A Burmese Kitten Interlude...

Blue Belle, my lovely, gentle blue Burmese cat, had a litter of Burmese kittens in January. Now, prompted by a comment on my last post by Celine, I thought I would just update you on their progress...

Blue Belle herself as a young kitten...

 

Burmese cats which have been part of my life for so very long are truly, truly wonderful and have huge characters. They come in many different colours though I only breed Brown, Blue, Chocolate and Lilac.

 A previous litter showing on the left a young, pale brown and on the right a warm chocolate kitten whose colours can be similar at this very young age.

I first encountered the Burmese breed when I was a young child and was visiting friends of my parents who had two very elegant chocolate Burmese who sauntered through their 300 year old Oxfordshire cottage filled with delicate antiques as if they owned it and the humans who happened to be there were present only to cater for their every whim and need...which was of course very true...

As a child, I was warned to be on my very best behaviour and not to touch all these precious antiques yet these beautiful cats strolled around, weaving in and out of fragile figurines on the mantelpiece, never causing any damage and with their owners talking to them as if they were important members of the family whose wishes were paramount... 

 One of my Lilac Burmese that I bred.

 

As I grew up we had many animals including cats but none could match the Burmese that I had met previously. Many years later I returned to live in the UK and wanted to have a kitten or two. As it turned out, my parent’s vet who was also a family friend, was a long time fan of Burmese and had two of his own. He put me in touch with a breeder and I acquired my first two Burmese. Tosca was a chocolate and Mimi was a blue. They were incredible characters and again encouraged by my parent’s vet I started on the saga of breeding from them, showing, stewarding and eventually qualifying as a Full Judge. That, of course took many, many years...

 Another one of my Lilacs

 

A Chocolate Burmese kitten...

 

Tessy, Mimi’s first daughter, has just turned 20 and I see her regularly where she lives, much loved, on the Gower peninsular in South Wales.

Anyway, back to my current litter. Blue Belle had five kittens-two lilac and three blue. As an experienced mum who had had two previous litters, she popped them out with me sitting beside her as midwife at 2am in the morning, without any difficulty and within a few hours of being born, all were having their first drink...

 

The kittens, three female and two males have grown really well.

Seen here at Day Three, a Lilac and Blue close entwined...

 

Wilma, their brown half sister from Blue Belle’s previous litter comes to investigate her half siblings...

 

She, thankfully, quickly adores them and now acts as chief babysitter when mum wants a rest...

And at four weeks they are starting to bustle around the kitten box...

 

Now at seven weeks they are charging around the house downstairs as if they own it...which perhaps they do...

Taking photos at this age is extremely difficult as they don’t keep still long enough and all the photos I take seemed to be somewhat blurred...

All I can take is some when they are asleep...

 

Whilst we may find life stressful at times, a kitten or two can just simply sleep it all away...

 

I do hope some people liked my ‘Burmese Kitten Interlude’. I know there was no mention of gardening or food today so my apologies to anyone who finds this post boring or disappointing...