Another year comes to an end......

Here we are nearly at the end of 2011 -  yet another year I'd rather not have experienced......

Still, one good thing has been achieved with the setting up of my new business - now I need to get it fully established and earn some money!

I would like to share a few photos of my current kittens -  5 chocolate Burmese,  and 5 Ocicats (4 blue; 2 classic & 2 spotted - and a tawny spotted)

They are now old enough to receive visitors,  so please feel free to contact me if you're considering adding to your family!

The Big Day!

So the Royal Wedding has come and gone - what a marvellous spectacle it was. Britain at its best!  

It's time for a kitten update.  Sadly, things did not quite go according to plan and only 2 kittens survived of the 5 born.  These are a boy (chocolate) and a girl (brown).  I'm still not 100% sure of the patterns but I think the boy will be ticked and the girl silver shaded.   They are very pretty :)

Here are some recent photos.

Brown silver girl with mum Sophie

Chocolate boy

There's some news of an anticipated Burmese litter too -  Cherry (lilac) and Errol (chocolate) are expecting babies around June 14th (chocolate or lilac are the possible colours).  Errol is the boy I imported from France last year and this will be his first UK litter.  He is only very distantly related to Cherry,  so this is a very nice outcross.  I'll post further updates soon. The 2 Asian kittens will be available to new homes in June -  I've decided to stop breeding Asians for a while until I can bring in some "new blood" -   for the last few years I've wanted to breed Burmillas specifically, but my current cats don't seem to want to co-operate!

New Asian Litter

We have a new Asian litter at Vervain -  it's been a very long time since the last Asian kittens, because I've been determined  to breed purely with the aim of producing full expression silver and smoke.   Therefore,  Dexter (Vervain Eldarion, black smoke) was mated to Sophie (Vervain Sophie-Elisabeth, brown silver ticked tabby) and the result was 4 kittens born in the early hours of March 17th.
Sadly I missed the births-  I checked Sophie at just after midnight when she was showing no apparent sign of labour -  then woke up at 3.30 am to find all kittens clean and tidy!
Even more sadly,  one of the kittens has since died for no apparent reason although Sophie and her friends took to moving them several times on the 18th and I suspect some damage may have been done.  Thankfully the 3 remaining kittens are now settled and putting on weight well.
I think we have a black silver (girl),  brown silver (girl) and bumese colour restriction chocolate silver (boy).  The boy who died was a chocolate self.
Here is a picture of Sophie with the 4 kittens taken on the 17th.

Snow!!

This week has seen the heaviest snowfall I can remember -  I was 8 years old in 1963 so in theory should be able to remember it but certainly don't have any memory of snow higher than my boots, as it is here at present!

It started last Friday night -  by Saturday morning there was 2-3 inches,  and I was due to do a stall at the Methodist Church in Retford; luckily I did get there and back safely,  also to Friesthorpe for another event on Sunday.  Then all through Monday & Tuesday we had another 10 inches at least - Tuesday morning was unbelievable as far as getting out to the cattery was concerned.  The stud boys are thankfully very snug and warm,  in fact they're better off than we are!  There hasn't been another heavy fall since Tuesday but a few showers,  and of course the temperature has not gone above freezing so nothing has thawed at all.

I was intending to go to the Burmese Cat Society Show tomorrow but travelling would be far too risky and the roads are predicted to be very treacherous.  Other shows had been cancelled earlier in the week.  Thank goodness our trip to London was last week!  

We've had no mail or other deliveries since Monday - I'm waiting on a delivery of raw meat for the cats,  and various other bits and bobs,  goodness knows when anything will get through.  Luckily we do have enough food to last a while!

One Kitten still to find a home!

I never expected to be posting again about available Ocicat kittens -  yes,  I still have 3 of them at almost 6 months of age.  Reluctantly I've decided to keep two -  Zelda (Sielun Veljet) the tawny classic girl,  and Teazle (Shamrain) the chocolate spotted boy who was very ill at 14 weeks but amazingly made a complete recovery with no clue as to the cause of his illness.  Thunderstone,  the black silver classic boy who really should be THE example of correct classic pattern,  is still here too and despite several enquiries, no-one seems to appreciate his stunning looks!

 I hope to show Teazle and Zelda in the New Year,  it is now over a year since I last showed a cat and I'm not even sure I'm confident enough to try it again........

Other news is that I was approved for promotion to Full Judge by the Ocicat BAC,  but for some strange reason this did not get onto the Council Agenda,  so I have to wait until February 2011.  I was also recently approved by the Russian BAC as a PJ and again that will hopefully be actioned in February.

And the very exciting news - apart from it being the Supreme Show tomorrow, which isn't all that exciting as I have nothing entered yet again -   is that Ross and I are going to the ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 next Tuesday - if my intuition is right,  we'll be seeing Federer v Murray :))     Will report further next week!