Moving Day

Originally posted on my private blog- posted to http://indikon-tonkinese.blogspot.com/ on 06/01/11

I don't see what the problem is..?

Indigo decided to move her litter yesterday. Ok, fine... but she wanted to move the kittens into the cat tree. Half way up the cat tree, in fact, where they'd be liable to fall out. Argh! Not to mention the fact that, as she was carting one kitten up the steps, she DROPPED IT- a distance of some 40cms or so. Kitten seems to be ok and it was fortunately onto a soft blanket, but oh my word..!

I couldn't persuade Indigo otherwise, I'd move them out, she'd try to move them back in, so in the end I had to stopper up the cat cubbyhole with blankets so she couldn't get in. Indigo was very upset by this but what could I do? You can't have kittens at table height with nothing to stop them falling off! Even the other cat tree would have been better as it has a 'lip'- this had nothing between the kittens and a nasty plunge onto hard laminate.

I just kept showing her alternative nests that I'd hastily set up, and in the end she decided to move her kittens to another ground level cardboard box. Phew! Note to self, next time have nests ALREADY SET UP for if Indigo decides to move. I've left Indigo and the kittens pretty much alone since moving, bar weighing this morning, and given her lots of fuss when she's ventured out, and I think she's calming down now, but it was very stressful for all of us I think.

I hated upsetting her, and getting in the way of her normal motherly instincts, and she couldn't understand why I was being so mean and interfering with her kittens! I didn't see that one coming, that's for sure. Ah well, we live and learn.

Anyway, on to rather less stressful matters, I think!  This little darling is called AnnElise. Or Annelise or Ann Elise, she's not too bothered :). AnnElise is from the song Time After Time (AnnElise) from REM's second studio album, Reckoning, 1984.

If you look at her nose you can see that most of it is darkening now, but that there's a little stripe that isn't. AnnElise is a tortoiseshell, and the darkening bits are where she will be lilac and the other bits she will be cream (or caramel and apricot, if she's got the caramel gene) You can see the darkening on her paws too, and her ears. I'm especially interested in how the girls turn out as I think it was a lilac tortoiseshell mink (tonkinese, intermediete) that made me fall in love with the Tonkinese breed in the first place.