Elvira Mistress of the Dark

The final viewing appointment was today, and we were delighted at midday to welcome Ley with her sons Zebb & Kallum to our little home and to meet and greet  my cats & most importantly Prune’s kittens.

From the outset, Ley (pronounced Lay) had wanted to have one of the black females & had even chosen her name, Elvira ( or Elvi for short) so it was really just a case of which girl appealed most when she finally got to meet them.

Over the last couple of weeks Ley & I have exchanged many emails, photos & videos as we quickly became firm friends finding we have so much in common. Photos of the two black girls together hoping to help her in her choice during this time were hard to achieve since, just as one was in the right position, the other was looking down or had exited stage left! Each photo or video I know was poured over down in Plymouth as Ley & her young men began to form a preference for one girl over the other. However, though I knew which one was looking more like THE ONE for them, you can never know until you meet the kittens & so having offered Ley first choice on the black girls, I did not say which black girl yesterday’s couple had preferred, because I did not wish to influence choices.

Coffee made, biscuits offered, toys were found & everyone was more than happy to engage in play as we chatted. Ley already has an adult male Sphynx named Ash & a moggy named Shady, but recently had had to say a devastating farewell to her shadow & constant companion, a Sphynx lady named Floozy. The whole family, cats included, are missing her big personality & felt like now would be a good time to adopt a new family member, particularly as Ash was pining for Floozy, missing the grooming tasks he was so diligent at performing for her.

The decision of which kitten they liked best was solidified & so Elvira will be joining her new family on the last weekend of September.

All kittens will be leaving us on the same weekend, as each new family wants to collect over that weekend, it will be an exodus. I currently have 6 lovely Sphynx running a-mock here, but that weekend 4 of them will depart - I imagine tumble weed & the sound of wind!

I will cry when I wave them away & close the door, but they will be happy tears knowing they are all going on to have really good lives full of love & that each one of them will change the lives of their new families as the Sphynx cat just does. I’m not losing them, instead I gain new connections, each family now a valued part of our Naked Sphynx Cat clan.

So we have Elvira, black female, Karma, blue female, Lux, black female & the blue boy has yet to be named!

Karma & Lux

I’m so happy today to have met another delightful couple Louis & Charlotte from Bristol both with enormous big soft hearts & who I’m delighted have chosen to become the new parents to not one, but TWO Naked Sphynx Cat Hampshire kittens.

Prunes blue daughter is now named Karma & one of the black sisters bears the monicker Lux (Latin for light - a clever play on words being as she is black).

We have a lovely play time together, then the two kittens chosen were even gave baths, with ear and claw cleaning practice. This made Karma so sleepy that curled up in her bed, she didn’t even notice that her siblings were tucking into their pouches in the kitchen. Luckily she didn’t mind being woken up for that!

As we said our farewells for a couple more weeks, I truly felt that rather than losing two kittens I’m very fond of, instead I’ve gained a new extension to my NSCH family to cherish, with promises that I will not be short of emails and photos of the sisters as time goes on.

Breeding these cats I adore with my whole heart is a vocation of abundant love. It’s not easy, I’ve learned that on one end of the scale there is risk, heartache and huge expense, often unexpected, but at the other end is the privilege of trust given to me by the mother cat, as she carries her developing embryos to birth, then allows me to be her birthing partner, and/or to be her nurse as might be needed in the first days. The wonder of watching her bring these beautiful new lives into the world & holding my breath as I wait for them to take theirs and the relief of hearing their first mew. The sleepless nights, a mixture of wonder and terrible anxiety at each different stage, from supplementary feeding to weaning and litter training to becoming playmate and caregiver as I watch each personality develop and finally when they begin the next part which are all of their futures. I’m truly blessed & I thank my lucky stars that somehow the right new families do find their way to my door.

There were lots of photos taken today, but Louis & Charlotte has a long journey to travel back so may not have sight of them for a while, but will share when I can.

Tomorrow I am excited to be meeting the final new family who are coming to view their kitten, that story is for tomorrow, today belongs to Charlotte & Louis, new parents to Karma & Lux.❤️🐾🐾❤️

8 weeks of age & a viewing

Yesterday, Wednesday morning was the 8 week anniversary of the births of Prune’s kittens & it’s so lovely watching these little personalities behaving exactly as ‘text-book’ kittens do, and indeed seeing my adult cats remember what it is to be a kitten & playing hide & seek.

My curtains are still safe at least!

The eighth week not only brings the kittens the first part of their vaccinations (which they had on Tuesday) but also our first viewing visitors.

This evening we were delighted to welcome a most delightful father and daughter team to our home. Dad, Maurice and young Ella came inside to be greeted first by Pru and then by Aunty Noo(dle) & the “wrecking crew”. Thankfully all little ones had all paid their visits to their litter boxes about ½ an hour before our guests arrived, and, as I’d held up their evening meal a while they were nicely wide awake rather than in a food-induced soporific doze of epic proportions.

Ella & Maurice seemed to enjoy seeing the 2 adult and 4 kittens all interacting while the three of us chose to sit on the floor (I do have a sofa, perhaps I forgot to mention that!☺️) . While it was the kittens who were really the focus of our attention, true to form Princess Noodle chose to swipe two bottles of anti-bac handwash off of my desk in order to re-gain the attention she believes is rightly hers! She is a spoilt brat, she did her usual nibbling which she thinks let’s people know that she requires firm stroking (how?) She was quite the stroppy pants this evening in fact yelling as if hurt when she given a cuddle. Obviously that was not on her agenda. How embarrassing!

Thankfully Prunella Prudence can be relied upon to charm, with her beguiling beauty and push-button purring. She is so slim again, regaining her sleek silhouette like all unspayed female’s do.

And need I say it, but the kittens were simply divine - their Buddha bellies wobbling as they waddled along, tails up to follow me to the kitchen where they sang like ardent Christmas carollers telling me just exactly how hungry they were and how many days it had been since last a morsel has passed their lips!  The little darlings, unused to being fed elsewhere, were confused to be asked to eat in another room where their visitors could enjoy watching them, but once I’d scooped them all up and deposited them in front of the dishes they soon tucked in, with Pru & Noodle, watching on and who hardly needed an invitation to swoop in to finish any left-overs (there was some tonight too!).

Lucky little boy blue has been chosen by this wonderful family, but has yet to be given a name. His next chapters are theirs to write & I shall miss him very much when he goes. I shall savour these last 4 weeks with him!

We now look forwards again, to the weekend when more prospective new families come for their viewings so here’s hoping that his sisters will all secure safe new homes where love abounds.