March 2021 Tennessee Rex Kittens

Satindelight Angelique's  litter born 11 March 2021

Angelique gave us a concern in that we expected kittens by 6 March based upon the date we thought she had been bred. This was not the case.  She finally went into labour about 1830  on 11 March and delivered her first kitten at 1923 EST. Then the second kitten came some 90 minutes later.

Then a long wait until nearly midnight but she delivered her last two kittens in very rapid succession, about a minute later.  She delivered four healthy kittens raging from about 120 down to 106 grams at birth. They are gaining weight about as expected.  We were hoping for five kittens.

We weigh kittens and some adults such as expectant moms  each day and enter their weights on the cattery master spread sheet. This tradition has been a work in progress for well over 20 years  The spread sheet automatically produces weight charts that are posted on the cattery pages.  Posting is extremely easy thanks to the work of out IT administrator, Michael Anderson, from Port St Lucie, Florida.  Angelica's kitten weight chart is posted below.

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The "T" Litter

We have a tradition to name all the kittens in each letter with the same first letter. We are now up to T. Also the second letter is a vowel in alphabetical order.   This is helpful in identifying a cat or kitten by their litter name.
The kittens have been named and individual space for pictures and other information has been prepared below. The chart is colour coded  brown, red, green and blue as are their spread sheet entries and on their individual  information.

 8 April was the date when they were four weeks old. About that time we begin to introduce the kittens to soft food and a kitten milk substitute. The milk substitute is to get them to lap the liquid. This will not last long. Once the kittens are weaned we will have water available for them. Regular cow's milk is very indigestible in cats and kittens. Goats milk is a good substitute and may be easier to find than the two or three commercial milk substitutes for felines.  At the same time the  kittens will be encouraged to scratch in the litter pan provided in their "annex" to the maternity "suite."

We had some upgrades done on this computer and it was unavailable for about a week. The spreadsheet files were copied to an external HD so the daily updating could be done on a local l,aptop. Unfortunately the laptop and the external drive did not see "file-to-file" so to speak and we were not able to load the file into the spreadsheet app in the laptop. All is now updated in our usual computer that also had a good cleaning out from over 10 years if daily use. I have to applaud LENOVO, the manufacturer, for making excellent hardware. They and their predecessors, IBM, for continuing to produce quality computers.