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Early on Tuesday morning on 21st October 2014 a phonecall woke me up. Helmi’s (Northalla Granuaile) foster home was letting me know that the delivery has started and I should get going there. Last evening we had discussed over the phone and thought it’s unlikely that Helmi would start the delivery during the night to come, based on her behavior. However, quickly on my way, fortunately Helmi and Puusti’s (Northalla Cagafuego) foster home is not far away, they live in Linnavuori, Nokia.
Northalla Moonlight “Moona”
Just as I arrived on their door, the first kitten was born. The delivery was normal, it’s always a bit longer process to squeeze the first kitten out. This little female kitten was born head first, and Helmi started immediately to take care of her, giving her a good wash and trimming the naval cord. Despite she was a first-timer, Helmi seemed to instinctively just know how to do everything. The kitten was healthy and weighed 97 grams. We saw immediately that she was silver, but the color seemed very light… Did we get our first ever cinnamon silver spotted kitten? She looks very different than the two choc silver girls in the Corvidae Litter, her tale tip and the color behind her ears look cinnamon. Well, we’ll call her cinnamon silver, unless we are proven otherwise.
Northalla Sunlight “Samu”
The girl went for the milk bar quickly, and started to enjoy. The it took quite long, three hours, until the next kitten was born. The kitten was born head first, with fetal membranes intact, and we found that this was a male kitten, ebony silver spotted. He weighed 105 grams. Helmi took good care of him, as well, and started to lick him dry. Helmi calmed down and we saw from her behaivor, that she was done with the delivery phase. We had suspected that this would be a small litter, from the size of Helmi’s belly, and two kittens was our estimate. The little boy joined his sister in the milk bar, and after only two hours both kittens had increased their weight very nicely. Everything was fine, and the breeder got to work, leaving the foster home to just watch and amaze the endearing moments of the newborn kittens and their mommy.
The birthday of the kittens was one day past the due date. The estimation of the doe date and the real birthdate have been quite close with our litters, about +/- 2 days max. This day, or rather morning, when Helmi and Hiski’s (Northalla Springwater) kittens were born, was also a special day for me professionally, it was the Day Of Photonics, which is the day when the speed of light was determined. After the kittens were born, my mind wandered quickly away from the theme I had thought for this litter, and soon it seemed really approppriate to name this litter according the theme: Light! Light theme suits very well the kittens’ foster mom Tiina, who is a wonderful, radiant and positive person. After some thinking, the names of the kittens were clear to us. The girl kitten is called Moonlight (she was born before the dawn) and the boy kitten Sunlight (he was born close to the dawn).
Helmi and the 1-week-old siblings’ love
Moona and Samu are now two weeks old, and they have been growing nicely. Helmi is a very caring mom. In the first couple of days she was a bit too caretaking, and kept moving the kittens from one nest to another; Helmi was not really satisfied with any of the nest alternatives. Usually our queens have accepted quite well those nests that we have provided them, but now thanks to other breeders we got tips, according to which Tiina made the nest more to Helmi’s liking. The nest is now standing on top of a box, lifting it off the ground, padded with thick and soft padding, and the opening is partially closed with a piece of fabric. No more moving kittens around.
There are some photos on our Facebook, and we’ll update some in the gallery as well, at some point.