Pardalis Ocicats

‘Wasters’ isn’t really the right word, as how can time spent watching and playing with adorable kittens ever be wasted?  Fizz’s kittens are now downstairs in the kitten room.  We fully intendedcontaining them in the new kitten pen until they’d started on solids and were using the litter tray confidently.  However, I can’t believe how quickly they’ve changed this past week or so.  All of a sudden they want to be into everything and explore when just a week ago they were warily tottering around the pen. Now it’s all play, play, play!!! So the door to the pen is kept open now.

They are using the litter tray, albeit to sleep in…… No interest has been shown in proper food but they’re all very good weights and still gaining steadily so there’s no rush.  They all drink water out of the bowl so it won’t be long before they decide to give kitten food a try.

Quincy is the handsome lilac silver boy from Fizz’s litter born in May 2009.  We grew very fond of him as a kitten, he was always very affectionate and friendly, being the first to greet visitors.  But we were happy that he had gone to a wonderful home.  He lives in London now and is very well known in the local community.  He wears a collar with a phone number on which is often called to say ‘ did you know your cat regularly visits our pub, and wanders around for a chat with the people there?’ or ‘ Quincy’s just let himself into the local school and is sitting in the classroom with the children’ or even ‘Quincy’s just let himself in and pinched my dinner!’.

Now he needed somewhere to stay while his new family went on holiday.  As this coincided with the time that Fizz would be upstairs with her new babies, we decided that we’d be able to help out on this occasion and have him stay with us.  We were especially keen to see how he’d turned out. Although we’d seen recent photos, we were pleasantly surprised at how much more handsome he is in the fur.  He’s also huge! With enormous paws and very solid muscular body. He’s still a very loving cat, who loves a cuddle and is so very laid back and relaxed.  He settled right in and it was only a few days before he was integrated in the family and playing with our other cats.

We hope he enjoyed his three week stay with us as much as we enjoyed having him here, but we’re sure he’s happy to be back doing his rounds of the locality!

Fizz was fidgety on Wednesday and wouldn’t leave my side so I knew something was about to happen.  We took her up to bed with us and the loud purring started.  She has a very quiet purr normally so this was her ‘ouch’ purr.  I turned the light off and prayed nothing would happen until the morning.

No such luck!  At around 1am I woke up to shuffling in the birth box and a little squeak.  The first born was already nice and dry and suckling and getting lots of attention from mum before I noticed another in the corner still in its sac.  My first thought was it was a still born as Fizz wasn’t paying it any attention.  I grabbed an old flannel and rubbed gently and she gave a sigh.  After quickly wiping the sac from her mouth and tearing the cord, I dried her as best I could and gave her back to mum who was now happy to wash her.  She was a bit slow to suckle and felt a little cold, so I held her in my hands to warm her up a little and after a little while she livened up enough to root for a teat. Two more births followed in the next hour or so and by 4am, with Fizz happily nursing them, I crawled back to bed. The alarm goes off at 6am and we found another kitten had been born bringing the total to five.

We have 3 tawnies, a blue and a chocolate.  They’re all very content and getting lovely round bellies.

Fizz is definitely showing signs of pregnancy.  She spent six days back with her breeder up in Lincoln snuggled up to Neo, the handsome tawny classic we paired Lexi with for her last litter. The pair really hit it off and at first it seemed they were happy just to be ‘good friends’ for the first few days. How

ever, one thing led to another and on the third evening, once Neo had finished his dinner and washed his paws, he turned his attention to Fizz She’d made him wait three days, now he was making her wait :-)  Honestly, men!!!

We’re not sure if Fizz carries the Classic pattern, though she has the potential to as her dad carries the gene.  If she has it too then it should show in this mating.  Both Fizz and Neo carry the dilute gene and chocolate so apart from the obvious likelihood of predominantly tawny kittens, other possible colours could be chocolate, blue or lilac.  It’s wait and see time!  Very exciting, really looking forward to having kittens in the house again

Fizz won her second Open Class at the Short-haired Cat Society Show on 18th April.

She just needs one more CC for her to earn the title of Champion.  However, she’s far more interested in getting the next litter started than earning titles so she’s paid a visit to a stud and we’re waiting confirmation that the meeting was successful.  Her next show may then have to wait until much later in the year, which she’s, no doubt, very happy about as she doesn’t really enjoy being at the shows.

Whether she finally earns the title or not, she’ll always be our little Champion

Also at this show were two of Lexi’s kittens, Connie and Delphi.  Owned by our good friends, Lorraine and David, they’re helping to gain the required merits for the Ocicat Classic’s progression to full championship status.  Both got glowing merit reports and did very well in the miscellaneous classes.  Off to a flying start in their show careers and a credit to their beautiful mother!

Saturday saw the 4th Championship Show.  For the second year running we teamed up with the Tabby Cat Club who also held assessment classes for the Ocicat Classic, meaning Lexi was able to gain two more merits at the one show!  She had some wonderful comments from the judges - “A pretty girl of very good type”, “lovely bright green eyes”, “clear classic markings of bright warm chocolate…very clear contrast” “excellent temperament and condition” and “A real Ocicat”.

Our Fizz did us proud on her first show outing as an adult by gaining her first challenge certificate, 2 more and she can earn the title of Champion. Both our girls did well in their side classes too with a mixture of 1st and 2nd places.

Florence, Lexi’s daughter, brought her strokers Lorraine and David so they could witness her gaining her first Grand certificate.  Not content with just being called Premier Pardalis Genesis, she’s aiming high for the Grand Premier title

New homes have been found for all of Fizz’s rainbow litter.  We’ve been very lucky to find such wonderful homes for them all and I just know they’re all going to be spoilt rotten!!  Three left yesterday and it’s already very quiet around here!  I’m looking forward to seeing their photos as they grow and will keep posting them as they arrive in the new owners album.  We need a few kitten free months now while we prepare to move house.  We’re not going too far but we’ve some busy times ahead! I’ll hopefully be able to get to a few more shows with Fizz and Lexi once we’re settled starting, of course, with the Ocicat Club Show at Alcester on 3rd October.

I was woken at 1am on Friday morning by a rustle coming from the litter tray.  I rolled over thinking ‘hope it’s not a smelly one’.  Then I heard a squeek.  I jumped out of bed and looked in all the obvious places that I’d prepared to give Fizz a choice of where to give birth.  The nice cosy cardboard box by my bed,  the Sturdi where the kittens and mum usually spend their first 3 weeks until they get too active and are ready to come downstairs, and the kneehole in the dressing table.  But no, madam had decided the covered litter tray was the place to be!

I lifted Fizz and a wet kitten out and transferred them both to the cardboard box.  The poor little mite had bits of litter all stuck to her!  Luckily it was clean litter :-)  I brushed off what I could while Fizz had her second kitten in the comfort of the box.  A total of 5 were born by 2.30am.  All good weights, not much difference between them all.

They’re all putting weight on nicely and finding their lungs!  Fizz is a great mum, she’s only left them to stretch her legs a few times and she covers them with the blanket when she’s gone.  We’ve got a black silver and a lilac (maybe lilac silver) boys and chocolate, blue and blue silver girls.  It’s lovely to have them all different and such a nice variety of colours.  Well done Fizz!

Fizz is looking swell!  We’re expecting her happy event by the end of the week.  Difficult to tell if she’s bigger than last time.  I think she is, though that could be down to it being her second pregnancy rather than there being more kittens.

It was very warm during this stage of her pregnancy last time and she was sleeping a lot.  This time she’s far more fidgety and awake, really quite restless.  I think we’ll both be glad when the kittens have arrived and we can all get some sleep

Fizz went to stud a few weeks ago and we can safely say it was a successful visit and we’re expecting to hear the pitter patter of tiny paws in about 6 weeks time.  This time she went to a beautiful Blue Silver -  Grand Champion Thickthorn Cus Cus giving us the possibility of Black silver or Chocolate silver kittens.  We’re really looking forward to having kittens around again!