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.

Babies born September 8, 2005 - Click Here for Kitten Diary
September 5, 2005 (approximately 4 days to go)
The time is drawing nearer and in about 4 days time, Sambuca will hopefully be giving birth. At the moment she's looking really well and is still remarkably active considering that she is not far off her due date. She still runs around the house and climbs out in the cat run. The babies are still moving about which I'm really relieved about and from tomorrow night onwards, Sambuca will be spending her evenings in the bedroom with us, then during the day she can join "general population". I am just hoping and praying that the labour will be easy for her and that it will all go smoothly. In her first litter she took a little while to adjust to actually being a mother and I'm hoping that as this is the 2nd time around for her that she will remember what she is supposed to be doing. This will be the last entry in this diary now and if you check back here from the 9th onwards, there should hopefully be a birth announcement and the start of yet another Schimmel Kitten Diary.



August 30, 2005 (approximately 10 days to go)
The sooner Sambuca has her babies, the better it will be. For the last couple of days, she has been so very cranky with our younger kittens, even though she still lets Tia Lusso, Galliano, Amarula and Sheridans suckle from her, the minute she is awake and walking around the house, she smacks everyone on the head who is unfortunate enough to get in her way. She is very loving towards us humans, but then she has always been like that, she just has no patience for the other cats at the moment. Sambuca and her mum, Cacao have become really close during this last week and they are often seen sleeping together or Cacao will be forever grooming Sami which is really lovely to see. She is still expanding quite nicely and is still eating huge quantities which does make me happy. At this stage, it would appear that the babies are actually still growing inside her which I will take as being a promising sign. It is so difficult not to worry about this pregnancy and I do think that we will be pleased once the birth is over and hopefully, some lovely, healthy babies will have been born. The photos are absolutely dreadful however, Sambuca was not prepared to move off a dark sofa just to have her picture taken!


August 22, 2005 (approximately 7 weeks pregnant)
In total honest, I have forgotten to keep this diary updated. With everything that has been going on with The T's, Sami's pregnancy diary totally slipped my mind. Still, better late than never. As you can see, she is expanding at a rapid rate and actually looks bigger in real life than she does in the photos below. When she is sleeping and relaxing, she loves being with our older kittens, particularly Tia Lusso who has started the bad habit of feeding from Sambuca! When she is awake however she is a big grumpy and likes to be left to her own devices when she's wandering about the house. If any of the older babies try and approach her, she greets them with a rather sharp hiss and then bats them on the head with her paw. Of an evening, during visiting time in the bedroom, she spends most of that time sitting in my clothes shelves or climbing in and out of Graham's clothes shelves, looking for what she thinks is the best place to have her children. Let's just hope that when the time comes she realises that the place to have them is in her box and not in amongst our clothes. On the whole though, considering we never thought she would even get this far, she looks really, really well and is absolutely blooming.


August 5, 2005 (approximately 4 weeks pregnant)
Well this has come as quite a shock and a bit worrying too in fact because we were hoping that Sambuca wasn't pregnant. Sambuca was recently vaccinated and then about 10 days after the vaccine, she developed a lump in the same spot. We rushed her straight into the vets because her mother, Cacao, only this year had a bad reaction to the FeLV vaccine as well, she got a massive lump and as a result had to be operated on and the lump removed and sent off for biopsies. With Cacao, it turned out to be a mass of inflamed cells and while we couldn't be certain it was a reaction to the vaccine, we did wonder. Anyway, when we took Sami in to the vet's with her lump (which was still quite small at the time), it became rather apparent that this was the exact same thing that her mum had and now with 2 of them both with the same problem, directly after being given the FeLV vaccine, it's pretty obvious what the cause was. Fortunately, As Sami's lump was so small, she did not need to have it removed but was instead put on strong anti inflammatories. The problem with this is that the anti inflammatories were most likely to cause Sami to reabsorb. She started her course of tablets about 5 days into her pregnancy and after speaking with our vet, prior to putting her on them, we made the decision that we would still go with the course of tablets because Sambuca is much more special to us than any possible babies might have been. It was a case of risk Sami or risk the babies. Anyway, to be honest, I had just automatically assumed that the pregnancy would go no further because of the tablets and just put it out of my mind and when she reached the 3 week stage, I didn't even check to see if she had pinked up. Last night however, I caught Tia Lusso feeding off Sambuca which is unusual and I picked Sami up and sure enough, she is pregnant. For the last week she has been so cranky with everyone and had been sick at least once a day but because of the other problems going on here, I didn't really think a great deal of it. Had I have stopped and thought about it, I would have realised straight away that she was still pregnant. Of course, we are now extremely worried about the babies due to the drugs she has been on and will just be praying very hard that they will be okay.



July 4, 2005 (The Honeymoon)
Here we go again! Another possible litter of entire Blacks <sigh>. As Sambuca, like her mum and sister, calls far too regularly than she should, when her last litter reached 13 weeks of age, she had another lovely honeymoon with Ice. If all goes well, this will be our last litter born in 2005. Sambuca went in with Ice on July 3 and she'll be coming back into the house on July 5th. Already, a number of matings have taken place, along with a few arguments when Ice was overly keen and Sambuca was more interested in rolling around on the floor. What was amusing is that Ice's house is just beyond our daughters' bedroom window and every half hour or so last night, she was opening her bedroom door and calling out down the hallway, "he's just got her again, that's 4 times now mum". Who needs baby monitors in stud houses when you have children :) Ice was overjoyed when we put Sambuca in with him because for the past 4 weeks he has heard her calling constantly but we weren't ready to mate her again then so you can imagine the look on his face when I went out there with a "present" for him. We don't have any intentions of keeping any babies ourselves from this litter as we already have 2 Oriental Black girls in the house which is more than enough. Provided everything goes according to plan, Sambuca's babies will be due approximately September 9, 2005. Due to lack of time and our current 2 litters being in the throes of leaving us, I didn't take any honeymoon photos.