuddling with her and drinking from their mum.

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We suspected that this new interest in Tilly’s kittens indicated that Tia was getting close to her own due date, and sure enough, she began delivery this morning.  As it stands, she has three, all boys.  I think we have three different patterns: a shaded, a ticked tabby and a spotted tabby.

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Other News

I had my first board meeting with the GCCF this week.  I wasn’t sure what to expect but received a very warm and welcoming reception from the other directors and actually found the meeting quite enjoyable.  In addition, we’ve spent our evenings over the past couple of weeks building a new day-run for the cats.  The primary purpose is to give the girls a bit of fresh air but we’ve built it in two parts so that it can also double as somewhere for visiting girls to get to know whichever boy they’re visiting.

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It’s the Edinburgh show this weekend and although we can’t show because of being out last weekend, I’m going to be stewarding so if you’re going then I’ll see you there.

First Eyes

It looks like Tilly’s kitten 4 (the lilac girl) is going to be an early-developer, since she had half-opened one of her eyes last night.  At three days old, this is four to seven days earlier than the average.  Thankfully, I’ve had friends’ kittens open their eyes at about the same age, without any issues, otherwise I’d have been worrying that opening so soon could cause problems.

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With the exception of Tiny (Tilly’s kitten 6), her lot are all well over 100g now and even Tiny is feeding well and filling out.

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Tia and her brood are also fine, and I’ll try to take some pictures later.  Incidentally, in case you’re wondering about the sudden increase in update frequency, I’ve finally managed to get the WordPress app to install and connect on my phone, so updates should be more regular now.

Six sweet little bundles

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This is how Tilly and the kittens looked when I first got up this morning.

Elisabeth came round last night to give me a second opinion on colours, and this is our best guesses at the moment (plus the individual portraits):

Kitten 1 was the one who was sadly still-born (she was female and a BCR chocolate or lilac of some description)

Kitten 2 is a male FEX chocolate ticked tabby or shaded

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Kitten 3 is a female, either FEX chocolate or BCR brown, I think smoke but might be self

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Kitten 4 is a female, I think FEX lilac self or smoke

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Kitten 5 is a female, either FEX lilac silver or BCR chocolate silver

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Kitten 6 is a male, known as ‘Tiny’ because he was only 65g at birth.  He looks like maybe a caramel silver

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Kitten 7 is a male black smoke

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As before, Tilly is proving to be a great mum and the kittens all seem well-fed and contented.

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Tilly’s Kittens

Tilly’s kittens arrived overnight last night.  I’d no sooner saved my last post and gone up to check on her than she started labour.  The first kitten was, unfortunately, born dead (she was very small and looked like she’d been squashed), but there are six alive and looking well.

We have three boys and three girls, and all are different colours.  I’ll try and get on with individual photos of then later.

Tia is still nesting so keep your fingers crossed for an easy delivery for her.

I was going to post photos, but unfortunately WordPress is being rubbish again, and won’t accept them from either my phone or my PC (hence the half-baked photo attempt with the last post – out of a batch of about 25 photos, only four are actually visible!).  I’ll see if I can get the uploads to work later.

Summer 2015 Update

Wow; I have to be the worst blogger on the planet! My last update was in August last year – 10 1/2 months without an update surely has to be some kind of record?

Kitten Update:

I’ll start with the bit that most of you are probably interested in… when I last posted we had three litters in the house: Tilly’s, Tia’s and Lhasa’s, making sixteen kittens in total:

Tilly's four kittens in a row on the edge of the bed
Tilly’s four – Isla, Mischka, Horatio and Imp

Tilly’s Kitten 1 (Cagaran Impich / Imp) was an early favourite online because of his distinctive ‘cap’ of dark brown against the silver of the rest of his head. In spite of that, the right home took until between Christmas and New Year to come along, when he was over 7 months old. He went to live with the owner of Mia, one of the girls from our third Ocicat litter.

Imp - Tilly's chocolate silver shaded son
Imp on the windowledge

Tilly’s Kitten 2 (Cagaran Ìla / Isla) went over to live with Maura Lenihan (Coomakista) in Ireland, where they were desperately in need of new Asian bloodlines. She had her first litter last month: seven kittens in a range of colours and coat lengths!

Isla - Tilly's black smoke Tiffanie daughter
Isla on Richard’s legs

Tilly’s Kitten 3 (Cagaran Ifrinnach / Mischka) went to her new home in Paisley, as planned, and is still the little devil she was when she was here. At least her owners can’t say they weren’t warned.

Tilly’s Kitten 4 (Cagaran Iùmh-rud / Mini-Doop now Horatio) won the hearts of our vet and vet nurse and went up to live on their small-holding near Bathgate. He’s even more of a lump than he was back then, now being at least as big as his Dad but still oh so very like him in temperament (and facially).

Tia’s Kitten 1 (Cagaran Jonick / Nicki) now lives with the Lucky Owl cattery in northern Italy. We had a bit of a mammoth journey to get her down there, but spent a lovely couple of days sightseeing in southern Switzerland and northern Italy with her owners before visiting friends in Holland on the way home. We actually drove to Brussels via the Dover-Calais ferry, left the car in Brussels and flew down to Milan; our first experience of having a cat in the cabin!

Tia’s Kitten 2 (Cagaran Julie-Jo / Julie) stayed here with us and made Champion at the end of May. She is really cuddly but also a comedienne and often behaves like a cartoon. In fact, one of her nicknames is Simon’s Cat, because she’s so like the little cartoon.

Tia’s Kitten 3 (Cagaran Jimmy / Jimmy now Oleg) went to live with Sarah Davidson (Karakoram) as a stud boy, as planned. She’s going to do a few matings this year taking advantage of his spots to hopefully get some spotted kittens, and then he will probably be neutered.

Tia’s Kitten 4 (Cagaran Jinking-Jillet / Jill now Duchess) turned out to be a ticked tabby rather than a shaded and went to live with a lovely couple in Daventry who will hopefully be having a litter from her this year. They have bred British Shorthairs and have a Tiffanie neuter, so her kittens will be their first Asians, though not their first kittens.

Tia’s Kitten 7 (Cagaran Jimp-n-Joco / Jock) went to live with Mischka and her owners. Unfortunately, he contracted an infection a couple of months ago, and after fighting it for a few weeks, eventually had to be put to sleep. His owners are absolutely devastated and Mischka spent the first couple of weeks pining for him. This is particularly rough given that Jock fought so hard for life in the first place, being the only one of Tia’s three ‘tinies’ to survive. Perhaps his system never had developed fully, leaving him susceptible to infection; we’ll never know.

Lhasa’s Kitten 1 (Cagaran Kittling-o-Hinnie / Honey) accompanied Isla to Ireland, though she lives with a different breeder (Geralyn Bowles). We also took Eiteag over to live with Ger for the time-being, again to help boost the Irish blood-lines.

Lhasa’s Kitten 2 (Cagaran Kelpie / Kelpie) and
Lhasa’s Kitten 6 (Cagaran Killiemahou / Killie) live together with a lovely family just outside Bristol. These two were close as kittens and are still very close now that they’re adults. We dropped them off on our way to Dover to take Nicki to Switzerland.

Lhasa’s Kitten 3 (Cagaran Karriwhitchit / Widget now Oliver) now lives in Leamington Spa with a lovely couple whose grandkids dote on him. We went back to visit in February and it was obvious that he has his ‘parents’ very firmly wrapped around his little paw.

Lhasa’s Kitten 4 (Cagaran Keekers) stayed here with us and will hopefully undertake his first ‘stud duties’ later this year. We decided to re-register him as a shaded because his pattern is so light that it’s barely visible. He made Champion at the end of May and then picked up a Grand last month, in his first attempt in the class.

Lhasa’s Kitten 5 (Cagaran Kievie) was booked to go and live with the people who eventually had Nicki from us but when she was weaning she ate something (perhaps some litter) that clogged her gut and took her from us. I have photos of her taken late one evening, where she’s flying around, playing happily, but she was very lethargic when we got up the next morning so we rushed her to the vet who operated but lost her while she was under anaesthetic. Of course it was sod’s law that she was the only kitten in the litter who was booked at that point, so not only did we have to deal with our own sadness at losing her, but also the sadness of the people who were meant to have been her owners.

Kievie on the bed
One of the photos of Kievie taken on the evening before she died

Lhasa’s Kitten 7 (Cagaran Kenspeckle / Finley) lives with the lovely young vet who was originally going to have B-B from us, right back in 2010. She’d had various changes of circumstances in the meantime, but was finally settled down and ready to have her kitten so she and her boyfriend came up to stay with us for a weekend (sleeping in the kitten room with 12 kittens!) and chose Finley, who now lives with a teenage Tiffanie neuter, a British shorthair, two moggies and two house-rabbits.

At the end of the summer we took Small down to Helen Marriott-Power, for a visit with her cream Burmese boy, Quin (I GR CH Mainman Quintessence). Small delivered us five cream shaded kittens in October; our first litter of all-the-same-colour Asians, which was a slightly weird experience! We’ve kept back Lura (Cagaran Lurach) to bring the Burmese outcross genes into our lines and the other kittens have gone to pet homes: two to different homes in the Glasgow area, one to Edinburgh and the last to live with Finley’s owner’s mum in Wales (she’d fallen in love with Finley but wanted a shorthair so Elysé put her in touch with us).

We held off putting anyone else in kitten until all of Tilly, Tia and Lhasa’s kittens had found homes, but once Imp left us in December, we mated Ayla to Donny.  Since she’s petite and only had two kittens last time, we were expecting the same again, but she actually gave us a litter of five.  Unfortunately the smallest of these was far too small and never breathed, even with half an hour of resuscitation attempts.

The others were two brown tortie silver shaded Tiffanie girls (one a harlequin-style tortie like Donny’s litter-sister, Quinn, and the other a more subtle tortie typical of our Dàrna-descendants), a brown silver ticked tabby Asian girl and an apricot silver shaded Burmilla boy.  Three of the kittens started out very small but soon caught up to, and surpassed, their larger sibling, and, like the two in her last litter, all four are a normal size for their age, in spite of their mother’s diminutive proportions.

Having had Horatio from us last year, our vet and vet nurse had decided that they wanted a second Asian and since these kittens were Horatio’s half-siblings (he was also out of Donny), they got first pick of this litter and chose one of the Tiffanie girls, who they’ve called Aurora.  The two shorthairs have gone to live together near Berwick; we dropped them off on Saturday and they were already racing around, completely uninterested in us, by the time we left.  The other Tiffanie girl is going to join Duchess in Daventry and will hopefully have kittens of her own in a year or so.

Kitten News

We put Tilly and Tia in with boys at the end of April and they are busily nesting at present.  Tilly is due kittens imminently: she’s at 65 days today and like last year, the father of the kittens is Donny.  We’re hoping for a female version of Horatio – a female, Tiffanie version of their father, in other words.

The father of Tia’s kittens is Zuko, our Australian-Mist outcross boy, so their kittens will be F2s and we’ll be hoping for a cinnamon-carrier with reasonable type to continue that line into the next generation.

Other News

Dàrna made Premier at the Teesside back in August, then followed that by making Grand Premier at the Nor’East of Scotland in May.  Meanwhile, Tia made up to Grand Champion at the Lancashire in March.  To our amazement, Lhasa’s daughter, Honey (who lives in Ireland) went Overall Best Foreign at the Cumberland show in October, and then Keeker and Julie did us proud at the Supreme, taking 2nd and 3rd place in the Special kitten classes, which had somewhere over 50 competitors.

Ali’s favourite person in the whole world has always been our friend, Carrie, who lived with us for a time back in 2006-8 and we’d promised years ago that when she finally got a house of her own, she could take Ali to live with her.  That happened last autumn, so he went to live with her in Falkirk, along with a rescue kitten from Rhodes.  Shortly after that, however, she was offered a post in Jersey, so with human and pet passports in order, the three moved to sunnier climes in March.

Since Bru seemed to have outgrown any issues caused by his single-lung status, we began looking out for a home for him last summer.  The right people came along in November: a local family with three boys, who had recently lost one of their two cats.  Since Bru was so close to his sister, Cheeky, we decided to let her go with him and the two have settled in extremely well down in Bo’ness.

The final, and surprise, re-home of the year was Small, who seemed to fall in love with a couple who came to see her kittens, and ended up asking for her instead.  However much we might love the cats, we try to leave decisions about their homing up to them, so we had her spayed at the same time as her kittens and, once she was recovered, drove her across to meet their other cats.  She now takes daily walks with them to look after their horses and seems at least as happy there as she was here.

Richard and I had agreed to be show managers for the West of Scotland show that was meant to be held in December of last year.  By the summer of last year, it was becoming obvious that we weren’t going to be able to get enough judges due to a clash with a big show down south, so the show was moved to the end of January, in a new venue up in Scotstoun.

However, we’d no sooner got that arranged than the Scottish Cat Club came to me saying that their show manager had resigned and asking if I’d manage their show in February.  I told them I couldn’t possibly manage the two largest shows in Scotland, only three weeks apart, in my first ‘outing’ as a show manager, so I suggested that they consider joining the West in a ‘back-to-back’ or double show, where the two clubs share the hall, judges, etc. so the management would only have to be done once.

After a few days consideration, they came back to say that they would like to do that, for this one year.  The Scotstoun venue had only just been big enough for the West by itself, so having the two clubs together required a renewed venue hunt, including going back to some of the venues who had previously turned us down and begging them to consider at least trying a cat show.  Luckily, the manager of the Ravenscraig sports centre in Motherwell took pity on me (after I agreed to personally mop the floor if it wasn’t left sufficiently clean) and agreed to host the show.  They didn’t have availability on our date so we had to move a week earlier to the 17th of January.

By that point it was November, leaving us with only two months to plan the first double show in Scotland; not necessarily the way that I had intended to undertake my first time as a show manager (all my previous shows I’d only been an assistant).  However, we managed; the judges rallied round to help us and we had some fabulous helpers on the day, and the show seemed to go down well.

It was successful enough that the Scottish decided to abandon their one-year-only policy and opted to do the same thing next year.  This time we’ll be back in December, but on a date where there isn’t another show, and I’ve got a full complement of judges booked already, thankfully.  We’re in the same venue again, since it proved very popular with exhibitors and judges alike, and we should be able to iron out the few niggles that didn’t quite work last time around.  Of course, we’ll no doubt do something else wrong instead…

Our friend Elisabeth Stark (Dushenka Russians) is now a full judge of Russians and a probationer of Asians (as well as Korats, of which she’s getting close to being ready to progress to full judge) and I was elected to the GCCF Board of Directors last month.

Our final, and arguably most important, piece of news is that Richard and I got engaged in November of last year and are planning our wedding for the 18th of April next year – the 15th anniversary of the day we started dating!  We’ve been living together 14 years this summer so it doesn’t change much beyond our official marital status, but at least it solves the question of what to refer to him as – he can now be my fiancé instead of my ‘partner’!

Even More Kittens

Tia and Lhasa had seven kittens each, but sadly two of Lhasa’s tiny kittens didn’t make it. The remaining twelve kittens, as well as Tilly’s four, have all grown well, though. Dàrna won her first two PCs at the Humberside & Lincs show and Small has gone off to stud with one of Helen Marriott-Power’s boys. Richard was elected as Vice-Chair of the AGCS.

Unfortunately, I can’t get WordPress to accept any image uploads this evening, so I’m putting the blog up and will add the images as soon as it’s possible to get them uploaded.

Okay, so it’s taken me ages to get around to doing another update after my announcement of the arrival of Tia’s kittens, but at least you got the announcement of one of the births in a timely fashion! With looking after the three litters, including having to syringe-feed Tia’s smallest ones, there was just never a good moment to post.

Tia and Lhasa’s Combined Litter

Unfortunately, Tia’s second-smallest kitten died part-way through the Friday, but somehow he had seemed like he was never meant to be. Far more devastating was the loss of her smallest at 12 days: by the time you’ve been syringe-feeding a kitten for as long as that, you’re starting to think that it’s going to make it, but she died in my hands after her early-evening feed and I was absolutely devastated. Thanking heaven for small mercies, though, the biggest of Tia’s tinies did pull through and is now probably the most characterful kitten in the whole litter!

Once Tia’s kittens arrived, we had to cover her nest box or Lhasa would hop in and try to run off with the kittens to her nest box. When Lhasa went into labour, Tia climbed into the box with her, lay down behind her so that Lhasa was leaning against her, and gave her a quick lick as if to say “I’m here; just breathe”. As each kitten arrived, the two girls cleaned them up together and then Tia looked after the newborns while Lhasa concentrated on the next delivery. It was very cute to watch the two experienced mums working together – when we’ve had two girls sharing during a delivery in the past, it’s been one experienced girl and one first-timer, so it was interesting to see how these two divided the duties, rather than one coaching the other.

Once Lhasa was finished, and the kittens were all cleaned up, we changed the bedding to take away the delivery-soiled towels, and then moved Tia’s kittens into the nest alongside Lhasa’s, since it was obvious that the two would be happier in together. The two litters have therefore grown up as one giant litter, and I’m sure they don’t have a clue which of the two is actually their mum.

They are just approaching six weeks and are starting to show individual personalities, but at the moment these are not distinctive enough for us to start naming them. They are therefore still known as ‘Tia’s Kitten 1’, ‘Lhasa’s Kitten 6′, and so on:

Tia’s Kitten 1 – lilac tortie BCR (Burmese Colour Restriction) silver shaded Burmilla female.

Tia’s Kitten 2 – lilac tortie BCR silver spotted Burmilla or Tiffanie (not sure) female. At the moment, I’m leaning towards this one being ours.

Tia’s Kitten 3 – lilac FEX (Full Expression, i.e. not BCR) spotted Asian Tabby male (might be silver). At the moment, this boy is reserved for Sarah Davidson, who owned the kittens’ grandsire, Shogun, because she has been wanting to get another spotty stud since Shogun was neutered. She’ll come and look at him when he is a bit older, and decide whether she wants him or not.

Tia’s Kitten 4 – brown tortie BCR shaded Burmilla female.

Tia’s Kitten 7 – brown silver shaded (tipped) Burmilla male. This is the one who was hand-fed for the first week or so and he is such a character and loves his cuddles and kisses.

Lhasa’s Kitten 1 – chocolate tortie BCR classic tabby Tiffanie female (might be silver). This is probably my favourite of Lhasa’s kittens for type, but since we’re keeping a girl from Tia’s litter, I want to keep one of Lhasa’s boys instead. Typical!

Lhasa’s Kitten 2 – brown BCR silver shaded Tiffanie male.

Lhasa’s Kitten 3 – lilac (maybe chocolate) BCR silver shaded Tiffanie male.

Lhasa’s Kitten 4 – lilac (maybe chocolate) BCR silver classic tabby Tiffanie male.

Lhasa’s Kitten 5 – chocolate tortie BCR silver shaded Tiffanie female. At the moment, she is reserved for John and Theresa Beale, because they’re looking for a silver shaded Tiffanie female. Again, we’ll see how she develops before they decide for certain.

Lhasa’s Kitten 6 – chocolate BCR silver spotted tabby Tiffanie male.

Lhasa’s Kitten 7 – brown BCR silver spotted tabby Tiffanie male.

At the moment, the kitten we keep from Lhasa’s litter is between Kitten 4 and Kitten 7, but I won’t decide until we see how both type and personality develop over the next few weeks.

The fact that both Tia and Lhasa’s litters contained seven kittens takes Eiteag’s average to four kittens per litter, which is the expected average and therefore allays my fears about there being something amiss with his fertility due to both Small and Hailey being single-kitten-litters.  That means that if the people in Eastern Europe who had previously expressed an interest in him are still looking for a Tiffanie stud, I would feel much more comfortable letting him go out there, knowing that he is fully fertile.  My original thinking was to have him neutered once we had the litters from Tia and Lhasa, but having seen him working, he enjoys his job far too much to take that away from him.  Donny doesn’t care either way – he would be just as happy to be a neutered pet as to be a stud cat, but Eiteag loves working as a stud!

Tilly’s Kittens:

Tilly’s kittens are getting close to being ready to leave us, so I really must start looking for new homes.  They will have their second vaccinations later this week, go in to be neutered/spayed next week and then be ready to go to their new homes the week after.

Kitten 1 – chocolate FEX silver shaded Burmilla male.  Pet name: Imp.  Pedigree name: (Cagaran) Impich, which means ‘persuade’, because he’s very vocal about telling you when he wants food, play or a cuddle.  It’s pronounced as it looks, with ‘ch’ as in the Scottish ‘loch’.  He’s a right little monkey and gets up to all sorts of mischief with his partner in crime, Mischka (Kitten 3).

Kitten 2 – black FEX smoke Tiffanie female.  Pet name: Isla.  Pedigree name: (Cagaran) Ìla, which is the Gaelic form of the island name Islay.  It’s pronounced the same way as the island (the pronunciation ending in ‘a’ rather than ‘ay’).

Kitten 3 – chocolate BCR silver shaded Burmilla female.  Pet name: Mischka (chosen by her new owners).  Pedigree name: (Cagaran) Ifrinnach, which means ‘fiend’ or ‘demon’, because she’s an absolute devil-child!

Kitten 4 – brown BCR smoke Tiffanie male.  Pet name: Mini-Doop or Doopy-Two (due to his resemblance to his Dad), Sumo or Lump (due to his size) or Yoda (because my brother thinks he looks like Yoda).  Pedigree name: (Cagaran) Iùmh-rud, which means ‘lump’.  It’s pronounced Ee-oov-root.

Other Cat Stuff:

The Edinburgh & East show was on the 19th of July, and though we couldn’t enter because we decided to do the Humberside & Lincs the following weekend, we did help to set up on the Friday evening and then visited to assist the following day.  I spent a lovely day stewarding for Steve Crow, whom I haven’t stewarded for in a couple of years.

The Humberside & Lincs show is in Newark, which is only about 40 minutes from Richard’s parents house, so is always a good excuse to pay them a visit.  That weekend also suited the bulk of the AGCS (Asian Group Cat Society) Committee for their summer Committee meeting, and if we were going to be going as far as Kettering for that meeting, we decided that we might as well fit in the double-show at the same time.  We took Dàrna to try for her first PCs and also arranged for Helen Marriott-Power to take Small home with her from the show, to ‘meet’ one of her stud boys.  Since Small was going to be at the show for that purpose anyway, we decided to enter her in the Grand on the off-chance that the judge would be in a lenient mood, but really she still looks too immature to win and indeed she wasn’t placed in either show.  She did win Best of Breed in both shows, though, as did Dàrna, who also won the two PCs.  During the show day, Richard and I caught up on some shopping in Grantham and had a lovely walk in the gardens of the National-Trust-owned Belton House.

At the Committee meeting the following day, Steve stepped down as Chairman, since he is now Chairman of the GCCF itself, and Sarndra Devereux (Rainsong Burmese and Asians) took over as Chair with Richard elected to the position of Vice-Chair.  As always, the meeting was held in the beer garden of a pub in Kettering and was a fabulously relaxed afternoon.

On the way home, we called in at Anita’s, since she had been unable to attend the meeting due to midwife duties for Breagha.  This did let us meet the three litters that Anita has at the moment, thought – two ‘oops’ Tiffanie x Ocicat kittens from Cailin (Anita’s Ocicat stud boy, Chippie, managed to get to her!); three gorgeous Ocicats (one tawny, two cinnamon) from Bobbi by a lovely Swedish import boy, of which Anita is keeping the girl; and another three from Breagha by Chippie – a chocolate silver Ocicat Classic, a cinnamon silver Ocicat and a cinnamon Ocicat.  We joked that we and Anita have our litters the wrong way around at the moment – we have three litters from girls we didn’t breed, including one bred by Anita (though we did breed her mum), and she has three litters from girls that we bred!

Cailin and her chocolate spotted tabby daughter in a basket at Anita's
Cailin and her very Oci-like half-Oci daughter

Cailin's silver shaded son asleep on a blanket
Cailin’s very Asian-like half-Oci son

We’ve also just had Tármus (our first Ocicat neuter girl) and Simba (one of the grown-up kittens form our first Ocicat litter) back to stay with us for their three-week summer holiday (their people were away to the US for a special birthday celebration).  I always enjoy having these two back for their holidays, not least because it gives us a chance to see how they’re both doing, three years after leaving us.

More Kittens

Tia has successfully delivered seven kittens, though some are very small and therefore not entirely out of danger yet. Lhasa is due imminently…

As promised, this is just a quick post to let you know that Tia had seven kittens yesterday morning.  This is our biggest litter so far, but I’m not entirely sure that all seven are going to survive.  The smallest was only 52g at birth and in spite of top-up feeds was down to 50g this morning.  Three of the seven are still 60g or below (60g having been the smallest survival weight we’ve had in the past, with Hailey) and one is 64g.  The other three are perfectly normal weights and should be fine, but I’m keeping my fingers and toes crossed for the tiny ones.  On the plus-side, they are all active and squeak if Tia sits on them, so they seem strong enough at the moment.  As long as I can keep getting some food into them, hopefully they will eventually start latching onto Tia properly.  I have no idea on genders or colours at the moment except that we have at least one boy and at least one girl and that one is a chocolate tortie of some description and two are spotted.  Beyond that, I’ll reserve judgement until their colour develops further.

Tia curled up in her nest box with the seven newborn kittens tucked into her tummy
Tia with her seven kittens yesterday

The chocolate tortie kitten in my hand
The chocolate tortie (kitten 4)

Lhasa is still busily nesting and looks absolutely enormous, so I hope for her sake that her litter arrives before too much longer!

Another Catch-Up and…. Kittens!!

Quinn made Grand at the Nor’East, Cheeky made Premier at the Lakeland and we had another good day representing the Asian Group at the London Pet Show. Tilly has a litter of four kittens, born on the 22nd of May – two boys and two girls in a variety of colours – and Tia and Lhasa are due imminently. In addition, two of Anita’s Cagarans have also had litters – two ‘oops’ kittens for Cailin and three lovely Ocicats for Bobbi.

Once again it is well over two months since my last post, and I must offer my apologies to all the people who have messaged me asking if everything is okay and begging for an update on whether we have kittens – sorry!  We haven’t had any problems and in fact, everything is great – we’ve just had confirmation that every cat in the household is Tritrich negative (yay!) and we have plenty of exciting kitten news…

Shows

We’ve only done two competitive shows since my last post: the Scottish Shorthair back in April, and the Lakeland in the middle of last month.  We also represented the Asians at the London Pet Show again, in May.

Our most exciting show news is actually from the Nor’East, which we attended to help, but couldn’t show at ourselves due to the LPS being the following weekend.  Thankfully there were still some Cagaran’s present, with Lona showing Lainni and Tracey showing Quinn, however. The tortie devil did us proud, winning her third and final Grand certificate, making her up to Grand Premier – the fourth Cagaran to win the Grand title, and the first Cagaran to hold three titles (Premier, Grand and Mastercat).  Congratulations to both Tracey and Quinn and thanks, Tracey, for giving her such a fabulous home!

Quinn in her pen at the Nor'East, with her rosette, giving us some tortitude
Quinn talking in her pen at the Nor’East

Lainni in her pen at the Nor'East
Lainni looking gorgeous

At both the Scottish Shorthair and the Lakeland, we only took Cheeky to try for her PCs, which she won, making her up to Premier.  This seems somehow fitting, given that the Lakeland is the show at which our original Ocicat neuter, Tármus, made Premier back in 2009!  Tármus got us interested in breeding Ocis and Cheeky is the last of our dabble in the breed, so I guess that makes the Lakeland the bookends of our Ocicat experience.  The Lakeland this year was also on the most gorgeous day, so Richard and I went for a long walk, taking in Kendal Castle and one of the local ridges with stunning 360º views – down to Morecambe bay, up into the mountains of the Lakes and across to the western Dales.

Cheeky in her Lakeland pen with her rosettes and Premier certificate
Cheeky with her awards at the Lakeland

Richard and I under a blue sky with fluffy clouds, Kendal in the midground and the mountains of Cumbria in the background
Richard and I at the top of ‘The Helm’ behind Kendal, with the town in the mid-ground and the mountains of the Lakes in the background

The London Pet Show was fabulous as usual and we had a fantastic day.  We took four representatives for the Asian breed: Ayla and Small representing Tiffanies (and showing a silver and a non-silver) and Zuko and Hailey representing Asian Shorthairs.  As previous readers of our blog will know, Hailey hadn’t yet made it to a show, so I was half prepared to just have her sitting in her pen to allow people to see a classic Asian (they’re pretty rare), but she turned out to be our superstar for the day – she and Ayla spent the whole day sitting out on their bed, cleaning each other and talking to their adoring public.  I was so proud!  Zuko also spent most of the day on the table, cuddled up in his bed and allowing the spectators to give him whatever attention they wanted but without really paying them much attention.  Small didn’t like the noise from the tannoy system that was blasting out on the next exhibit, so she was more relaxed in her pen, where she sprawled around looking adorable and talking to the people who looked in through the front of her cage.

Ayla and Hailey on their cushion at one end of the table, with Zuko in his bed at the other end and the club materials laid out inbetween
Ayla, Hailey and Zuko on the table

Zuko curled up in his bed, allowing himself to be stroked
Zuko letting the public stroke him
Small lying across her pen, using her litter tray as a pillow
Small relaxing in her pen

The night of the LPS was also the annual GCCF Gala Dinner, so we went straight from London to Cambridge.  We shared a table with Anita and Elisabeth, among others, and had a fabulous night.  This year they had a karaoke machine which those of you who knew me in my teens will not be surprised to hear that I was persuaded to sing on.  After supporting ‘the Birman crew’ who couldn’t remember how the verses of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ went, I also sang a couple of duets with Sally Rainbow-Ockwell – what a team we made!  I think we finally went to bed about 4am, tired but having had a fantastic time, and I’m already looking forward to next year…

Kittens

Okay, the reason that most of you are probably reading this – the kittens…

Tilly delivered six kittens on the 22nd of May, but unfortunately she had four big kittens and two tiny ones.  The tinies were just too small: one never breathed at all and the other slipped away after about half-an-hour of mouth-to-mouth and attempts to stimulate him the way I did with Hailey last year.  I continued my efforts for probably ten or fifteen minutes after that but eventually had to accept that I wasn’t going to be successful this time.  As is usually the case with mother cats, Tilly showed absolutely no interest in the two kittens that died, not even attempting to open their sacks or clean them up, so she obviously knew what I wouldn’t admit until there could be no doubt.  As sad as the loss of those two little ones made me, I am delighted to report that the other four are lively and adorable and doing really well.  They will be six weeks this week and are starting to show their individual personalities.

Tilly with the four kittens once they were cleaned up
Tilly with her four kittens once they were all cleaned up and we had changed her onto clean bedding

The four kittens lying together by their mum's foot
A closer view of the four kittens.  From left to right: kitten 4, kitten 2, kitten 3 and kitten 1

Kitten 1 is a chocolate silver shaded male, and I think he’s a shorthair.  He’s quite gentle but very outgoing and loves his cuddles, especially if you lie him on his back and rub his shoulders and the sides of his neck.  Actually, this whole litter seem to find that completely mesmeric and will flop like little ragdolls when I do that.

Kitten 1 in my hand at 12 hours old
Kitten 1 at 12 hours old

Kitten 1 looking up from his bed a couple of days ago
Kitten 1 now

Kitten 2 is a black smoke female, and looks to be a Tiffanie.  At the moment, she is the shyest but also the most talkative in the litter and likes to follow us around the room.  She always answers back when she’s spoken to, and reminds me a lot of her mum.

Kitten 2 nestling in my hand at 12 hours old
Kitten 2 at 12 hours old

Kitten 2 peeking up from her basket a couple of days ago
Kitten 2 now

Kitten 3 is a chocolate silver shaded Burmese restriction female.  Her coat is fairly short, so she might be a shorthair, but the texture and appearance reminds me of Cailin’s (Tilly’s mum) at the same age, and she turned out to be a Tiffanie, so I’m reserving judgement at the moment.  She is an absolute minx, but has been Richard’s favourite since the start and there’s something very endearing about her.  She and the fourth kitten are the adventurers and are always the first two to try everything: when we moved the kittens down to the back bedroom yesterday, I asked Richard how long he reckoned it would be before one of those two found their way up into the box on the scratching post and sure enough, maybe five minutes later, there she was!

Kitten 3 resting on my hand at 12 hours old
Kitten 3 at 12 hours old

Kitten 3 asleep on the floor last night
Kitten 3 asleep on the floor last night – she had been in the bed behind, but fell out whilst sleeping!

Kitten 4 is a brown smoke (Burmese restriction) male, like his father, but he’s a Tiffanie, whereas Donny is a shorthair.  He’s always been the biggest kitten in the litter, earning him the nickname ‘Lump’ from an early age, but as he’s grown up, he’s become so like his Dad in temperament as well as looks that he’s now known as ‘mini-Doop’ (Doop being one of Donny’s nicknames).  As if two nicknames aren’t enough, my brother calls him Yoda, due to his wise, slightly mournful expression.  As you might gather from the number of nicknames, he’s a bit of a character, but in a very laid-back manner.  Whereas Kitten 3 tackles her adventures with an endearing cheekiness, he just takes everything in his stride and since nothing phases him, he’s frequently the first to try new things.  He started eating biscuits at less than three weeks old and was the first to figure out how to jump out of the kitten pen.

Kitten 4 resting his head on the heel of my hand at 12 hours old
Kitten 4 at 12 hours old

Kitten 4 meeting his Dad a few days ago
Kitten 4 a few days ago

At the moment, you’ll gather that Kittens 3 and 4 have more personality than the other two, who are just very sweet and gentle at the moment.  I would expect that by the time I next do an update, I’ll have a lot more to say about them because they’re personalities will have developed more fully by then.

Both Tia and Lhasa are heavily pregnant and due any time from today.  I honestly will try and at least do a quick update after the births, to let you know the kittens have arrived safely!  Aside from our own kittens, Anita’s also had litters from both Cailin (CH Cagaran Cailin-Anizz) and Bobbi (Cagaran Ceann-Ciatach) recently.  Cailin had an ‘oops’ mating with Anita’s Ocicat stud, so the kittens are technically first-generation Asians – one silver spotted girl and a silver shaded boy.  Bobbi was mated to a Swedish import boy that Anita’s been wanting to have a litter from and she had three kittens: a tawny boy, a chocolate boy and a chocolate girl.  The chocolate girl will be staying with Anita to both continue the outcross line (You may remember that Bobbi was second-generation from our Ocicat-Abyssinian outcross) and keep the new Swedish line in Anita’s breeding programme.

Lhasa lying in her nest box, on her back, looking heavily pregnant
Lhasa in her nest box today, looking very pregnant and showing her Burmese scowl

Tia in her nest box
Tia in her nest box today.  We don’t normally cover their nests but Lhasa keeps trying to jump in with Tia if the box is uncovered!