BEIGATTI MAINE COONS

I hate it when I go to websites only to find that they have not been updated.  Well...my own site has been woefully neglected lately....it's been two months in fact since my update about Maya's kittens.  We had some rough spots, but the 4 remaining kittens are doing well.  Tasha and Lucy have been bred in the meantime, and I am sharing Lucy's mating experience by letting Sharon Stegall be my "guest blogger" for today.  Please check out Sharon's blog, describing Lucy's ...um... de-flowering.

I has taken a long time for me to post about some difficult events in November.  A week before Olive was due, I had an out-of-town conference.  My dear friend offered to check on Olive during my absence. 

I received a phone call around noon, telling me that Olive has a dead kitten "stuck" - half in and half out.  She rushed her to the vet, and after a telephone consult, the vet and I decided to take the kittens and try to save Olive.

She had three kittens way too early, and none survived.  One was tiny and mummified, one had a cleft palate...surely there was something terribly wrong with this pregnancy and litter.  Olive made it through surgery like a trooper and was put on antibiotics and fluids at the vet.  We expected her fever to break over the weekend, and for her to come home to complete her recovery.  She never recovered, and after trying several courses of IVs and various drugs we had to made the difficult decision about Olive a week later.

After a course of antibiotics (clavamox), Olive seems to be back to her old self.  She went to visit Bandol (Dracoonfly Needabah) on Sunday night.  Over the next 48 hours she was bred several times.  I will know in about 3 weeks if the breeding "took."  Here they are getting to know each other:

^^Olive looking fetching^^

^^Bandol yearning^^

^^Bandol still hoping^^

We will know in three weeks if she is pregnant.

So this past Monday, I loaded Olive and Tasha into the car to be part of a clinical trial at Tufts University (outside of Boston) on Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) and size and nutrition in the Maine Coon.  (OK, that is not the official title, but here is a brief description of the trial.)

We got to Tufts around 10:30.  They examined Tasha first.  They poked, prodded, x-rayed, took blood, ultrasounded, and generally annoyed her.  Tasha was particularly offended at the entire procedure.

The good news:  Her heart has no sign of HCM, no thickening of the heart muscle and she can continue in my breeding program.

Next it was Olive's turn.  Olive was bred on July 10th, and I thought it might not have "taken."  A couple of weeks later, I thought she might be pregnant, then another week later, not.  I didn't know what was going on with her.  She went through the same procedures as Tasha with one exception:  they palpated her abdomen and ultrasounded her to check for a pregnancy.  Olive was not pregnant.    The fine veterinarians at Tufts noticed that there was a small bit of fluid in her uterus, so it could be "something."  hmmmm.  The result of the cardio testing revealed that Olive's heart was sound (yay!), but there was that fluid...

That night I received a call from my (hometown) vet...she had the results of the testing at Tufts and the bloodwork showed that she had an infection.  Her uterus was slightly enlarged, and there was that pesky fluid that showed up on the ultrasound.  Bottom line, she is now on antibiotics, and we are going to breed her again once the infection is cleared.

Funny thing, had I not participated in the clinical trial, I never would have known anything was wrong.

Olive is now relaxing at home, getting better, and we hope she will recover soon.  I will keep her status up to date on my kitten page.

Yesterday I drove to East Greenwich, RI to have an echocardiogram done on Beigatti Lake Superior Sand, a solid cream boy who will start his career as a stud.  (He is the gorgeous cream boy on my homepage.) This screening was routine, but it does rule out any potential problems early on.   "Muscat,"  as he is called, told the vet what he thought about being held down for the echo - but he passed with flying colors, so his breeding career begins.  His owner, Janet, is excited that he will now be able to charm the ladies.

Breeders tend to take advantage of any travel plans by transporting any cats that need to get from point A to B.  I call this the cat mambo.  Since I was in RI, Sharon Stegall of Dracoonfly Cattery (in CT) drove to meet me so that she could bring me a female kitten and potential new breeding girl, Lucy.  I had seen her picture many times on the web, and we had been talking about this girl for months.  Now she was mine!  We let her out of the carrier, I held her for about 2 minutes - yup - 2 ears, 2 eyes, 4 legs....throw her back in the carrier and lets get lunch.

At lunch, Sharon, Janet and I discussed Muscat's breeding career and Sharon just happened to have another female in the car, Olivia.  Olivia was having hard heats and needed to be bred.  Could we bring her back to NY and put her with Muscat, since he was just found to have a good echo.  So we threw one more cat in the car (in a carrier of course) and headed home.

Once we got home, I took Lucy out of the carrier and put her in the office with my husband.  "Here's the kitten - I'll be back."  Olivia needed to be cleaned up from the car ride (use your imagination).  Janet and I cleaned her up, dried her off and put her in Janet's car.  We moved Muscat from my car into into Janet's car.  I fed my "big cats," and went  to check out Lucy.

OMG!  Here was this little girl, right in the middle of the room like she owned the place.  She was not hiding, she was not shaking, she was saying, "hey!  nice digs!  Let me scope things out!"  Now I got a good look at her.  She is spectacular!  I never noticed the dramatic markings around her face - pictures do not do her justice.  She is big-boned...her legs, in proportion to the rest of her, are huge.  She has a nice scoop to her profile, beautiful eyes and depth of chin.  She has a motor that won't stop!  She settled herself into my husband's lap and dozed.  Sharon did a specular job making this little girl!  Here she is:

Tasha's kittens are ready to go home - to their NEW homes, their forever homes.  The kittens stay here until they are about 12 weeks old, then it is time to let them go. By that time I am ready.

When kittens are newborn, momma takes pretty good care of them, and it is just a matter of weighing the kittens, feeding mom, and keeping the area clean, warm, and giving mom fresh food and water three times a day.  Then the kittens grow.  They make messes.  They grow more.  They make bigger messes.  They start to explore.  They find things to get into that you never even considered.

And since the kittens are born and raised upstairs, I am going up and down the stairs 4,386 times a day.  Wake up, prepare their breakfast, take it upstairs, get the dirties from the prior night, take them downstairs, back upstairs to get the litter boxes, back downstairs to clean out the boxes and refill, back upstairs to put them in the room, then downstairs to get the mop and broom and upstairs to clean.  rinse.  repeat.

They continue to grow.  To socialize them, they get the run of the house.  They go in all directions looking for trouble.  It's like having 6 two-year olds running around.  "What is in your mouth?" "Where did you find that?"  They threaten to jump off of the balcony.  We hear thuds, booms and crashes.  "What was that?!"

So the babies are now ready to go.  I'm ready to let them go.  Two are now with a terrific woman who will love them dearly.  Two are with a couple who had them in their hearts before they were even born. 

And so, I will have more time to myself, more time to sew, more time to relax.  I won't be scraping kitten poop off of the walls (how did it get up there?) or frantically chasing a kitten with a piece of cellophane in its mouth.

Yes, I'll miss them.

I am finding myself in the position of having to name a cat again.  I may be getting a new female to add to my brood, and one would think that naming kittens would be fun, but I over-analyze and get all tied up in knots when naming cats.  Consider this...I had 9 months to name my 3 human children, and yet none of them were named until I had a baby in my arms, ready to leave the hospital, and some impatient bureaucrat was tapping her foot saying, "this baby needs a name before you go home!"

So, back to kitten names.  Many breeders have a "theme."  Some name their kittens after songs, others after tv shows, another after Native-American names.  My "theme" is to give each kitten an Italian name, simply because "Beigatti" means beautiful cats in Italian, my heritage is Italian, and it seemed like a good idea when I started out.

Oh but there are rules...

The breeder's cattery name must go first, then the kitten name, then the owner of the kitten's cattery name.  You end up with things like "Hockinghairballs Lucinda of Poopybottom" - except one is only allowed 35 characters in the cat's name.  Also, there is a "call name" - what you will actually call the cat.  So many decisions.

Additionally, it is common to "honor" the breeder of the cat by selecting a name which combines their theme and yours.  For example, if their theme is famous movies and your cats all have a wild west theme going on, the cat might be named "Midnight Cowboy."

My breeding cats have been named "America" (a good Italian name), "Biscotta," "Divina Comedia," "Nata di Marzo," and "Dolcetta Nera."  I am now looking for another name.

Oh I have some names in mind for future cats.  I'd love to have a cat named "Spaghetti Western," and "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."  But right now I need a name for a female, no more than thirteen characters.  It can be an Italian wine, a movie, a song title, an expression.

Send me your suggestions, before "whatshername" comes to live with us.

Beigatti Tiramisu ca. 2005

Last week, the final week of February, our area was hit with a massive storm.  Snow started on Wednesday and didn't stop till Friday; the accumulation was measured in feet, not inches.  We lost power and stumbled around without electricity or water for a couple of days.  So Tasha decided it would be a good day to deliver kittens.

I was ready.  I had the box set up with the supplies:  washcloths, scale, alcohol, paper and pencil, bulb syringe:

I also had a very pregnant cat:

and a fire going to warm up the house:

By early evening on Saturday, Tasha had finished delivering 6 little ones:

Now we just had to work on getting out of the driveway:

Many people think that breeding involves putting two cats together and waiting for kittens to arrive.  Mom pops out the kittens, feeds them, and all live happily ever after.  I wish that were true, but it is quite a bit more complicated than that.

Breeders start by obtaining the best cat they can after studying pedigrees.  How much inbreeding is there?  How many ancestors are still alive?  Are there any issues with hearts, hips, knees, kidneys, or gums?  What can this cat add to my breeding program?  If I get this cat, with whom can I mate it, and what is the inbreeding there?  What health issues am I facing if I put cat A with cat B?

After getting that drop-dead gorgous cat with a low inbreeding coefficient and good health, showing it to the title of "Champion" or "Grand Champion" and breeding it with another spectacular cat, you wait, hoping the kittens will have Dad's strong muzzle and Mom's perfect earset.

After a preganancy is confirmed, the breeder hopes that the queen (momma cat) does not get any type of infection, does not resorb the kittens, deliver early or does any number of crazy things to harm the babies.  Kittens arrive, hopefully on time and alive, and the breeder prays that mom takes care of the kittens.  Not every mom has the good instinct to care for her kittens properly, so a breeder may find him/herself cleanng kitten bottoms to stimulate defication, bottle feeding babies every two hours and weighing kittens daily to make sure any problems are caught early. 

I say this because it has been tough these past few weeks. Several friends of mine have lost kittens due to unusual circumstances, and each has been heartbroken.  Today was my turn.

Olive gave birth to this little guy who started off fine, but at one week old stopped gaining.  I brought him to the vet who thought he might have a low-grade infection of some sort.  I gave him antibiotics twice/day.  I tried feeding him with an eye dropper.  He did not gain - so a few days ago I went to tube-feeding, threading a small tube through his esophagus and into his stomach, and carefully getting some nourishment into him.  He was feisty, adorable, and I loved him.

This morning I tube-fed him as usual, and put him into the kitten tent so that he could cuddle with his mom.  She licked him and I knew she would take care of him while I was at work.  I came home at 5:00 PM, got the tube ready for his next feeding and discovered he was gone.  He just didn't make it and my tube-feedng didn't help.

I now have to concentrate on the other kittens, but I thought I would post his picture here.  He is no less important than the others, and he touched me so deeply.  Rest well little guy.

I have been worried about my little Tasha.  She was with a stud male in October and she "pinked up" right on schedule.  Unfortunately, she was not gaining weight, and she was racing around the house like a kitten.

I had a veterinarian friend look at her, and she also could not determine if she was pregnant by palpating her.  She suggested I bring her in for an ultrasound.

Today it was confirmed:  Tasha had a "false" pregnancy.  Even though her mammary glands enlarged, she is carrying no kittens.

I am pleased that she is healthy and as soon as her body regulates itself, she will be bred again.