We have finally decided what to do about our sweet Honeybump. Quite a long time we was sure that we would sell her, she is a lavender variant and her mother is lavender longhair. Bumpy does not have the best type, she is sweet but nothing more. Except her eyecolour...... What do you think about this?

Her ears are small and to highly set, her eyes are quite round and her chin is not the best. But her profile is rather nice   So she will stay here with us for a while and hopefully have a couple of litters. Two of our breederfriends adviced us to keep her because of her eyecolour, and for once we follow advices    Now I have to make her a paige at our website..... I have not done it before so I guess here will be a bit of swearing   Using Dreamweaver is not my best qualification   

Yes, some people do think so   After all we got several thousands Nkr for just one little kitten    The reality is far from that! If I take a fast trip 1 year back I shure can tell you that here has been some great amounts of money on my bankaccount - going out to vets   The last litter in our cattery was born in September 2011, 5 healthy and strong kittens! And the money starts running out on their birthday. Mama Puma could not manage to get the first baby out, so I have to go to the vets for help. The kitten was born at the vets office - and the bill was nearly 4000 Nkr (529 Euro/£443/698$). After a few days the kittens suddenly started to fade, and off to the vets. 1000 Nkr + medicine (200-300 Nkr?).  One kitten died the day after the birth, another after a few days. Kitten no. 2 was sent to authopsy - 1200 Nkr. Change of medicine for the kittens - 200 Nkr. 3rd kitten suddenly very ill, off to the vets where she got some fluid under her skin and the vet tried to place a probe in her stomach. Not a succes - bill somewhere around Nkr 1000. The little one was a bit better for å few hours but then it turned again. Off to vet, more fluid under the skin, back home. Next day off to Bodø (80 km one way)where the little one was having a probe and fed in addition to more fluid under her skin and through a line in her neck in addition to another line which she got the medicine through. They worked with her for several hours and she was better. The vets ment that we would not be able to give her the care she needed and one from the staff brought her home with her and cared for her the whole weekend. Sadly the girl died, and she was sent to authopsy. The bill? A lot of money! If I sum up the bills from the vets on this litter we are talking about Nkr 30000++.

We have had Giardia among our cats, and needed to hire some who could help ut cleaning and desinfect our house in addition to wash everything possible. 2 and sometimes 3 women every second day during several weeks. I do not know how much we payed in total, but it is a lot! And we have replaced every catfurnitures, beds, litterboxes, toys...

Testing for Giardia several thousands.....

And when the Giardia was gone we discovered that another "guest" has moved in - the Tritrichomonas Foetus Paracite! To get rid of this we needed to import Ronidazole and only this medicine for our cats costs Nkr 10000. The tests for this paracite was Nkr 500 but the lab changed their fee when our tests was on their way to the lab. Today I picked up the bill for the tests that was done after the medication  Nkr 5000........ Now we have to treat them a second time since some of them was positive. This time we are lucky - we only need to buy a scale, capsules and a machine to make capsules with - only Nkr 1500. We get the Ronidazole for free. And now we have to do some construtionwork at home to make enclosures for the cats during treatment, the time they have to wait between medication and gathering the stool for tests and while waiting for the results on the tests. These tests I guess will cost at least 10000 Nkr since we have to identify who of the cats that are negative and who are positive......

When ending the project "get rid of the TF" I think we have used somewhere around Nkr 100000 this last year. And we have 2 kittens to sell.... If we got Nkr 5000 for each of them it will be 10% of the extraordinary costs. And then we have not talked about shots, food, advertising, insurance...... Yes we are rich as breeders but that is love and affection, not money   

A breeder of another catbreed has offered us some Ronidazole for free!!! She got more than enough but it`s not in capsules so that we have to do ourselves. I have phoned to several pharmacists and asked them for help, but none of them would help us. But Ebay does! Finn-Ove has bought capsules, a weight and a capsulesmachin and we are going to make capsules both for us and the kind breeder who gives us Ronidazole. This time we will separate the cats, and give them Ronidazole twice a day. This way we hope (and prey for) a success! Ole Martin is coming home on Friday, and he will devide our livingroom (it is really the largest catroom today) at the ground floor in to 4 or maybe 5. We will make mesh-walls and doors and the cats in this livingroom can se earchother but not be in physically contact. Our small ones, Honeybump & Bart will be placed in our second catroom, Vinnie will be in the open area of the house witch means he will be together wit us and the dog, Puma will stay at Marie`s room.

We got quite a surprice today when weighed the cats to find out how much Ronidazole we needs. A few weeks ago we changed from Royal Canin dry food to Iams and both Muffin and Lion-O have had a weightloss on 500 grams each! And they both needed it   Prille and Puma have lost 300 grams - not bad that either! When they are in separate rooms they will be fed 3 times a day, and we will only give them as much as recomended by Iams. The rooms will be quite small and they will not be able to run around, but we hope that spring is here when they have completed the treatment. They will stay in their rooms from we start to give them Ronidazole and be there till they have tested negative. We hope our plan would leed to 9 negative cats sometime in May, but if not all of them are negative, we have to continue the treatment. I have been told that there has been a project where they used large doses (double) of Flagyl. I think that if some of our cats are still positive after the second round with Ronidazole, I tell our vets about Flagyl and hopefully they will agree in us trying this.

We are going towards a spraying-hell since we have 2 fertile boys (Vinnie and Lion-O) and 2 boys that has started to show signs of being fertile (Muffin & Bart). This could be very interesting   But I guess we will handle this situation too

and frustrated    And sad...... and mad at myself...... 

And the reason is quite simple - we got the results of the TF-testes for 7 of our cats. 

Disappointed, frustrated and sad - since Bart & Honeybumps test was nearly negative, Vinnie, Puma, Lina, Muffin and Lion-O`s was clearly positive. I have started to hope for and almost believe that we would get negative results but no.

Mad at myself - we discussed with our vets how we should do the treatment of our cats and since they have good experience with medicate cats with TF once a day for 14 days and the Ronidazole has some severe sideeffects we went for the solution the vets thought would be right. I was a bit doubtful but I agreed. I asked if the vets thought it would be smart to isolate each cat but they could not see any point in doing that since we would medicate every cat at the same time. Now I know better, I should have followed my gut feeling.

So what do we do know?

Our first reaction was negative, there have been so many problems these years and we felt we really needed some positive experiences. Is it really this way it should be? With illnesses, paracites, dying kittens and medicine, medicine, medicine....... One worse than the other? How far can we go? How much can we push and pull our beloved fourlegged companians through? Where should we stop? I do not know...... Finn-Ove do not know. But it feels like we are very close now to the finishline. At the same time it is so sad to think about not having any litters for a couple of years...... We do not know what to do.........We are tired...... the bankaccount is screaming STOP!!! But I guess we will go on for another round of treatment..... later.....

I got some fantastic news today when I brought Lion-O to the vet`s. The first results of the testing for Tritrichomonas Fuetus came today by phone, and the 2 cats that tested positive for this paracite earlier this winter, has tested negative after the treatment with Ronidazole  Now we are waiting for the result of the rest of the cats. Hopefully they will also have the same result on their tests.

I took Lion-O to the vet`s because he needed a rabies shot, and at the same time I got a documentation that he has no defects (sternum, tail) and that his testicles are where they are suppused to be   I think that this would be rather ok for Gianni to know before Lion-O is moving to Italy. If some of the testes for TF come back as positive, he will of course not move anywhere before all our cats are tested and found negative after a new round of treatment. We have also planned to go to some cat-shows this spring, but that will only be possible if all cats are negative

Well, not right away but in a few weeks. He is moving to Italy to Orobie Diva`s Cattery, and we hope he will settle in their group of cats. We think that Lion-O has a lot of qualities that are needed in the longhairbreeds and we could of course use him ourselves but we have other males (his father might be fertile again this autumn)and we have Lion-O`s sister Jagara. So when we discovered that Gianni was looking for a red balinese male kitten, we could not restist our need to offer him our Lion-O. We will of course miss our dear boy, but we are sure that he will have a nice life in Italy   

We have done the collection of the stool from our cats, and the boxes are sent to Oslo for analyzing. Now we just cross our fingers that they coma back negative for TF, otherwise we have to medicate them one more time and then we can not attend the cat show in Trondheim. But we hope for the best!

Since Lion-O is moving we have to make new plans, and one of the plans we think are very nice with opportunity to have really goodlooking variants. We will be back with our new plans in a few weeks, the other plans will stay like they are for a time. We do not want to jinx Lion-O`s moving by inform about our new plans before he has really moved. Superstitious? Ohh yes!