Maidstone & Medway Cat Show
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Like the West of Scotland, the Maidstone & Medway Cat Club had their 25th Anniversary show in December, which was also to be the last one managed by Anne Gregory before she gives up. I had asked Sandra Woodley (Honpuss Burmese & Asians) to suggest some shows where I could steward for her, and this was one of the suggestions. When I mentioned that to Elisabeth (Dushenka Russian Blues), she calculated that it would be a good one for her because it would be Lucy’s first shot at a CC, and also the first show that her babies would be old enough for. Considering all of that, we couldn’t resist making the trip.
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We took our three kittens (Donny, Quinn and Grace) plus Shogun, and Elisabeth took three of her kittens plus Lucy. We stayed near Warwick on the Friday night, which was the first night away from home for all of the babies. Our rooms were across the hallway, and I think we must have been just about the only people on our floor, which meant that there wasn’t too much noise to disturb the cats. None of them seemed the least bit phased, though Shogun wasn’t massively impressed with having to spend the night in the bathroom! Quinn and Grace cuddled up in bed with us, while Donny spent the night keeping us awake by knocking Richard’s glasses off the bedside table, playing with our toothbrushes and unpacking our bag all over the floor.
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I had an interesting day stewarding for Sandra, and saw some beautiful cats. Meanwhile our own cats did well, and Shogun won his second CC. Elisabeth’s Lucy won her first, and all of the babies handled well, and met with approval from the judges.
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The ‘Festive Season’
Once again this year, we ordered Christmas cards with one of our own photos on the front. We took the photo just before Maltech and Cailin went off to their new homes, in the few days after they had been introduced to Dàrna’s litter. That meant that we were able to have a Tiffanie, an Ocicat Variant and the two Asians all together in one photo. As before, it was a challenge to get the kittens to sit together, and the Christmassy backdrop that we created had virtually been destroyed by the time we got the final photo.
The series of photos below show just some of the many failed attempts to get a decent photo, but also just some cute ones that we took along the way. We were using a feather stick to try and get the kittens attention, but you’ll see that sometimes it failed to work, and sometimes it worked a little too well!
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Richard’s parents came up to stay with us over Christmas, and some of my relatives were joining us for Christmas dinner, making a party of 14 in total. The day before Christmas Eve, the trip for the sockets in every room except the kitchen went faulty. As a result, we had to run extension-leads around the house to power the Christmas lights and fish tank, but at least we had still had power in the kitchen and light throughout the house! Dinner was very successful, and it was lovely to catch up with the family.
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Keela was still behaving as if she hated Shogun, squealing and hissing at him whenever we went into the room. However, when I went up to see them on Christmas day, I found her sleeping curled up against his tummy. As soon as she saw me, she jumped up and started hissing and growling at him again as if she hated him, but by then I knew that she was just putting it on for my benefit. I checked her over, and discovered that her back nipples were just starting to show a slight flush. By the start of January, the flush had extended into full pinking from back to front, so it looks like he has successfully mated her.
Hogmanay was my grandfather’s 80th birthday, so we stayed overnight with my family in the Crown Plaza hotel in Glasgow, and went to the black-tie gala dinner there. This was another fantastic opportunity to catch up with family members, particularly my cousins who live in Guernsey, and another of my cousins who is about to move to Spain. Anyone who is friends with me on Facebook will no doubt already have seen the sets of highly embarrassing photos one of my cousins later posted of me dancing!
Asian Group Cat Society Show
The night of the 2nd was extremely windy, and by the time we got up the next morning, four large trees had come down across our driveway. It took us a couple of days to manage to get a tree surgeon out, and even then it took him two days just to cut us a route through the trees so that we could get the car out, and then he had to leave to get on with other jobs. The remains of the trees are still waiting for them to have time to return! By the time they were here for the second day, I was getting rather nervous, because we were due to be going to a show that weekend!
The first show of 2012, as usual, was the Asian Group Cat Society, which takes place alongside the Short Hair Cat Society show. This time, we took Annas for her 3rd Olympian, Dàrna for her 1st Imperial, Donny in the kitten classes, and Grace in her last show as a Pedigree Pet. Cats in the Household Pet section must be neutered once they are six months old, so we won’t be able to show her again until after she has had her litter and been spayed. On the way down to the show, we took Keela back to Anita’s, and also took a dropped off a girl who had been at stud with Elisabeth.
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All four of our cats did well, both Annas and Dàrna winning their certificates, and Grace winning her Ped Pet class and Best of Colour out of five. Anita and Robert were there with Cailin, who was looking beautiful, and won her kitten class, Best of Breed, and three 1sts in her side classes.
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Our star of the show was little Donny, who followed in his big sister Fi’s ‘paw-steps’, and went Best Kitten in the AGCS.
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We had arranged to collect our new stud boy, Kagura Apollo, from the show, and he only needed one more CC to make up to Champion. As it was, he won the CC in both the AGCS and SHCS parts of the show, giving him the title plus a spare. Elisabeth also had a good day in the SHCS part of the show, with Lucy winning her 2nd CC, and both her kittens winning their Open classes. To top off the day, Dukey (Dushenka Duke Ellington) went overall Best Foreign!
Best Neuter was Teignage Sir Pouncealot, but Best Adult and Overall Best in Show was the beautiful Kagura Galadriel, so that’s two years in a row that a Kagura adult has been Overall Best in Show, and a Cagaran Best Kitten.
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Not a bad day out, to take home between ourselves and Elisabeth, a Ped-Pet Best of Colour, two kitten Best of Breeds, a new Champion, another two CCs, an Imperial, an Olympian and two Best in Show awards!
Notts & Derbys Cat Club
Yesterday saw us heading down to the Notts & Derbys, which we didn’t get to last year, though Annas won one of her Imperials there back in 2010. I can hardly believe it’s two years since we were ‘chasing’ Imps with her, and now here we were back to try for an Oly!
We had entered Annas, Dàrna and Katie, and normally would have got our show stuff ready in the first half of last week. However, I had a new employee up for his first week’s training, and Richard also had a busy week due to the wind bringing lots of fences down, so we didn’t get around to it until Friday evening.
When we got Katie’s vaccination card out of the drawer, we discovered that it hadn’t been filled in for her last vaccination. I knew that she had been vaccinated with her 2011 (C-litter) kittens’ first vaccination, so we looked out the receipt, and sure enough, it shows a booster vaccination for ‘Katie’ and then the first vaccinations for her kittens. However, she is obviously entered in a show as Rushbrooke Airgead Cagaran, not as ‘Katie’, so the receipt wouldn’t prove that she was vaccinated. When we get the pink (registration) slips for our kittens, they come with a white copy for our records, so we photocopied the ones for the C-litter, to show that her kittens would have been the right age to be the ones whose vaccinations were recorded on the receipt. I was going to use all of that, and hope that the show manager would allow us to take her in. When we got up yesterday morning, however, she was pulling stupid faces and I decided that I couldn’t be bothered trying to argue her into the show hall, only to have her pull faces at the judge, so we left her at home with the Donny, Quinn and Gracie.
Annas looked fantastic, but the competition was very steep in all the Olympian classes, and she didn’t place this time. The certificate in her class went to the fabulous Mylward Sassafras, a Birman who is already a Bronze-level Olympian, meaning that this certificate counts towards her Silver Olympian title. The Reserve went to Perri Hutchison’s (Irrep Burmese) gorgeous 11-year-old, chocolate tortie Burmese, Hypnos Tigerlily of Irrep. I had the pleasure of handling her for the Breed class, and she was adorable!
In spite of not winning the Oly, Annas seems please with herself today, so she obviously feels that she did a good job. She did win the Best of Breed, and also had good results in her sides, winning a 1st, a 2nd and a 3rd, in each case beating quality cats. Dàrna also looked lovely, and won her second Imperial certificate, though the Best of Breed went to Diane Bunting’s (Xchardi Asians) beautiful own-bred girl, Xchardi Xsi Xsi, whom I loved as a kitten at the Humberside & Lincs show last summer. Like Annas, Dàrna also won a 1st, 2nd and 3rd in her side class, beating a couple of other cats each time.
As usual, Elisabeth travelled with us, and Lucy did well, winning her third and qualifying CC, making her up to Champion, as well as joining Annas and Dàrna’s 1-2-3 club and winning a 1st, 2nd and 3rd in her sides, again beating good cats each time. Karen Hettman was also there with Lucy’s Dad, Zach, who won another Imperial and a 1st and two 2nds in his sides, while her other boy, Stan, lost to Zach in the Imperial but won two 2nds in his sides.
New Stud Boy
Apollo is slowly settling in, though making sure that we are aware that he is no enamoured by the move! He spends a lot of his time sitting on one particular log in the run, keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings, and starts shouting to us as soon as we go through the gate. Whenever we leave the run, he immediately sniffs around the whole floor with a look of disgust, as if we’ve messed up his territory just by visiting. He is very sweet, and absolutely gorgeous. He looks very like Fiona, though his eye shape and muzzle are better than hers. Both are apricot silver, and his dam is Fi’s half-sister, so it isn’t that surprising that they look alike.
We will be starting to take him out for his Grands soon, so watch this space!
Decisions Made
Kia has been calling a lot recently, but won’t be ready to go to stud for several months yet. Since she was such a hopeless mother last time around, we have decided to have her spayed. A lovely couple from Glasgow have been waiting over a year for an Ocicat or Ocicat Classic from us, but we only had the Ocicat Variant litter last year, so there wasn’t anything for them. They had absolutely fallen in love with Kia when they visited us, and she seemed to like them, so having decided to spay her, I contacted them to ask if they would be interested in her instead of a kitten. Sheona and a friend came to visit last weekend, and loved her just as much as last time, so she will be going to live with Sheona and Bruce after the spay.
Since Kia is going in to be spayed, it seemed sensible to finally decide which of Dàrna’s last kittens we are going to keep, and have the other one neutered at the same time. Originally I said that we would make the decision after seeing what the judges thought of the two at the West of Scotland show back at the start of December. I’ve been putting it off ever since, because although Donny has the better overall type, and was the favourite with the judges, Quinn is probably my personal favourite – she’s just so cute! She’s the one who jumps up onto the bed in the morning, and tries to snuggle down for a cuddle. She also makes me laugh with her insistence when she thinks it’s time for her to be fed.
Over the past few days, however, I’ve looked at what matings we might like to do in the next couple of years, and Donny does fit better into those plans. He is still absolutely adorable, and is definitely Richard’s preference – he’s been trying to persuade me to re-home her since the middle of last month. Donny has also been Elisabeth’s favourite since they were teeny-tinies, so she’ll be delighted. Annas also adores Donny, and is regularly found cuddling-up with him, or playing hide-seek-and-chase games behind, on, off, over and under the bedroom furniture. I took the photo this morning (using my phone), and if it wasn’t so rubbish, you’d be able to see a little patch of tousled fur next to Annas’ paw, where she had obviously been licking Donny’s back before I came into the room. It’s therefore only me who hates the idea of re-homing Quinn – I’m dreading having to see her going off with someone else!
She’ll make someone an adorable pet, or if we’re lucky, a lovely show neuter, because then I’d still get to see her occasionally. Her coat has improved dramatically, and although still a little long, it now has a lovely silky texture. Her tortie markings also mean that she’ll get away with murder with the judges! Her smoking is undoubtedly better than her brother’s, because you can’t see it at all until you part her coat, and then you can see the silvering underneath.
I’m not going to start advertising her for sale until after she’s been spayed. I think once that’s done I might find it a bit easier because I know she can’t be part of our breeding plans. That may well be total wishful-thinking, but I can hope!
I hadn't noticed the little pink bit on her nose until we took this photo!
Thinking Ahead for 2012
Fi is still up with Shogun, and still refusing to co-operate with his attempts to mate her. She has, however, been sick a few times in the past week, which although unpleasant, might actually be a good sign: she’s out of Dàrna, who suffers from morning sickness! All we can do is cross our fingers and keep checking her for signs of pinking-up.
I haven’t quite decide exactly what we’re doing with the other girls this year, and to some extent it depends how Donny develops. If he looks like being an early starter, I would hold Katie back to mate to him at the back end of the summer, in which case Dàrna would be going to Apollo. If Donny looks like he won’t be ready to work until the end of the year, I’ll put Katie to Apollo. Dàrna could then go down to Annas’ brother, Charlie, who is the only link I can find to Annas’ Dam’s line (Annas and Katie have the same sire so we already have that line), and I am therefore keen to keep a kitten from him. I’m also hoping to bring in a Tiffanie girl from a different line this year, to give us more flexibility in choosing who to mate to Donny (at present we only have Katie, plus his sister and his Dam).
Aside from the Asians, we will be completing our Ocicat outcross by taking Grace to an Ocicat stud. Rosemary Caunter (Thickthorn Ocicats) has suggested her cinnamon boy, Curry, who has a lovely strong head and would therefore be a good mate for her. We also have the option to use Anita’s (Anizz Ocicats and Tiffanies) young chocolate silver boy, Chippie, but we will need to see how he develops before we know if he would be a good mate. Both boys are Ocicats carrying classic, so either mating could give us a mixed litter of ticked (Variant), spotted (Ocicat) and classic (Ocicat Classic) kittens!
Of course sod’s law probably means we’ll have to change all of our plans due to something unforeseen at the moment, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…