August is the other “hot” season for cats on our latitudes. Because of the ratio of the light and dark, many queens come in heat in August-September and springtime in March-April. Also entire adult males may have hormonal surges, leading to spraying (marking territory), yodeling for females and oily tail/coat on some males.
Juno (SC Northalla Juniper) & Ulpu (GIC Mitha Goobita Yangatin). Photo: Eveliina Laine
This is the case with our cats, as well. First Ulpu (GIC Mitha Goobita Yangatin), and a week later Ulpu’s daughter Helmi (Northalla Granuaile) of the pirate litter. We had waited for Helmi to come in heat since March, so we didn’t want to postpone her litter now, eve though it means we have two litters born only one week apart.
Ulpu’s groom is Juno (SC Northalla Juniper) of the wood litter. Ulpu and Juno are living in the same household with our friend, in Helsinki. So the cats’ date was easy to arrange. The due date would be around 15-Oct-2014. The pedigree of Ulpu and Juno’s litter.
Shortly, all 12 ocicat colors are possible in Ulpu and Juno’s litter. We know that Ulpu carries cinnamon, for his father is a cinnamon spotted ocicat. Whether Ulpu carries dilution or not, we haven’t tested and we don’t know that. We don’t know yet what color Juno carries beside his chocolate allele, nor do we know yet if he carries dilution or not. His mother Ansa is a cinnamon carrier, and there are relatives with dilute color. About 50% of the kittens should be silver according to probability. Mind you, this might be far from the reality for the “gene lottery” doesn’t always follow the rule for probabilities…
Helmi (Northalla Granuaile) & Hiski (Northalla Springwater)
We had decided to mate Helmi with Hiski of the water litter . Uniting the pirates and the water. Silver colors are most probable in this litter, between 75-100% of the kittens, depending on whether Helmi is heterozygous or homozygous at the inhibitor gene. Helmi is a cinnamon carrier, Hiski has not been tested for his color genes. If Hiski is also a cinnamon carrier, the possible colors of the kittens would be tawny, ebony silver, cinnamon and cinnamon silver spotted, plus the same with dilution, i.e. blue, blue silver, fawn and fawn silver spotted. In case Hiski carries chocolate, just replace cinnamon with chocolate and fawn with lavender.
Pedigree of Helmin & Hiski’s litter is here. Helmi’s due date would be around 20-Oct-2014.
We hope that mom and daughter are both happily pregnant… Within a few weeks we should start seeing signs of pregnancy. Cross your fingers!