Tag Archives: Jossan

Jun 14 2010

Leroy and the kittens

Grandfather Leroy was curious, excited and a bit scared from the day one, but now when the kittens started crawling around he really likes to jump in the play-pen to lick and watch them.

He even went into the tipi when Jossan left them for a minute and licked the ones who slept there.

We were very cautious with Leroy being around the kittens, since he is male (although neutered), and the small ones took away his Jossan from him, but he is behaving well so far, and we are always close when he is with them.

He was a very good father when Jossan was small and brought her up, so we guess he will be a good grandfather also. Only, when Jossan arrived, she was three months old. These kittens are small and very fragile.

Still, he is very careful around them and when they attack him in huge numbers, he moves to another place.

May 23 2010

Seven kittens

Jossan gave birth to seven kittens. The delivery went fine.

One kitten went out with legs first, the rest of them head-first.

Strong contractions started 22:30. We weighed the kittens and wrote down the time they were born. We cut all the umbilical cords, cleaned their faces, mouths and noses and stimulated the breathing by massaging them gently with a dry towel. All of them were quite active from the start, we experienced no problems there.

0:19 #1     98 g male
0:40 #2    102 g female
0:55 #3    94 g male
1:38 #4    94 g male
1:46 #5    96 g female
2:58 #6   98 g female
3:07 #7   86 g male

We are very tired, it is 5AM in Stockholm and we are going to sleep now. More pictures tomorrow.

I have no idea which colors they are, they all were whitish and wet. I am not that sure about the gender either. The weight and time of the delivery are correct.

May 20 2010

Day #66, no kittens yet!

Jossan is huge! She did quite a performance on Wednesday morning and we thought she would give a birth, so Jelena stayed and worked from home that day. But – no. Yesterday evening she was so tired, that she was just dragging her heavy tummy over the floor, she could not walk as usual. Jelena fed her with egg yolk and cat milk while she was lying on the sofa. A fast setup with an old newspaper was made so that nothing would be spilt:

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Jossan’s most favorite place right now is the doormat, where she blocks the exit. She really wants us to stay at home. She is maybe waiting for the weekend to give a birth. Can pregnant animals delay the birth at all? I guess they can, a bit.

Our cats know when it is time for weekend. Leroy can even count days (he is okay when we leave him somewhere, cat hostel or a friend for 7 days, on day #8 he starts crying and crying. That is because our vacations without cats usually take a week, so he has learnt that after a week we always come and take him and the others back to their home).

Here is Jossan, blocking the entrance door:

May 16 2010

No kittens yet

No kittens yet.

Jossan is checking often if I am alert – she goes to another room and calls me, to see how fast will I come there. Then she cuddles a bit and seems relaxed. When she is not ‘training’ me, she is mostly lying next to me, resting. The kittens in her tummy are very active, a lot of moving and kicking. Rock&Roll!

I am getting a bit nervous, but I am trying to play relaxed in front of the cats, they are quite sensitive about our mood. The question is – how good of an actor am I, can I trick them?

May 13 2010

Almost there… day #59 or #57

We are not sure if the first day of pregnancy was Monday the 15th of March or Wednesday, two days after that. Goofy and Jossan did not kiss and tell, not really. But Jossan is so unbelievably big, and the kittens are moving a lot at times.

It is amazing to just sit and watch the small ones move inside of her. She could deliver any time starting from Sunday the 16th of May to Sunday the 23rd of May. We do not know how long it will take, this is her first pregnancy. But we are almost there!

May 8 2010

Big Jossan

BEFORE…

Some time ago, this is how the Siamese used to lie together, on a pile in one of their beds:

Please, notice: Jossan is the smallest one, lying in the middle of the pile.

AND, NOW…

This is how they look together today (sorry, Miii, you are out of the picture and out of our bed…)

Pregnant Jossan, much bigger than before, is hugging Leroy:

Apr 22 2010

Jossan’s kittens. A month until they arrive!

Babies, we saw Jossan’s babies! We waited for 40 minutes at the vet’s office, and Jossan was not happy.

Then they had to shave her tummy. Jossan was even less happy.

And then they put a lot of goo on her belly and looked for the babies on the ultrasound. NOT HAPPY!

The veterinary said that he could not see exactly how many kittens there are, which I do not get why not, if he just tried harder, he could have counted them. I started counting them, but every time I managed to focus, he moved the probe somewhere else. But we saw them clearly, at least 4, but probably 5 or 6. Many!

One opened and closed its little kitty mouth, looked like it was meowing, and its siblings rotated and moved and we saw the small hearts beating. Ooooh, so nice. They look like real little baby cats, which they are!

Now we are back home and Jossan is a bit upset since her tummy is shaved and yucky and we were away from home for so long, but now she is lying in my lap and has almost forgiven me everything.

Kittens! :)

Apr 10 2010

The signs

We think that Jossan is pregnant!

She sleeps a lot and is much calmer since she came back from Goofy. She threw up twice in the mornings last week, and she almost never throws up. Last week her nipples became pink in color. She started gaining weight.

So exciting!

We bought her food for kittens and she takes some yogurt and milk for cats daily. Otherwise she eats as usual; 3 different kinds of dry food are always in the bowls. The cats also eat either raw beef, canned chicken breast or canned tuna daily.

Mar 21 2010

Dating time again!

Jossan’s dates with the dark handsome guy, Flippen, did not work out. Jossan did not get pregnant in spite of three dates they had and her being very much in heat. She simply never accepted him as a mating partner. We liked Flippen, very much so, but Jossan did not.

Two months ago we did the FIV/FeLV tests again and started looking for a new date. It was not easy. I secretly suspected Jossan to be a racist, as shameful as it may sound. I talked to the veterinary about it, and apparently, that is not a phenomenon unheard of – it happens with some dogs and cats that they dislike the partner we choose for them if they are extremely different in color. That puzzles me; one would think that nature encourages diversity and that mixing of different genes is good for species (and quite a difference in color can be a good indicator for variations of genes), but no, something is apparently not quite right with that reasoning. Whatever the reason is, Jossan seemed to dislike Flippen and I suspected it was because of his color. So I started looking for a Siamese/Oriental that is light in color.

After some time I found a cat I liked on pictures, and whose pedigree was an excellent match for Jossan‘s; the white prince, IC Edo Créma de Luxe, M, SIA w 67. His pet name is Goofy.

Here is the picture I got from his owner, Sofie. The picture does not do him justice, Goofy is more handsome in person. His tail seems short on the picture, but it is a bad angle, it is actually quite long.

Goofy has the most amazing set of deep blue eyes, tight and silky fur, white as snow. A white beauty! Those beauties are hard to find, there is not so many of white Siamese (or – Foreign Whites) in Sweden, or anywhere, really.

Goofy is not extreme in type, but he has all the good parameters. He is a very alert young male cat with strong muscles and magical appearance. Also, he seemed social and not afraid or shy. I talked with his owner, Sofie, a few times on the phone before we met and it felt right from the start. They live in Sala, about 110km from Stockholm and we went there with Jossan last weekend, when she was about 2-3 days into her new heat cycle.

And, you know what – my little racist loved the white charmer! She was cuddled next to him in the same cat-bed after less than two days she had spent there! We do not know whether they successfully mated, but we hope they did, the right sounds are reported to had come from their room. In two-three weeks we will know!

Joakim took Jossan’s picture, and the one of Goofy I got from Sofie.

Jossan is back at home now, and she is still a bit in heat, but that is not uncommon. Whether or not a female cat mates, her estrus cycle will last about seven days, and sometimes longer.

The thing is that cats also have their preferences and taste, and we pick their partners according to their pedigree, show results, or whichever other parameters we find important, but our little darlings simply may not like our choice. We do not know best. In nature they would have more freedom to choose. Jossan is one strong-willed cat, with a lot of integrity. And this time it seems we managed to find the cat she liked and accepted as a potential father for her kittens. So exciting!

Jan 15 2010

Waiting time

We got Jossan back home on Tuesday. She was very stressed when we arrived to get her and cried a lot and complained about everything she had to go through. Siamese are loud cats with a lot of opinions. A lot. And she comes from a long line of Siamese that are loud even for Siamese. My head, my head, my head… Yes; and Jocke’s head…

When we got home, the other three cats were extremely happy she was back, especially Leroy. Jossan was happy, too, but very tired and slept for hours. The other cats licked her thoroughly and hugged her while she was sleeping. Maven and Miii hissed a bit at Jossan as they licked her, since she smelled strange.

She is out of heat now, and all we can do is wait. It takes at least 3 weeks before we can see the signs of a possible pregnancy. Jocke thinks that she did not allow Flippen to approach her this time either, but I am not so sure. There are tiny traces of biting on her neck skin, which is a good sign. I hope that the dating worked out this time. If it didn’t, we will have to look for another Siamese or Oriental tomcat that suites her, temper-wise and pedigree-wise. We are against inbreeding, and we need a guy with a nice temper (also, wide space between ears and wide open ear base are preferable). Flippen is a very good match for Jossan, IMHO. But, who knows what she thinks.

Oh, well. She is here, happy and sweet (to me) as usual, and everything is good again.

Jan 9 2010

Love between a cat and her human

Jocke took this picture last summer. He took a photo while I was talking to Jossan, and she was looking at me, occasionally meowing back.

There is so much love between us; she is my cat and I am her human, and I really feel that that love got captured on this photo – you can see it in her eyes, in the angle of my head when I am talking to her, in her whole body posture.

I miss Jossan a lot today. We left her at Flippen’s place again. Their dating did not work out that well last autumn. She did not allow him to approach her at all, and the poor guy lost his interest after a few days of trying hard. But, now Jossan is in heat again, and we’ll see if she accepts the handsome boy this time.

Aug 26 2009

Mrauuuuu Mrauuuuu

Jossan is in heat again! Only two weeks after she was in heat previously.

Either she did not get pregnant or she is one of those queens who get into heat even while pregnant… yes, there are such.

Whichever is the case, I can not sleep. Mrauuuuu. I recorded a part of her call. Unfortunately my equipment is not so good (K810i, a Sony Ericsson mobile phone), but you can get an idea how it feels…

\”I love the world\” by Josephine Brown, a Siamese cat in heat

Yes, like that, non stop.

Aug 9 2009

Jossan’s weight is fine

We spent some serious time investigating Jossan’s 2,9 kg of weight. She is muscular, lean and not skinny. The vet said Jossan has a good size and proportions (and that is a veterinary that also breeds Siamese and Orientals, so she is quite familiar with the race). Still, 2,9 kg does not sound like much!

JossanOut

A healthy grown up Siamese cat usually weighs: male 4-6,5 kg (9-14 pounds); female 2,7-4,8 kg (6-10 pounds). Also, this article I found was interesting (Siamese cats are just mentioned):

Some healthy adult female Siamese cats weigh as little as 5 lb (2,26 kg) though some male Siamese can reach 20 lb (9 kg). Some Siamese breeding lines give smaller, more “fragile-looking” cats than others and the old-style Siamese cats are more robust than the rather skinny modern version of this breed.

The source: “FELINE MEDICAL CURIOSITIES: DWARF CATS, GIANT CATS, FAT CATS” written by Sarah Hartwell.

LilacPointSiameseCats

I guess that Jossan’s lean look is more of “a skinny modern” one, although her mum is more robust. Jossan is her daddy’s little copy.

Here is an interesting read about the history of Siamese cats and the descriptions of two different types of Siamese – the more round version, similar to the original Thai one, that was imported from Siam (Thailand), and more elongated, modern version of the race. From the article:

It is important to raise that several breeders believed that there were two types (morphologies) of Siamese. Mrs. Veley would have written herself that its cat (Pho) had a rather thin line and that its second cat (Mia) was rather robust and round. Thereafter, Mrs. Carew Cox, a judge of cat-show and founder of the first Siamese club, would have also noted, to see two types of lines : one compact, with a short body, short legs and a round head, while the other with a body and a semi-long, nimble and sinuous head.

Edited May 29, 2010:

Jossan, that weighs so ‘little’, 2,9kg, gave a birth to her first litter of seven healthy big kittens (86-102 gr at birth) when she was 2,5 years old.

So, her weight is absolutely fine, and she gave a fine and healthy offspring. Jossan eats both dry food and raw meet (beef) and egg yolk. Sometimes I add butter and/or sour cream to the raw meet/cat milk mix, especially during her pregnancy and while she was breast-feeding kittens. Also, she eats tuna and chicken meet, but not very often.

Aug 8 2009

Jossan is tested

We tested Jossan for FeLV/FIV and checked creatinine and urea (BUN) blood values. Everything is as expected; she is FeLV/FIV free and the kidney function parameters are within the normal range.

She is very slim, though. Jossan eats like an elephant, but in spite of that she is the leanest Siamese we’ve seen. Except maybe for her grandmother Aisha, Leroy’s mom. A veterinary that checked Jossan earlier said that her weight was fine, but still, I would prefer her to go up in weight a bit.

Jossan is not skinny; she is very muscular, but somehow - tiny. Maybe she needs some more fat. Hm.