Our beautiful homebred queen Annie O, gave birth early evening (24th Feb 2012) to 2 big, fat and chunky bundles of joy, 1 male and 1 female. They have Annie's coat tones and colour... and their Sires (Big Mac) size. This is our first litter of the year and we are very pleased with the outcome. I have to confess, I wasn't expecting them to put in an appearance until around the 27th Feb. I guess mum decided they were big enough already and she wasn't waiting, and neither were they.
The male has an identical tail to his mummy, a full articulated hock tail with NO kinks or knots. The female has a longer tail that appears it will be short of foot.
Both were a decent birth weight (the girl) 144g, and (the boy) 149g, which is over 5oz each. Not quite the groundbreaking 6.8oz their dad was, that brought me to naming him what I did. But to be fair, he was an only kitten, and didn't have to share any space when developing... so mum held out for and extra week before he was born.
I have already decided on the names for these kittens, which almost always based on a nautical or coastal theme. I say almost always because their are exceptions to this rule.
In fact this pairing was of 2 exceptions to that rule. Annie O was named (after orphan Annie). She was a singleton and abandoned by her own mother, raised initially by me for a few weeks and then by her aunt. Big Mac was named as I previously mentioned because of his size. Thinking back, I probably could have come up with a name that was nautical and relative to size.. but Supersize Me was my first thought and it stuck... with no regrets!
As both parents of this litter were a break away from my regular naming conventions, it seemed fitting to add a twist to the way I named this litter. The usual approach is (which I am sure you're all familar with by now), I think of a Pedigree name (in some why relevant). I then attach a nickname/call name that can be made from a sound, from part or whole of the pedigree name.
I have decided to reverse this process, and do what a lot of us do when we are looking to find a name with meaning for our own children. So this litter has nicknames/call names with a Coastal or Nautical meaning. The meaning itself will then become their pedigree name.
So what are the names of this brother and sister going to be?
Well, I have decided on Dylana for the girl. I think it sounds a pretty name, and it means Born From Waves. For the Boy, I have opted for Neptune. It's strong and typey ;oP, of which I hope this boy is both.... Neptune is of course a mythological name for the God of the Sea.
As "of" is not permitted in a TICA names (because its use is already alloted to indicate a transfer of ownership to another cattery other than it's origin), we have got around this once again by linking OF and THE together.
So there you have it, the naming is done... (Dylana and Neptune),
Annie O is being a super attentive mum, that is comfortable with me stroking and lifting her babies away, for brief amounts of time. So you can imagine I didn't have to wait very long for the debut shots.
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| Left is Nepute (showing of that super tail) and Right is Dylana. |
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