I’ve thought about this post all day. I have had different ideas of how to approach the topic of the babies. With the photos I currently have, I chose this one to start this topic because I really love the little guy right in the middle stretched out over everyone. I’m glad to have caught him lying there as if he is just in complete leisure! These are Sapphire’s babies who are now much older now but for those of you who don’t know this, siamese (and colorpoint shorthair for that matter) are born all white. You get to watch and patiently wait for the colors to come in. The pointed gene that causes the siamese and colorpoints to be “pointed” or have color in the mask, legs/feet and tail is a heat sensitive gene, those before mentioned areas being the cooler points of the body after birth and throughout the cats life, in fact they will shade into the body with age, especially seals and blues. Chocolates and lilacs tend to have a clearer and snow white coat (if they have good color) but can shade, especially if they are injured or hairs are pulled out. In their mother’s womb, the kittens are kept the same temperature all over, so, they are born all white. Within a few days you can begin to tell seals and blues by the darkening paw pads and the dark rim on the edge of the ears (as seen in the photo). These kittens all turned out to be blue points like their mom. In a colorpoint litter where I expect (or hope for) red/cream points, I can tell the reds/creams at birth although I don’t know yet whether or not they will be red or cream, only they they are red or cream vs. solid pointed (which is an AOV and a whole different story) or tortie pointed because they are acutally whiter than the other kittens in the litter. I hope this has been an interesting topic. I plan on actually taping or photographing a birth and the kittens as they grow and develop their point colors.
The other interesting and very rewarding part of breeding these cats is watching them grow and develop, not just in point color, in their behavior. One thing I noticed about Papyrus and her daughter Ankhesenamon is that when the babies got to be about 4 weeks old or so and were getting more steady on their legs, and especially within the next week or so when the kittens start running all the time, their moms would play with them. I don’t mean just running with them or batting toys with them. I keep a show shelter up for the mom to keep the kittens in and as a security area for the babies and mom, although it’s open and not zipped up, they can go in and feel like they are “in” something safe. I realized one day that the mom was intentionally hiding behind the show shelter and jumping out when the kittens approached to startle them and they would just scatter and she would do it again. So….she thought this through. She was hiding and jumping out to play with her babies. Ankesenamon still does that with each litter and she enjoys playing with her kittens. It’s one of the many examples of how intelligent they are. I think siamese and colorpoints are one of the most, if not the most, intelligent cats in the world. Maybe I can catch some photos or video of it for you!
Leave a comment
Comments feed for this article