Next week we will test the cats for TF, and hopefully they will all be negative    Our vet has conferred with the lab who is doing the tests about how to gather the stool from all cats the best way possible both for the cats and the reliability of the results. We do not want to drug the cats to retrieve the stool and we are so lucky that this could be done in an easy way for the cats and us! We will give the cats a large meal of chicken and place them in different areas in our house with their own litterbox. And then it is just to wait for some poo    We will collect the stool as soon as it has reached the litterbox, and we will use small glasses with a lid on to place the stool in, and then the glass will be placed in the freezer.Next day we will deliver this glasses at our vet`s and she will send them to the lab. Please cross your fingers that all our cats will have negative results on their TFtest!!

Next week we will also take some of the cats to our vet, it is time to give them their shots. Also Bart & Honeybump will have their second vaccineshot and if we are lucky and there is no more TF paracites left, we will put out an ad and start the process to find new homes for our little ones that have grown quite well. They are almost 5 months old and it is time to move. We will miss them terribly and especially Bart who is the sweetest boy ever. He love to kiss us, and he is caring for our hair - a lovely little hairdresser! Honeybump is a sweet girl and she loves Finn-Ove. Our house will be very empty when they move....

Today Finn-Ove decided that it was about time the cats got something special for dinner. In several weeks they have only got dry food, but today it was time for some Whiskas. And When Finn-Ove opened the first box, Muffin came running to the kitchen. A little bit weird since he does not usually run anywhere at any time and he is not fond of canned food. But today he seemed really happy about it, and he ate a reasonable portion   

Our fertile males have been separated since Vinnie moved in, and we are prepared that this will continue. There is only a mesh door between them, and they often sit in front of this door talking to eachother. We have talked about letting them meet but I have been anxious for the two would harm eachother. This afternoon Finn-Ove took Vinnie in the catroom and he and Lion-O met. They just sniffed and talked, no sign of stress or anger. They played a bit and they both wanted to mate the otherone    After 10 minutes Finn-Ove took Vinnie out of the room and now they sit in front of the door again, talking    But I do not trust this to last, I can not imagine that they could be friends as they both are fertile. None of them has mated yet, so I guess that the situation would be changed when they have. But we will enjoy this adventure as long as we can!

Finn-Ove took a picture of the boys greeting - not the best quality but a rather sweet one   

   Vinnie is checking out Lion-O who is super chill, laying at the floor

Vinnie at the hotelroom at Gardermoen. After drinking, eating, use of the litterbox it was time to play with his favourite mouse   

Some time ago we got a picture of (N)Bekmørtnans Ko Kham Yoi (bal f). The picture was taken at her first birthday and we are suprised over her development! She looks so nice, we did not belive our eyes because she was quite mediocre when she moved to her new home.

And in addition of being a nice balinese female, she has the same super eyecolour as her mother Spitfire.

The treatment against TF seems to be a success! After 4 days there was no diarrhea in the litterboxes, and that was even faster than we had hoped for    No sideeffects has been observed on any of the cats, so this anxiety was  also unnecessary    Today the cats will have their last pill of Ronidazole, and then we just have to wait for a few weeks before testing. Hopefully they will all be negative, we cross our fingers......

Our dear Vinnie (Genesis of Beugnycats) has been tested for PRA and unfortunately the test showed that he has two copies of the CEP290 and he is likely to go blind. We will of course check him regularly at an ophthalmologist to monitor the development of his blindness. We want to do this in the best way possible, to facilitate for him so he can live a full life with us and our cats. We have discussed his positive test both here at home but also with other breeders and we have decided that we will use Vinnie in our breeding as planned. The reason of this decicion is that our females are all PRA negative and in a combination with Vinnie they will only make carriers. Carriers of PRA is as good as PRA negative cats since none of them could ever develop blindness. We just have to make sure that our carriers does not mate any other carrier. When using a carrier after Vinnie in our breeding we could choose a PRA free offspring in the making of our next generation. That way we will be able to include Vinnies benefits (his look and his temper) in our breeding without creating more PRA affected cats. Some breeders have contacted me regarding our choice and said that our plans for using Vinnie in our breeding is unwise and will create problems for his offspring. We can not with our best intentions see that this is correct, and we will not consider this input regarding our plans. If someone combines two carriers of PRA, they will statistically have 25% PRA free, 50% PRA carriers and 25% will be affected by PRA. This is nothing we would do, we think this is morally reprehensible in contrast to combine a PRA affected with a PRA free cat. But we have seen other and more experienced breeders do this   

Vinnies pedigree is registered at the Pawpeds database, and so is the result of his PRA test. When his pedigree was registered we discovered that there is a balinese among his ancestors . Her name is GEP Zoë Pri Yamaska Van de Restiemoor, and she is/was a bal j. When we discovered this we decided to test him for the longhairgene to find out if he really was a carrier, but we weren`t that lucky   Nevertheless he will be a great asset to our breeding and we look forward to see what he can give us!

Vinnie is a very affectionate cat and he loves to hang on our shoulders our sleep on our bellys. A while after he came to us we choosed to introduce him for Bart and Lina, and this was a big success. There was no doubt that he was happy to not be the only cat with us, and the 3 of them have had a lot of fun. Tonight when the cats have got their last pill we would introduce Freja, Muffin, Puma and Honeybump to him. Since Lion-O is fertile as well as Vinnie, we will not introduce those to eachother. Lion-O and Prille will stay in on of the catrooms downstairs, we will not take any risks.

We did not manage to wait until the testresults for TF before making plans, it is too exciting to wait with them. As soon as the results are ok and the girls are in their heat, Vinnie will meet our beautiful Jagara. We think they could make som really nice variants    Lion-O will mate Lina and Puma, and in the litter from Lion-O and Puma we will have (hopefully) some nice OLH`s since Puma is homozygous oriental and do not carry the gene for points. Lion-O and Lina will have pointed kittens, and since Lina is a carrier of longhair, there migth be both longhaired and variants in this litter.

We  have made some plans for cat-shows, and we will attend both Trønderkattens show in Trondheim the last weekend of March, and Björkstakattens show two weeks later. We are really looking forward to participate again! It has been a long time since our last cat-show. We plan to bring Lion-O and Vinnie, and we are a bit excited to bring two fertile males. How will that be? We have shown fertile males before, but only one at the time. It is a challenge!

We have also booked planetickets and hotelroom for the SWS in september this year. This will be our first time showing cats at this great show! Hopefully both our fertile boys will qualify   

In April we will have a new girl from our new cooperative breeder S*Milliminas. This girl is a osh variant with a splendid pedigree! None of her offsprings will be sold to other breeders and her kittens will be neutered before moving from us to prevent "accidents" to happen. A lot of people want to have a cat with a pedigree and at first they tell that they will neuter their cat. But some of them don`t and this is reflected in several websites where there is a lot of kittens for sale that have a mother or a father with a pedigree. We will not be a part of this, therefore we will neuter our small ones before they leave.