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Nuphar (31-07-2008) & Ariel (03-04-2008)

Nuphar is a beautiful seal mink and white male, our first born, son of Phlox and Firmin. Ariel, is a sweet tortie girl. Their daughter Hoppin’ Hua stays with us.

Firmin, male, 11-05-’07, Chocolate tabby & white

Handsome and sweet guttersnipe, sometimes he’s a bit clumsy, heehee. Huge hobbies are; eating (fish, fish and lots more fish) and playing in the fenced garden, and cuddling a lot. Firmin pets us back, very softly on the cheeks. Together with Phlox he runs through the house, rolling, jumping, having fun. Firmin has cute, furry white feet and a furry tail. He’s not completely bald. We tend to doubt the colour that is on his pedigree. He seems to have aqua eyes. Firmin has been scanned negative for HCM, PKD and CIN and has bloodgroup A.

Phlox, retired female, 21-05-’06, Seal tabby point

Super bald, nice, opinionated girl. She can “talk” so sweetly and prefers to sleep in bed with us. Our arms wrapped around her and her head poking out from under the covers. When Firmin arrived she kan finally have a ball. They play and romp together, and maybe this year they can have a litter. Phlox has a mysterious look in her beautiful blue eyes.
Because Phlox has a high percentage of inbreeding we searched for a friend who can bring it way down. Combined with Firmin this percentage gets from 18.5 to 0.34 over 4 generations. Over 9 generations it will go down from about 22% to 6.39. Because chances for heriditary diseases are much higher in inbred cats we’ve decided Phlox will be tested for HCM first, at one year of age, and 2 years of age, before she can have her first litter. She will also be tested for CIN and PKD. At 14 months of age Phlox was tested negative for HCM, PKD and CIN. On April 22nd she passed a second negative HCM scan. Phlox has bloodgroup A. Phlox is now living in Belgium with her lovely daughter Zillah.

Alice, retired female, 23-06-’03, Blue

In 2005 we started looking for info and pictures of Sphynxes on the Internet. Because of my allergy for furred felines our interest grew. The price for kittens was too high for us at that moment so we started our search for a retired cat. At the beginning of 2006 I found an msn group about the breed and placed a kind of ad in which I wrote we would like to give a special needs Sphynx a warm home. After a few days I got a mail from cattery Le Chat Noble, they had a dam they would not breed anymore because of a heart murmur. If I promised never to replace her and to buy her an electrical blanket I could pick her up.

We were so happy. That same weekend we went to get her. Alice had a chronic conjunctivitis (infected eye) which she had gotten after a visit to a stud from cattery ‘t Elzenhof. We also got the advice to have her HCM tested because the murmur could possibly point to HCM. On the way home Alice was in my lap, my cat, to cuddle without having the feeling that my head would explode from the inside out…I just sat there crying (so there were tears, but they had nothing to do with the allergy for once J).

The fact that one thing or another was wrong with her was too bad, but we would do everything we could to make her happy. But I was a real layman. HCM, I found on Google, was a heart disease. Nothing more. Now I know, I know a lot more about it. As soon as Alice was used to us, and developed into a playful and healthy looking girl without her teary eye we went to see a specialist. She was diagnosed with HCM. Alice is the result of inbreeding, her dad is also her granddad. She is a niece of Harmony, the brave cat who died on May 17 2008 after an unfair battle with this terrible disease.

Aliceke had one litter before she came to live with us. Her son Bryce (born Julius) has HCM in a bad way (Anneke, we feel for you). Bryce’s sister, Juna, has heart murmur, too. The last thing we heard was that Juna was sold “open” and that her pedigree was not passed along. Juna and Bryce’s brother, called Joske, has been stud in cattery Simanoba for a long time. The breeder, Viv, told me she sadly did not have her cats scanned for HCM. She also said that Joske showed no interest in mating. Luckily. Juna, our Alice’s daughter, had a son called Seti. He has heart murmur, too. This line is really very dangerous.