Schimmel Siamese & Oriental Cats are Oriental cat breeders based in Oxford, UK. We sometimes have Oriental and Siamese kittens for sale. We also have 2 Oriental Stud Cats and online kitten diaries.

Kitten Diaries

Amaretto

January 2005

Birth

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Week 11

Week 12

Week 13

Amaretto's 2nd Kitten Diary - January 2005 to may 2005

Day 6 - January 23, 2005

It's hard to believe that after 9pm tonight my little Herbs will be a week old! I do not know where this first week has gone but I'm so happy that all 6 little ones are doing so very well. There is actually very little to say for today's entry as the babies are at that stage of life where all they do is sleep, eat and wriggle around a little bit. Thyme is the only baby whose cord still hasn't fallen off and I've definitely not had one before where the cord is still there at Day 6. None of the babies eyes are open yet either so we will be monitoring that however I'm not anticipating any problems at all as their eyes are not swollen underneath and everything appears perfectly normal. I changed the bedding in the birthing box today so chances are Amaretto will not be particularly happy with me but she didn't appear to mind at the time. She still looks incredibly thin so last night I gave her some Nutri Drops and I think I will continue to do this on a daily basis for a while to see if that helps with her weight gain.

Day 5 - January 22, 2005

Finally.........sleep at long last. I slept well last night and even slept in this morning and Thyme weighs 120 grams this morning. You'll all be happy to know that Graham and I sexed the babies last night, well I should say we have sexed them to the best of our ability. As it stands at the moment we believe that we have the following:

Name	breed	sex
Sage	Oriental Blue	Female
Parsley	Siamese	Female
Rosemary	Siamese	Female
Tarragon	Siamese	Male
Thyme	Oriental Black	Male
Chives	Oriental Black	Male

As we all know though, when they get a bit older, it's very possible we may have made a mistake however we are hoping not, particularly with Sage. Naturally we are delighted with their sexes because this means that Sage will be staying permanently with us which we're really looking forward to, particularly Graham because he now has his blue girl. The babies are all doing very well however Amaretto is looking incredibly thin (she was like this with her first litter too) so we are constantly feeding her but at the moment it's not making a great deal of difference unfortunately.

Day 4 - January 21, 2005

Wonderful, wonderful news! Yesterday afternoon, Thyme started making fabulous weight gains and then last night made even more progress. He/she currently weighs 105 grams!!! I've been continuing with the 2 hourly feeds, although last night, I made the last feed at 12:40 and then didn't feed Thyme again until I woke up this morning. But the most astonishing thing was that after his dinner feed last night, when I put him back in the box, he went straight over to Amaretto, pushed another baby out of the way, found a nipple and latched on as if he'd been doing it all his life. Up until this point, Thyme could not get the hang of latching on and because he was so tiny, he was always being pushed aside, yet he could drink from the syringe with no problems at all. Watching him latch on, all on his own, brought tears to my eyes. I am positive that we have now turned the corner and it's the most amazing feeling, probably only understood truly by other breeders. After I fed him first thing this morning, he again went straight back to Amaretto, latched on and had a lovely meal. Today I will continue with the hand feeding (I probably will until Sunday just to be on the safe side) but at least now, I can get some proper sleep at night. Now that I know Thyme is feeding from Amaretto I can cut out the early morning feeds which will be nice. All of the other Herbs are doing incredibly well and are growing at a rapid rate with Sage being our largest baby weighing in at 145 grams last night. I really must thank a few people for their encouragement and support with Thyme, firstly my husband and daughter who have been absolutely tremendous with their support and understanding, secondly, the following breeders who have been fantastic and they are: Kim, Donna, and Sue. Lastly, many thanks to God for listening to and answering all my prayers to help Thyme get through this.

Day 3 - January 20, 2005

Well I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that our babies now have pet names, remembering of course that these are just the names that we refer to them by and their new kitten families will obviously change their names when the babies leave us. So our babies names are:

Sage - Oriental Blue

Parsley - Siamese

Rosemary - Siamese

Tarragon - Siamese

Thyme - Oriental Black (my tiny baby)

Chives - Oriental Black

Our little ones will be collective known as "The Herbs"

I'm now at the point I think where I feel that every day Thyme is with me, it's a blessing. Thyme had no weight gains at all during the night and I'm hoping that will change by this evening. Obviously the 2 hourly feeding is continuing. To give you an indication of how small he/she is, Thyme's weight at the moment is 80 grams, the other Herbs all weigh over 100 grams so there is quite a difference. I'm very proud of Thyme though as he/she is a real fighter and like me, is refusing to give up. The rest of our Herbs are doing very well though, with Sage making the biggest weight gains and quite frankly, is a little butterball! Not a particularly good sign in the respect that I would be inclined to wonder if because he/she is the biggest then Sage may be a boy in which case, there goes our hopes of a new Blue girl to add to our own family. I will however, remain optimistic that Sage is a girl :) A couple of the Siamese now have some very dark edging around their ears which would make me think that perhaps they are Seal Points which will be nice. Cords have started dropping off the babies now (rather gross) and I found one in the box last night. A rather long one I might add!

Sage

Parsley

Rosemary

Tarragon

Thyme

Chives

The New "House"

The Herbs

Day 2 - January 19, 2005

I'm extremely tired as I write this entry, having spent a lot of the night feeding the Black every 2 hours so goodness knows how much sense this entry will make! I made (I think) a little progress with him as he made some gains yesterday/last night so I'm hoping that's a good sign and we are winning our battle. To give you an indication of his weight situation, when he was first born he weighed 85 grams, 24 hours later, he weighed 73 grams, the following morning he had lost even more and weighed 70 grams, another 24 hours later he weighed 72 grams, and at the moment he currently weighs 76 grams. When I weighed the litter last night (this is done at approximately 9pm), I was pleased to see that everyone had made gains and there were no losses. Some gains were still quite small but any gain is a good thing. Today shall be spent continuing with the 2 hour feeds and in between that, I will be preparing the Kitten Room to move Amaretto and the babies in later this afternoon. So apart from that, the babies are really doing okay, as is Amaretto. Graham has chosen some names for this litter (remembering that we choose a particular theme with each litter we have) however, I'm not fully comfortable naming them just yet until I have made more progress with the Black. Maybe tomorrow I can let you know what their names are. As for their sexes..........don't even go down that road! I reckon that by the time they are ready to be registered, I'll have some idea of who are our boys and who are our girls!

Day 1 - January 18, 2005

Well I can now confirm that our Orientals colours are: 2 Oriental Blacks and 1 Oriental Blue. We'll now have to just keep praying that the Oriental Blue is a girl and not a boy!!! (for those who don't know, we wanted to keep an Oriental Blue girl ourselves from this litter). I had to laugh at Amaretto last night because I had covered the top of the box to make sure it stayed relatively dark in there, and Amaretto must have been confused by this because next thing you know, she jumped off our bed, straight onto the towel covering the box and naturally fell into the box, but fortunately, didn't actually squash any of the babies. I have a concern with 2 of the babies at the moment, one of the Blacks and one of the Siamese are quite small so last night we spent time topping them up and latching them on. The Siamese then gained weight, however, our little Black didn't. I will be hand feeding him every 2 hours today and on the first hand feed this morning, he took 2 mils so I am really pleased with that and will be aiming for a minimum of 2 mils every 2 hours. He is quite lively though in the respect that he squeaks as well as the others, he tries to fight for nipples, he just doesn't seem to be very successful. Some of the babies had lost weight by the 24 hour period, whereas others had gained a little so it is all rather normal. On the whole though, the majority of the babies are doing quite well with no real problems so far, they squeak when they are hungry, they beat each other up if someone tries to steal "their" nipple, and they sleep an awful lot. Amaretto nearly gave me a heart attack this morning though at about 8:30am. I went upstairs to feed her and to prepare a mixture for the Black and had a look in the box while Amaretto was having breakfast and there was a baby missing! A Black!. I truly feared the worst. Mainly because if a baby suddenly passes away, or if a baby is very ill, the "mum" will often take that baby out of the bed and put it somewhere on his/her own. So anyway, I opened the bedroom door and called out for Graham to come up and we both started searching, took all the bedding out of the box, moved the box and still no baby! Then I heard a little squeak from the corner and sure enough, one of the Blacks was in my clothes shelf!!! (the bottom shelf fortunately). Amaretto had obviously decided to move the babies but it would have been helpful if she had told me first! I put the Black back in the box and then proceeded to put kitten bedding on my bottom shelf to make it safe in case she decides to move the whole litter. I will add here that the Black that she had moved, was not the underweight one, it was the largest one. Amaretto is now eating a bit more thank goodness. Wouldn't you know it though, she wouldn't touch the Hills AD, nor would she touch the Iams pate, but instead, she wanted Whiskers tinned food, and I'm not a big fan of Whiskers cat food but so long as she's eating something, then it's a bonus. She also ate some of her dried food last night as well and used the litter tray so everything is getting back to normal with her. She's being such an excellent mum and she's more than happy for us to handle her babies, or to feed them which is really great.

Birth - January 16-17, 2005

Certainly not the easiest of births for our darling Amaretto and we are so very proud of her because she coped incredibly well and it wasn't easy at all. She went into labour at around 8pm and the whole process took 4 hours. She had 4 breech births in total, she found each one difficult and we had to assist with the 3rd and 4th breech birth as she was running out of energy to push them out and their heads were still inside. After the first baby was born, Amaretto couldn't make up her mind where she wanted to have the babies, so next thing you know, she walks over to the litter tray and starts giving birth in there! So naturally we had a mad scramble to take the hood off the tray, take the towels over to the tray, but fortunately, during the middle of this delivery, she was more than happy for me to move her back onto the bed. She had no interest in the first 2 babies and as usual, cutting cords and breaking sacs was left up to me. Rather than put the babies back in the box with her (which was obviously a mess), we did what we normally do and the babies were put on the heated pad on our bed, wrapped up, where we could watch them. After the 5th baby was born, I didn't actually think there were any more, Graham on the other hand was convinced there was one more. I had taken the bedding out of the box, put in the clean bedding and heated pad and sure enough, a little while after that, the 6th baby started to appear. Fortunately, that was the last one. So again, everyone was taken out of the box, the bedding was changed, and then they all went back in. The babies are absolutely so very, very precious and each time, I am always amazed at how small they are. The only thing that I was concerned about throughout the birth was that Amaretto wouldn't eat or drink anything, it didn't matter what we tried to give her, she just didn't want to know. As she'd had such a hard time of it, she really need to eat to keep her strength up. By 3am, some of the little ones were trying to latch on, while others were sound asleep, as was our beautiful Amaretto. Obviously, it is still very early days and our main concern now will be monitoring the little ones and getting them through the first few days.

Baby	Birth Time	Weight	Sex
Oriental (Breech birth)	9:23pm	85g	?
Siamese (Breech birth)	10:03pm	90g	?
Oriental	10:13pm	100g	?
Siamese (Breech birth)	10:50pm	81g
Siamese (Breech birth)	11:20pm	80g
Oriental	11:52pm	85g

Birth Photos