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

Sambuca

February 2008

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

Sambuca's 5th Kitten Diary - February 2008 to May 2008

Litter out of Schimmel Forever Charmed X Schimmel Sakuya

We are 1 week old today!

Day 6 - February 10, 2008

There were no kitten diaries yesterday and today's are all quite short with no photos due to lack of time. We had some kitten families here yesterday visiting our older babies and today has been spent cleaning as per usual and looking after cats and kittens. There will be photos again tomorrow as per normal though. I also spent a few hours today registering 4 out of our 5 new mummies with TICA (Nocello is already TICA registered), as well as registering our Monkeys' litter with TICA and this was really time consuming.

Our Hotels will be 1 week old tomorrow and as each week passes, yet more changes are seen with our little children. Claridge's continues to be an extremely laid back little baby, happy to let his sister push him around but what is nice is that when both babies are awake, if mum isn't in the box ,they are happy to try and crawl around and not worry about where mum is. Some babies will call out as soon as they realise mummy is not there but our Hotels are content to have a little time to themselves now and then.

Day 4 - February 8, 2008

I do so love our little Hotels. They are just the most precious little children and I have a feeling that Claridge's, our little Black man, is going to look a lot like his mummy when he grows up which will be nice because Sambuca is a stunning looking girl. As for Ritz, well she is going to be an extremely bossy little lady. If you look at the photos below, you will see that she climbs all over her poor brother and when it comes to the milk bar, she just barges right on in there, pushing him out of the way. I have to say though, that for me, this is the perfect Tortie attitude to life and I would expect no less from any Tortie baby that we had bred. The other mum's in the room have all well and truly checked out the Hotels now as they jump in and out of Sambuca's bed to see Sami and to visit her children. Sambuca is very calm and relaxed about the visits from the other mum's and even Lucy is smart enough to know not to try and steal one of Sami's babies while Sambuca is in the bed :)

Day 3 - February 7, 2008

At around lunchtime yesterday I went back into the kitten room as I wanted to weigh and examine the children again. I was quite late because I normally weigh them at around 10am each day but I got caught up doing other things. When I was in the kitten room first thing this morning changing bedding and feeding the mum's, I didn't properly look at either of our 2 Hotels. It came as a massive shock to me when I picked them up to examine them prior to weighing to discover that BOTH babies had their eyes fully open. I was stunned as 2 days of age is very, very early for babies to have their eyes open and I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. If I thought prior to this that our babies were beautiful, let me assure you that with both eyes open, as seen in the photos below, Ritz and Claridge's are even MORE gorgeous than they were with their eyes shut, don't you agree?

Day 2 - February 6, 2008

Again we have videos today instead of photos but for anyone who saw yesterday's videos then I am sure you will agree that I obviously need a heck of a lot of practice! I have never seen such bad filming in all of my life, so I thought I would try again today and see if I can improve on yesterday's works of art ;) In fact the video's for the Archangels and the 80's Group are quite clear. Also, you can actually see little faces for the Tarts and the Airports little faces although their bodies still look like blobs. As for the Hotels, well, you can see a tail that actually looks like a tail and that is the extent of it. Entries themselves though are fairly short today as I have an awful lot planned for today.

We've now reached Day 2 of our Hotels' lives and both babies are doing exceptionally well which is always a massive relief as you can imagine. Sambuca continues to be the perfect little mummy, and if either of these children have just half the personality or type of their half brother, Ashanti, then I will be absolutely over the moon. Obviously at such a very, very young age, our Hotels don't really do anything at all which makes it difficult to know what to write about. There is no doubt though that Ritz will be the bossy baby in this litter, in the way that Torties generally are. She doesn't hesitate to push Claridge's out of the way when she wants the milk bar.

Click Here to watch the Hotels video.

Day 1 - February 5, 2008

Instead of photos in today's kitten diaries, we have............................................................kitten video's :) :) Now, despite Julie telling me I am a "show off" lol the reason for the video's is very simple. When I do photos for the kitten diaries, it takes me a minimum of 2 hours per day just to sort out the photos and get them in the diaries but with the video clips, it is over and done with extremely quickly and saves me such a tremendous amount of time. I won't be doing away with the photos altogether, but will probably do alternate days i.e. photos one day, video's the next day. These video's have been done with Graham's camera which he bought a couple of months ago and we are both very impressed with the quality. I don't know how well today's movies will turn out though as I've never done them before so it will be trial and error but hopefully they will work out okay............

I'm pleased to say that both Claridge's and Ritz survived the first 24 hours of their lives and both babies made some gains this morning at their 24 hour weigh in. The gains weren't massive, but they were still gains so I am extremely pleased. Both of our new little darlings are very strong babies in that even at this young age, they are trying to stand up and they are both going to be very determined little people, just like their mother. Sambuca was not bothered at all by the move into the kitten room yesterday and she took it extremely well. I think she is actually pleased to have the company of other mummies' where they can all have their own "space" although I must say the maternity ward is looking rather full at the moment! One thing I am thrilled about is that Ritz is showing 4 very beautifully, well mingled tortie paws :) Often with torties, you will get one "almost solid" paw, or a couple of paws with very little mingling but Ritz appears to have perfectly little tortie paws which is lovely.

Click Here to watch the Hotels video.

In all honesty the video's are not great to say the least, especially with the Oriental babies as you can hardly see anything. As I said though, this is trial and error and I now realise that I will have to take the lids of the posh boxes to let more light in, prior to filming. We also are struggling with converting the files as they are quite large, so until we have sorted that out, I will upload the videos to Youtube as that seems to be the quickest way of sorting them out at the moment.

Birth - February 4, 2008

Now that this birth is over we can relax again now and start to get our lives back to normal. Sambuca's unplanned honeymoon was the last of our accidental matings that occurred prior to the boys being separated from the girls and for the past 2 weeks we had been anxiously playing the "waiting game", just wanting this birth to be over and done with.

Sambuca has done us proud and this is going to be an incredibly short birth entry mainly because Sambuca needed no assistance at all, she sailed through the labour, her coat looked incredibly glossy and shiny throughout, the mess was minimal. Sambuca dealt with the sacs, cords, etc. and as soon as the birth process was over, Sambuca was out of the wardrobe and bounding around the bedroom looking very smug and incredibly pleased with herself. This really was your typical textbook birth and we are really pleased with our babies' weights and since birth they have been very feisty little children.

Up until labour began though, we were getting very worried, particularly last night because 2 nights ago, Sambuca started spotting, not a huge amount, but enough to make us both keep a very close eye on her. Then last night the spotting was a very bright red colour and we made the decision that even though she was very well in herself, if she hadn't of gone into labour by the following morning, we would take her straight up to our vets for a scan. Of course, I could have done without the 0430 start though!

As for names for these babies, well it's a bit of a long story but here goes...........................we were not totally sure of Sambuca's exact due date although we had a fairly rough idea and as such, 2 weeks prior to giving birth, she lived in our bedroom. By the time January 30th came around, Graham and I were starting to wonder if she was ever going to give birth so every single night, Graham had a "chat" to the babies which had me in total hysterics. Sambuca would sit or sleep on the bed with us, Graham would lift up her tail and start calling to the babies inside that it's "check out time now and the hotel is closed for the winter", or things like "time to pack up your little bags, pay your bill and leave the hotel now". This went on for over a week and every single night, the speech was a different one. By the time last night arrived, we were both calling the unborn babies the "Hotels" so it stood to reason that would end up being their chosen themes, so we would now like to introduce you to.............................

The Hotels
Baby	Colour	Birth Time	Weight	Sex
Claridge's	Oriental Black	0500	100 grams	Who Knows!
Ritz	Oriental Black Tortie	0550	108 grams	F

I moved Sambuca and the Hotels into the kitten room this afternoon so that mum and babies can have some "peaceful" time and Sambuca will have the company of Tia Lusso, Nocello, Cointreau, Amaretto, the Archangels, the Tarts, the 80's Group, & the Airports. So long as Lucy doesn't try to steal Sambuca's babies everything should be just fine.