Watchmen 3 weeks

The four boys in our Watchmen litter turned three weeks of age and start to explore the world outside the safe kitten cage. Unfortunately Älva have too little milk to feed her four babies and the occasional older Firefly kitten full-time, so we have to support both her with extra food and now also three of her babies. Älva is in good shape but obviously it is tough for her to produce so much more milk. Since we do not believe in isolating the youngest kittens from the older, we will introduce solid food earlier and hope they will catch up weight-wise soon. Yesterday they tasted minced beef and loved it.

Älva turns seven years of age in April next year and will retire during 2010, meaning this will be her last litter. We are quite pleased with all her offspring with high-quality type and kind temperaments, although quite sad that there will not be more. We hope her good traits will live on in her children and grand-children. In out cattery, Tristan will hopefully contribute genetically as soon as he realises what a male cat is supposed to do...

Kit Kat Jam 1 year (and a couple of weeks)

My plan was to take new pics, but because of the weather and darkness and cat shows and life in general, it took a couple of weeks longer to finally get it done. It was still dark outdoors and the impending rain forced me to hurry, but he posed in the right spots voluntarily for the first time in months.
Kit Kat Jam is a strongly built young male and his look is intense. We are happy to enjoy his first two litters in our home and he seem to give his strength and ear placement to his offspring, added to social and sweet temperament. Pleased also that his heart looked perfectly fine at the first HCM test and of course he is GSD IV normal.
Since he became fertile at such early age he has rested from shows this autumn, but we hope he will accompany us again during 2010. So far, he and Tristan are very good friends, cuddling with each other, and we hope they will stay that way.

The Firefly kittens are the most adorable creatures and we are sad that we lost the tiny boy in the Watchmen litter, although it was no surprise. Älva and Anansi help each other with the kittens and it is adorable to see all nine kittens curled up next to each other in the same basket.

Kittens x 5

Well, we should not be surprised as we often get lots of males in our litters, but to have yet another somewhat large litter consisting of only males was not what we expected...

During the evening the 5th of November, Älva gave birth easily to five lovely sons. Everything went perfect and she handled the situation by the book, but I was proud to keep her company. Especially proud since she got into labour curled up on my stomach as I lay in the sofa reading a book. Of course I moved us both to a more proper place...

The first-born had very low birthweight (63 grams) and he was very thin, so we hope he is strong enough to make it but try to mentally prepare to loose him. The others gain weight nicely and Älva is a great mum as always.