Feline housemates
Oct. 20th, 2013 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaSo my new place to live has four cats: one mother cat and three half-grown kittens. This means I can finally contribute to the purpose of the internet and post cat photos! I am really more of a dog person, but yes, they are charming and have won me over with no great effort.
I kept them out of my room for the first two weeks, because they do have a tendency to claw at things, and also I had boxes everywhere and I was afraid they'd get stuck in some unlikely hiding place and get squashed or something. This annoyed them mightily, because the kittens were born in that room and felt it rightfully belonged to them.
Now that I have let them in, they have taken my bed into their possession. From the left, that's Ester, Charlie, and Skuggan (=Shadow), and the mother is Müsli. Ester and Charlie will go to other homes eventually.
And yes, they still want to suck milk, even though they eat cat food now! Look at the mom almost buried underneath them--they're almost as big as she is.
I kept them out of my room for the first two weeks, because they do have a tendency to claw at things, and also I had boxes everywhere and I was afraid they'd get stuck in some unlikely hiding place and get squashed or something. This annoyed them mightily, because the kittens were born in that room and felt it rightfully belonged to them.
Now that I have let them in, they have taken my bed into their possession. From the left, that's Ester, Charlie, and Skuggan (=Shadow), and the mother is Müsli. Ester and Charlie will go to other homes eventually.
And yes, they still want to suck milk, even though they eat cat food now! Look at the mom almost buried underneath them--they're almost as big as she is.
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Date: 2013-10-20 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-10-20 01:15 pm (UTC)I'm probably mispronouncing Skuggan's name, but I LOVE that name (I mean, I guess in Swedish it doesn't sound as cool, but it sounds cool to me) Is mama cat's name...Granola? Or does that word mean something different in Swedish? Anyway, she is so pretty!
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Date: 2013-10-20 01:56 pm (UTC)And yes, müsli is the thing with oats and raisins and stuff that you put on your yoghurt or in your milk, which I'm guessing granola also is.
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Date: 2013-10-20 01:47 pm (UTC)Funny story: Mimi is a tabby a bit like Müsli and when she had kittens she ALSO had a black/white, a red/white, and two tabbies. The female tabby (Musen) looked quite a lot like Skyggen.
Anyway, quick tip, your housemates probably already know, but it'll probably be easier to keep Skyggen if its a girl kitty. Both my family and my cousin's tried keeping a boy kitten, and it just doesn't seem to work out. The mommy cats become really exasperated with their sons and the sons kind of stall in a weird semi-inappropriate Oedipal phase, it can be a lot of hassle...
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Date: 2013-10-20 02:00 pm (UTC)I will pass on the tip about girl kitties! I think Skuggan is a girl, though I'm not entirely sure.
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Date: 2013-10-20 03:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-20 07:24 pm (UTC)Random Interesting Thing: Black-and-orange markings are usually X-linked. All-ginger tabbies are therefore most often male (XY). Cats with a mix of orange and black patches, with or without underlying stripes (Musli & Skuggan) are usually female (XX), except for the occasional rare XXY males. During foetal development, one X chromosome in each cell is turned off at random - either the one carrying "orange" or the one carrying "black". The size of the resulting colour-patches depends on which point it's turned off - if it's early in development (when the kitten is just a few cells) the patches are bigger than if it's later.
(This also makes it quite probable that Black Male Kitten, Orange Male Kitten and Tortoiseshell-Tabby Female Kitten are all full siblings :-)
eta: Or Black Female Kitten? Not sure. Black can be either...
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Date: 2013-10-20 07:48 pm (UTC)So do you mean that the black and orange genes are alleles on the X chromosome, so that the males can only get one of them, and females can get one of each? Or both, like Black Female Kitten--yes, Ester is a girl. And does the whole X chromosome get turned off? So I guess that's inherited when that cell divides, which makes for the patches...wow, this is so fascinating! \o/
I guess we can deduce that Müsli mated with a black male, then, since Ester is black.
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Date: 2013-10-20 07:59 pm (UTC)The father must have been carrying the black allele, I guess. But he might also have had other genes - tabby gene (black & brown stripes - not unlikely since two of the kittens are tabby) and/or the "washed out" gene (so, grey) and/or one of the "white patches" genes (so, black and white, or grey and white, or tabby and white)...
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Date: 2013-10-20 08:41 pm (UTC)Now I'm thinking about the way huskies sometimes have one blue and one brown eye, or sometimes one eye is even half-blue, half-brown. That sounds kind of like the patch thing? Or maybe it's a completely different process.
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Date: 2013-10-20 09:31 pm (UTC)But dogs, yeah. I used to understand dogs. Maybe I still do, but haven't had one in a long time :(
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Date: 2013-10-20 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-10-21 01:37 am (UTC)And I adore Müsli as a name for a multicoloured cat.
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Date: 2013-10-21 03:34 pm (UTC)I'm generally a dog-oriented person too, but a kitty can be awfully hard to resist when he gives you that, "Awww, but I'm warm and furry, and conveniently lap-sized, how can you not cuddle me?" Devious. ;)
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Date: 2013-10-21 07:08 pm (UTC)And yeah, very devious. : )
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