Day 20 - September 14, 2007

We'd like to start off today's kitten diaries by congratulating Julie of Lorimnailie Siamese & Orientals on the birth of her new kittens, sired by our own Ashanti.

There really are no entries today as my day has not gone according to plan at all. In fact, I've ended up being very behind with absolutely everything and had no hope at all in doing kitten diaries.

Day 19 - September 13, 2007

Yet more exciting news regarding the Ray J's. Between colours, patterns, and sexes, this litter is turning into quite a drama to say the least. I have now discovered, upon close examination both last night, and today, that Barry, our Chocolate Oriental Tabby, is in fact a girl :) For me, this is wonderful news, for The Man In The White Coat and The Rosette Queen, this is not such great news. But, you can't win 'em all I guess. I am almost positive as well that Ray is also female so it is all very interesting at the moment. Most of you are aware that we are looking for an Oriental Tabby girl to add to our own cat family and breeding program so now it's a case of waiting to see whether or not Jamie, in our Chef's litter, ends up male or female. I have put our babies' current weights below to give you an idea of just how they are progressing at the moment.

Baby	Colour	Sex	Week 1 Gain	Week 2 Gain	Current Weight
Ray	Brown Oriental Tabby	F	65g	87g	278g
Jonesy	Chocolate Oriental Tabby	M	91g	81g	325g
Barry	Chocolate Oriental Tabby	F	62g	87g	303g

I can confirm though that I will not be changing our Ray J's names and if this means the girls grow up with a complex there is just nothing I can do about it :)

Day 18 - September 12, 2007

Now the below information may be useful to any other novice breeders like myself who are trying to determine colours. A lovely breeder and friend, named Jill, from Beaububbly Siamese & Orientals, has very kindly taken an interest in the babies. Jill is a Cinnamon breeder and has a keen interest in the lines behind Cinnamon cats. I received an email from Jill yesterday regarding the "Silver" issue and I have been totally wrong. Ray can not be a Black Silver because Silver is what is known as an "inhibitor" gene. In layman's terms, this basically means that Silver can not be carried like other colours are carried. For a baby to be a Silver, one of the parents must be silver themselves which obviously is not the case with this litter. So this now means that Ray has got to be a Brown (Black) Tabby, and now we play the waiting game to see how his pattern develops and just what he grows up to be :) I have to say that it is litters like this one that makes me realise just how incredibly difficult it is to breed the Oriental Tabbies and I still have such an awful lot to learn but I can truly say that it is so exciting waiting to see how the patterns develop and what we end up with.

This morning I managed to take individual photos of our 3 Ray J's, amidst many protests as our butterballs did not want to be photographed, they wanted to be in the box. During the photo session though, I had made the mistake of leaving the ramp on the posh box down so while I have one baby on top of the posh box to take photos, the other 2 Ray J's are trying to climb down the ramp, much to the horror of Amaretto and Sambuca. As you can imagine, the photo session was fun and games all round.

Day 17 - September 11, 2007

We have rather interesting news to share with you all about our Ray J's, or more importantly, about Ray himself. I will need to go back to when he was born though to explain.................when I first saw him, it was assumed he would be a Brown (Black) Tabby, but something just was not right about that colouring. His father is a Brown Classic Tabby and Ray's own colouring is totally different to that of her fathers. At the time, I mentioned to Teen that if I didn't know better I'd say he was a Black Silver. To explain a little bit here, in order to have a silver, both parents must have silver in the pedigree. I already knew that Ashanti had silver in his pedigree, but up until this point, automatically assumed Amretto didn't. I gave it no more thought after that because I had far more things to concentrate on, however as time passed, I would keep looking at him, and knew I was not looking at a Brown Tabby. I happened to be speaking with Teen about this yesterday because Teen has showed photos of him to a couple of people, both of whom said exactly the same thing I had been saying from the start. That he was a Black Silver. While we spoke on the phone, I looked up my pedigree database on the computer, and went way, way back in Amaretto's pedigree and sure enough, there IS silver in there. This means that of course this mating has the capacity to produce silver babies. We would dearly love for Ray to become female because if he did, then he would not be going anywhere. We thought, when the Ray J's were born, that we were incredibly lucky because Ashanti was then a proven Chocolate carrier. You can imagine our delight now to have discovered that our boy not only carries Chocolate, but he also carries dilute (meaning he can produce blue, lilac and fawn), and Cinnamon, and Silver :) This litter has been a litter of "firsts" for us as we have now produced our first Chocolate Tabby, our first Cinnamon Tabby, and our first Black Silver so I think that makes the Ray J's a very special litter indeed.

Day 16 - September 10, 2007

Amaretto, bless her, is such a very patient soul. Let me tell you why................................she was lying down, feeding her 3 beautiful Ray J's, perfectly content with her little world and her children, when "plop", something landed on her head. It was a baby! Sambuca decided the time had come to share a box and to share the babies so she picked up Antony, carried him straight into Retto's box and dropped him straight on Retto's head. What did Retto do? Well she look up, she sighed, and then moved over a little to give Antony some room. It will come as no surprise to any of you that 10 minutes late, Amaretto suddenly found herself lumbered with 6 more children and Sambuca, all in the one box. Of course the Ray J's are absolute delighted because they are only just now learning to play and this morning I spent a good 15 minutes peering into the box watching Jonesy and Barry sitting up and trying to box each other. The only problem they had was that co-ordination is not particularly great at this age so there was an awful lot of falling over and surprised looks on their faces. All 3 Ray J's took a great deal of interest in their new room mates and have been sniffing them and climbing all over them.

Day 15 - September 9, 2007

There are no photos in today's kitten diaries as it's been a "relaxing day" as we had our very good friends, Caryll, Ray, Jim, Jacqui and Marcelle visit us (and their respective babies) so we have had a lovely relaxing afternoon and quite a few laughs.

Jonesy and Barry had a visit today from their new family. The reason I say Barry and Jonesy is because we don't know which baby the Man in the White Coat will choose, and as of yet, Ray and Barry's sexes are a tad confusing. Time will tell though. The Rosette Queen appeared to fall in love with both babies, whereas the Man in the White Coat was casting very experienced eyes over both babies, perhaps determining which baby will have the most potential of the two because after all, their baby will be sharing his home with Ch Schimmel Sunchaser and Gr Pr Schimmel Chilli Tequila so we can't be sending anything less than a stunner home with the Man in the White Coat. In actual fact, there is no way on earth I would choose which baby had the most potential for the Man in the White Coat, because I am too scared of him and might choose the wrong baby <eek>. He did at least have the good grace not to mention to me exactly what faults he happened to see on either baby :) Of course, he could perhaps have been trying to determine just which baby will be the least naughty of the two. But whichever baby is chosen, we know that there is no better home in all the world for one of our fur children. The fun part will be choosing a very special "registered" name for their baby ;)

Day 14 - September 8, 2007

Prior to typing today's kitten diaries, we would like to congratulate Linz and Martin on Tifa's fantastic show results and we would like to congratulate Julie and Andy on Mimi's fantastic show results today. Please Click Here to view the girls' results.

At 2 weeks of age I am concerned that if our Ray J's continue to looks as chubby as they do, then they will end up looking like BSH as opposed to Orientals :) They really are the fattest little babies we have had in a while. I'm now dreading the 4 week stage where I start to wean the babies because can you imagine how much food they will be eating? I would like to say that they are such happy little babies but to be honest, at the moment, Jonesy continues to be a "Whingy Bum". He feels there is absolutely no need to at all to be weighed at all. I'm going to finish this entry right here as it is now 1700, the adult cats are all starting to create WW3 because they know it is dinner time and I'm not in the kitchen preparing their chicken etc. It's at the stage now where I can't stand to listen to them moan at me any longer so I really must dash.