Endangered Scottish Wildcats

Having finished my show reports (48 cats to write up, how do you describe a Burmese 48 different ways???) I was catching up with reading today and was very concerned to read in the FAB Journal (Cat Care) that there are only around 400 Scottish Wildcats left and that they could be extinct in 10 years' time. I had no idea the situation was so dire and I'll certainly be joining the Scottish Wildcat Association when they open for membership next year (they're still very new so still getting charitable status sorted out etc)

Anyway I spent this afternoon on the SWA website and will be buying the DVD in January when it goes on release. More people need to know about this - the Wildcat can be saved, but it needs action - and money.

I hate Christmas

It took me several attempts to spell the stupid word!

It always seems to creep up too quickly. Today I finally made the effort to order various items that have been requested, with the predictable result that amazon.co.uk was out of stock. I know I've left it far later than this in previous years, just goes to show that 99% of the British public order Christmas online nowadays. With a bit of searching I did manage to find alternative sources and desired items (with one exception) have been ordered. I really don't see the point, it's all such a vast waste of money.

We went to the Lincoln Christmas Market last Sunday. It is supposedly the largest in Europe, had never been before (despite it being the 14th year). It was freezing cold (hovering around zero C) and the stalls were mainly selling tat - not nearly enough quality stuff. Far too many stalls spread over too wide an area, all around the cathedral and in the castle courtyard. Also far too many people, making it virtually impossible to look at anything properly. The best bit was the orange sunset, making the cathedral glow beautifully, and the moon in a perfectly clear blue sky. IF we go again it will be after 4pm on the Sunday, when there are less visitors and of course everything looks better after dark with the street decorations etc.

On Saturday it was the BCS Show, where I was gobsmacked to have 8 Brown and 6 Lilac kittens to judge, plus a fair few adults and neuters. Can't remember seeing 8 Brown kittens at a show for years! Lilacs I'd expect, but never Browns. I have no idea if I got it right, it was virtually impossible to choose between most of the kittens. Went to see some of Theo's kittens after the show - very nice indeed. Also heard of a possible litter which might produce a potential stud - watch this space!

Anyway, I must get on with writing the critiques - have only done one kitten so far, need to do 8 or so cats per day to get it finished by this time next week!

Mewsings

Glitter Graphics

Asian & Ocicat Kittens

I took some photos of the kittens at the weekend. They are all together now, it seemed by far the easiest option and fortunately Rio & Evie get on well, although Rio is leaving most of the work to Evie now! Rio can't bear to miss out on what might be happening upstairs......... (not a lot, apart from piles of sleeping cats on my bed)

Well I was right about the All Blacks - but that referee!! He is ALWAYS biased against England, it's blatantly obvious. What can you expect from an Irishman with a French name?? Wales had a great game against Australia, there were even a few tries!

I am back - finally

aargh! I must keep this up to date more often.

Anyway, as you'll have seen from my website, I have now joined the ranks of successful Burmese breeders - it only took 18 years! Still, I think that having bred through 8 straight generations before achieving something on the scale of BOV Burmese kitten at the Supreme Show, is far more satisfying than simply buying 2 highly inbred kittens, putting them together and creating an instant Grand Champion. At least I can hold my head up and say my lines are reasonably outcrossed - and that I never breed a litter without serious consideration of the parents' pedigrees and degree of relatedness.

After the success of Saturday, I had a disappointment on Monday when I heard that the potential Burmese stud I was hoping to import had been identified by his vet as having a very small hernia - no-one else had noticed it even by the age of 12 weeks! So of course he is not suitable for breeding and I have to go back to the drawing board re. finding a suitable boy with a decent pedigree. I will get there in the end - the breed desperately needs new lines in the UK and no-one else seems even slightly concerned :((

Saturday's excitement made up in a small way for the sadness of the previosu weekend - we had to say goodbye on Sunday November 16th to Rosa (Vervain Coraldawn), 14 year old red Burmese girl and the 3rd generation of my line. She had a suspected intestinal tumour and despite a bit of a rally after antibiotics and steroids, went downhill and developed renal failure. She went to sleep very peacefully at the vet's and I'll be collecting her ashes later this week - another casket to add to the 4 already on the top of the kitchen cupboards. Cherry is Rosa's great-great-great granddaughter.

This coming weekend I don't have to go anywhere! Yippeee - can stay in bed till after 8am both days, and watch England being crushed by the All Blacks (well, only the highlights as the live stuff is only on Sky - ridiculous!!) It hardly seems a year since they achieved the impossible, they've already lost to Australia and South Africa on the last 2 weekends........

More very soon - that's a promise!

Back at last!

Not quite sure why I haven't been here for so long - Lincoln show tasks have taken over for the last couple of weeks, and there've been various other complications such as judging, poorly kittens and kids, not to mention the arrival of a new litter of Asian kittens on June 9th, rapidly followed by Evie's premature delivery of one (dead) kitten 10 days early :(

I took 2 of Nina's kittens to the Burmese Cat Club show last Saturday, and both did very well - 2nd in their Opens, and placed in all misc. classes. Cherryplum (lilac) was 1st in the breeders class - she will now be staying here. Her half sister Tehya was BOB lilac kitten and runner-up to the overall BIS kitten!

Wimbledon is on and I've managed to watch a few matches - Andy Murray's win over Gasquet on Monday was incredible, pity he couldn't repeat it against Nadal tonight! The final looks predictable yet again.......

HACKED!!

I WAS HACKED!! Have been online since 1995 so I suppose it had to happen sooner or later......... at about 1.30pm today I received loads of "undeliverable mail" messages, and it seems that someone had hijacked my email address to send out a spam mail about some Chinese electronics supplier! This went to everyone in my contacts list, which is a LOT of people. So apologies if you were one of the unlucky ones.............
I checked for viruses and spyware - nothing at all, which at least reassures me that Zone Alarm is doing a good job. Problem is that my mail account is now locked and I cannot send anything. According to the help files it should only last 24 hours or so - I do hope that's the case.

Kittens are doing well and 2 are now over 1kg. (they were 10 weeks old yesterday). First vaccinations last Thursday and no apparent problems thank goodness. It is now extremely difficult to get good photos as they just will not stay still long enough - they have the run of the house during the day now, and have found several cosy places to sleep (when they do sleep!)

I'm hoping to get some help tomorrow so I can get some decent pics to post on here, so watch this space!

I really should update this more often! We've had amazing weather here for the last week or so - temperatures of 22C or thereabouts, and no rain. It can't possibly last, seeing as Thursday is my birthday that'll probably be when we get a thunderstorm.........

Nina's kittens are 8 weeks old this Friday and it seems that they have all found new homes. I'm debating whether to enter a couple of them in the Burmese Cat Club show on June 28th, but they'll only be 14 weeks and 1 day, so not sure if I should. I have another 10 days or so to decide, before the closing date. I am still finding it difficult to decide which of the girls to keep myself. The 3 blues are all incredibly similar and I still need collars on them to tell them apart.

I've added a few more photos to the web album

Now I need to think of names - I've got several sorted out but can't decide whether to give my girl a Tolkien name (Luthien??) or a spring-themed name (they were born March 21st).



We have no hot water at present - the heating pump finally packed up last Wednesday, a plumber came Friday evening, said it was the pump, gave it a thump and it started working - only to stop about a minute after he left! Repeated thumpings have failed miserably :((
Plumber is coming back to fit new pump tomorrow evening! It will be nice to be able to have a shower and wash up cat bowls without boiling a kettle......

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!

Latest kitten photo

Here they all are - photo taken this afternoon. I tried to get individual shots of each kitten but that wasn't too successful. As you can see, they're looking quite fat. Only 2 have even got one eye open yet, lazy things! All are around 170-180g now.

Kitten progress

Nina's 6 Burmese kittens are starting to open their eyes - I will take more pics tomorrow. One of these days I will get adventurous and shoot a video - not sure my camera is quite up to it, probably time I got a new one! That's Nina on the left BTW, last November.

Updating

OK, now I've got this sussed, I'll continue to post here rather than on livejournal. For anyone wanting to read past entries, the link to my LJ blog is http://kozykatz.livejournal.com/

My last entry on LJ was just before the February Council meeting - well that was a bundle of fun (not). But at least the Ocicat registration policy was restored to its former glory, and therefore Teemu is now eligible for the Supplementary Register, as are his kittens. I wrote to the GCCF office the day after the meeting, requesting that he be transferred - I have yet to receive a reply, so no change there then!

One of those busy weekends coming up - judging at Stevenage on Saturday, staying overnight then on to Slough for an Asian BAC meeting on Sunday. Hope I survive!

Burmese kittens

It seems to work! So here is a picture of my current Burmese kittens, taken at 2 days of age. 3 blue girls, a lilac girl, a lilac boy and a cream boy. Doing well so far :))

trying a new system...

After a long absence, I'm trying a new method which in theory at least, will integrate the blog into my website. This is like venturing into the unknown so if it works I will be amazed!