A little over a year ago we had the privilege of welcoming a young blue male kitten to our home. He was from another British shorthair cattery in California called WC Blues. He had been born the smallest in his litter and as such, got the nickname Tiny. He soon grew to be the largest in his litter and has remained that way since. His nickname stuck though and we still call him Tiny.
“Tiny” doesn’t sound dignified enough for a show cat. Well, my husband thought it was a great registered name. I wasn’t convinced. Maybe it’s my own insecurities. After talking to other breeders and mulling it over in my mind, I settled on Sir Charles. This name sounded like one that would garner respect and one of my favorite dogs had been named Sir Charles. He was special and Tiny was special so I registered Tiny as, WC Blues Sir Charles of Beauty Tracks. This sounded fitting to me for the show cat I hoped he’d be.
Well Tiny is pretty special. When he first joined us he was just under three months old. One of our cats, Zina, had a litter of kittens at the time and Tiny missed his mama and tried to nurse with Zina. She wasn’t fond of the idea and would swat him away. Tiny persisted though and kept trying. He found that if he joined from the back she would ignore him. Soon he was nursing with all her kittens despite him being twice their size.
Tiny sneaking in
He quickly worked his way into our hearts and we fell head over heals with him. In January 2013 he went to his first show, that turned out to be a fun experience. He’s been to other shows as well and between those times, we just enjoy him as much as is possible.
This past spring our girls began coming in heat. Tiny knew he should do something, but wasn’t quite sure what. So he’d stand over them and bite the scruff of their neck, then just stand there. It was quite comical really, having a female arching, purr meowing and gyrating around and Tiny just standing there.
With time he seemed to be figuring out what a boy is to do when a girl is acting this way. He didn’t know quite all of it but enough that I decided it was time to separate him from the girls. I work a lot and wanted to wait to have kittens. So he took up residence downstairs where my own boys bedrooms are. And time went by.
Well, Daisey is one of our girls who has very short heat cycles and will be in heat for about a day and a half. I had never been about to get her to a stud we’ve used in Portland, OR or Seattle, WA because she would be out of heat by the time I tried to make arrangements. So when Daisey came into heat, I thought, “She’s two years old now, I’ll let she and Tiny spend some time together.” So downstairs she went, to join Tiny.
A few days later I happened to go into one of my sons rooms and discovered the carpet was wet half way across his room. Needless to say, the water line in the wall had sprung a leak and water was taking over. Somehow it evaded my son as to the fact that it might be important to tell me about something like this. He’d known about it for awhile and it just didn’t occur that it would be good to let us know!
The water caused mold and the carpets had to ripped out of all the downstairs and then chemicals had to be sprayed to kill the mold. I couldn’t have cats down with the fumes, so let Daisey and Tiny up to join the rest of us.
Update:
Earlier I mentioned that I work a lot. Sometimes the busyness makes it so I don’t think of everything. One important detail, I neglected to consider, was that Tiny may have figured out what to do with girls who are in heat. Which can explain how we had three litters of British shorthair kittens born in the same day!