Sometime breeding sucks.

Breeding is never easy.
Every litters are different , from the early start.
Most of them goes well, with no complications, lots of milk and all  babies grows day by day all healthy and it's such a joy -but when you get a litter that gives you just sorrow and tears, it is hard.  You want to give up your breeding dream, and just have neutred cats.

Why kittens just fade away can be alot of causes.
It can be genetic, it can be viruses, or it is just the mother natures way, that there is problems inside a kitten you can't see, but the mother cat knows.

In our breeding program we take out all the breeding cats that cause any problems we don't want to have in our breeding, if it can't get fixed somehow . It can be a female that of course don't get pregnant, don't have easy birth, low milk production, not good mothers etc etc.
It has not been many of those cases, but this happens in every cattery. Not all females are ment for breeding , but can live a spoiled happy pet life somewere else in a loving lasting home.

We have had males that we have never used, but neutred insted, and also placed in good forever homes.
One male gave us just sadness after sadness, and we discovered a blood type problem. He was neutred fast when we found out the problem, and he has a very good home now with an old siamese cat.

The genetic problems are the worst, because we don't want to put more problems in to this breed, but we are happy when there is an answer to all ours questions.

In this case it is our beloved Ainur. With his beautiful type, and his beautiful temper,that passes on to all his babies.
But it doesn't help to be beautiful and have a good temper, when almost all his babies dies :-(

2 years ago he had 2 big litters, and in the end it was only 2 kittens that grew up.
One of the kittens you might remember, our beautiful red SYS boy Kichiro. He had alot of health issues, but together with our wonderful Vet team , they found out that it was his teeth that caused his problems, and an easy fix. But he never woke up from the operation.  That was really a hard case for us.

This time 2 different litters, and during this weekend whe have lost them all.

Ainur is on his second Suprelorin Chip, and that is good. We hope we will find out why all his kittens just are fading away , togeher with our Vets. The chip will probaly last 1.5y to 2 y.
We hope of course it is nothing genetic and that it's fixable. But if there is nothing to do, or no answer can be found, we will neuter him.

So why am I writing all this?
Because we want pet-people to know that breeding is not always fun , but at the same time we want to find out why, if it's possible , and continue a healthy breeding program.
Cats that are not fit for breeding happens in every cattery, if you are breeding long enough. But many breeders choose to not talk about it. People are different. We have no problems to talk and write about it. We are dealing with alive creatures.

We have alot of exiting plans for 2018 with all our girls, the boys that are planned to be used will be a totally outcross . We are not quite ready yet for a "neuter- cattery".
So we hope for a good fresh start in our cattery next year , with joy and no tears.