Photos uploaded

I updated my album of Nina & Theo's kittens with a few photos taken last Sunday when they were just over 5 weeks:

Nina and Theo's kittens


And, as promised, I now have some photos from my weekend in Scotland - I've posted them to my picasa web album here:
Scotland April 2008

enjoy!!

AND......... I heard the other day that Teemu is now going to have his registration amended - finally justice (not to mention common sense) has prevailed!!

Back from Scotland!

Back home after my long weekend in Scotland and just taking a break from writing up my reports from the Shorthair Cat Club show.  I had a wonderful time staying with Valerie, Cameron & their gorgeous daughter Tegan, in Birnam - we visited Scone Palace on the Friday,  then drove up to Culloden on Sunday.  They have a new visitor centre at Culloden (new since I was last there in August 2006) and it really is impressive.  This time we had a guided tour of the battlefield with details of the battle positions and tactics -  fascinating stuff but depressing when you realise what a huge disaster it was for the Highlanders.  Then we visited the Clava Cairns,  ancient standing stones about 8 miles from Culloden and the setting for an important part of Diana Gabaldon's stories.   Hopefully I'll have a few photos to post later.

Nina's kittens are doing well after a bit of a setback last week - Nina developed mastitis just before I was due to leave,  which was rather scary as I thought I wouldn't be able to go.  She refused to let the kittens suckle for 2 days, as it was painful for her, hence became totally engorged with milk, and one nipple looked quite badly damaged - I was worried she'd end up with a huge hole like I've heard has happened to other queens.  I started her on Noroclav and luckily the kittens were just starting to get interested in solids - at 7am on Thursday morning I persuaded them all to eat some pilchard,  but had to leave things to Graham, who normally takes little interest in the cats!  He did very well though and managed to keep them going by syringing Liquivite into them several times on Thursday and Friday (they were drinking water by themselves anyway) and by Saturday Nina was recovering and letting them suckle again.  By the time I got back Monday evening she was almost back to normal and the kits had started putting on weight again (they had lost 20-30g each).  Now they are all eating solids really well and have put back all the lost weight and more.  Fingers crossed there will be no more setbacks!

Again, more photos of the kits to follow soon, once I get organised!

Catching up again

Doesn't time fly?!  Nina's kittens are 3 weeks old tomorrow and they are doing very well.  They're all well over 300g now and some of them look really beautiful - I don't know how I shall decide which one to keep.  I'm very pleased with them -  I think they're probably the typiest Burmese kittens I've bred so far.

You can find all the photos I've taken so far on my picasa web album

I went to the GCCF Council meeting yesterday - the fate of the Official Journal has finally been decided,  and by a very large majority we voted to continue with Our Cats.  We learned that the title is being sold in August to Axis Cook Management Ltd. so that will hopefully remove the doubts that existed regarding the financial status of Our Cats.  Let's hope we never have a repeat performance of the last 9 months which really showed GCCF in a bad light.

I do have one more moan about GCCF though - I had a letter last week to say that Teemu could not be transferred to the Supplementary Register because he was registered before the Ocicat registration policy was amended!!  Talk about bureaucracy gone mad - it was ME who discovered the error in the policy in the first place,  and brought it to the attention of the BAC - there is NO WAY I am going to be penalised for this.  The BAC Secretary will be writing to Executive Committee to sort it out.  Even though I don't want to show Teemu,  it is the principle of the thing that's important here.    

That's it for today!