All grown up

Emma's kittens are getting very close to going to their new homes. They are so much fun right now. We usually have all 6 on the bed at night tucked in every little space left after our older girls take their spots. Needless to say, it's a little hard to move around...but it's fun. They love to play with everything and love to cuddle...and purr. We will miss them, but we are so excited for their new families to get to enjoy all the furry fun.

Nala's kittens are starting to play with each other. They can't walk very well yet, so it's kind of funny to watch them try to move around and attack each other. They are like little toddlers. Before long they will be running all over the place!

First picture

Here is a picture of two of Nala's kittens. She has 3 boys and 2 girls. We are still waiting for their color to come in more so we can tell their patterns.

New Kittens!

Nala had her kittens today! She started at about 8 this morning when her water broke. She took her time and had her last one around 5 this evening. I waited a little bit to make sure it really was her last one...and the final count is 5 beautiful little white fur balls. Nala is purring away and happy to finally be done :-). And even the kittens are purring! So, everyone is happy. I will post pictures as soon as I get some.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a busy fall here at Little Apple, so I've been bad about keeping up on the updates. Here's a little bit of what's happening right now.

Emma's kittens are a lot of fun. They are in the playful stage and keep us laughing with their antics. They love to crawl up on my lap, but they don't sit still for long so it usually ends up with them playing in my lap (not sleeping). They are all very sweet too and love to be held.

Nala is expecting kittens in a little less than a week, so we can't wait to see how many she has and what their patterns are going to be. She is very happy right now and content to lounge in the birthing room. She'll be really busy soon, so it's good that she is having some down time first. I will post an update when the kittens are born!

We are continuing to work on updates for our website, but most of them have been put on hold until after Thanksgiving. If you are waiting to see additions to our scrapbook we should have more up in early December. We also have some new articles that are about ready to post. We will make sure to post a blog to announce any web changes, so check back if you are interested.

Kittens for Christmas

We are happy to announce that the first few pages of the scrapbook were posted this past weekend and we have more that we hope to be able to add in the next week or so. We are very grateful to all that have contributed!

Emma's kittens have grown a lot in the last week, so I'm posting another picture. They are sweet and floppy kittens. They are also huge! One of the boys was over 1lb at 3 weeks of age. We are starting to be able to tell them apart and so we hope to have names for them soon. They will be ready for their new homes right around Christmas time!

Scrapbook and Kitten update

For all of you that are waiting for a notice on the new scrapbook, it is coming along well. We hope to have it up soon. We keep getting new pictures, so I'm trying to get it all together before we post it. We have decided to send out an email notice when it is done, so hopefully you will be hearing from me soon. Thanks to everyone that has participated!

We are also enjoying Emma's new kittens. Their eyes are opened and they are walking around exploring. They are almost 3 weeks old now, which is hard to believe. It looks like we have 3 boys and 3 girls, all are seal lynx bicolor. They will be ready for their new homes around Christmas.

Fall Kittens

Our first fall kittens were born this morning! Emma had 6 big beautiful kittens. Both mom and kittens are doing well. Emma is constantly purring! I hope to get some pictures of them up here soon.

Growing and Changing

Having Ragdoll kittens around the house is always fun. As the octuplets are growing up we have been enjoying their playfulness, their cuddliness, and their desire to be involved in everything. They are sleeping on the bed, helping me clean litter boxes, helping me sweep (the broom needs attacked, doesn't it?), helping me make the bed, and the list goes on. It's fun as they grow up to learn more about their personalities and all of them are very sweet! We've also been making a few more additions and changes to the website as well. Here are the most recent:
1. Colors & Patterns - We have updated this page adding new pictures and expanding some of the descriptions. If you are wanting more information about how to describe the colors and patterns this article will hopefully be helpful to you.
2. About Us - This article gives a little history of our journey into breeding Ragdolls. If you want to know more about us, this is a good article to read.
3. Everything You Want To Know About Shipping - Throughout our time breeding we have shipped kittens all over the States, from coast to coast. Many people have a lot of questions about shipping and this is our attempt to answer most of those questions. If you are thinking about having a kitten shipped to you, please take a look at this article for details on how that process works.
4. We also put some new pictures up of our kittens this past weekend. So check out our kitten page to see their new pictures.

Sweet dreams

While the kittens are spending their days playing and sleeping, we are continuing to add articles to the website. Here are some of the newest:
1. The 3 F's: Felv, FIV, FIP - this article gives general information about these three diseases and ways of preventing your cat or kitten from coming in contact with them.
2. Toxic House plants - gives a link to a website that has a big list of indoor and outdoor plants that are toxic to your cat.

Time keeps ticking away...

Okay, so it's been a really long time since I last wrote. Bailey's kittens have grown in the last 3.5 weeks. We have their first individual pictures posted so you can see how beautiful they are, just take a look at the kitten page! We are planning to do a series of website updates in the upcoming weeks. The first article is posted here. It is an explanation, written by our vet and us, of the common findings for kittens at the first few vet appointments. We hope it will be helpful!

Eight Little Apples in a basket

Hi Everyone! I'm falling terribly behind in my blogging, but I have a great excuse...lots of beautiful kittens to play with everyday! Here is the first picture of our octuplets. It's very hard to get 8 kittens to look at you all at the same time, so we were doing pretty good to get 7 of them. These little ones are about 4.5 weeks old already, I can't believe how fast the time goes. They are litter trained and starting to play with the older kittens already. We are having fun getting to know each one of their little personalities!

Octomom Update

Bailey is doing great with her 8 kittens. You would hardly know she has that many to care for. They are all growing very fast and their eyes are open. They are starting to crawl around and engage in their surroundings. They are two weeks old today, so we are confident of listing their color and patterns now. So here goes: 2 seal mitted boys, 1 seal colorpoint boy, 2 seal lynx colorpoint boys, 1 seal tortie colorpoint girl, 1 seal torbie colorpoint girl and 1 seal torbie mitted girl. There are 5 boys and 3 girls total. I will probably try to get some pictures of them in a week or two, when they get to the age they can kind of try to look at the camera ;-).

Website Updates

You might have already noticed but over the last week we have been adding articles to our website. We still have more to come, but so far we have added:
1. A tour of our cattery - This tour is complete with pictures and descriptions of our two homes.
2. Food, Treats, & Water - We often have people ask us about food and water. This article goes into detail about what food we use and why, even hitting on the wet food question. We also give our treat recommendation and talk a little about water, particularly water fountains.
3. Litter and Litter boxes - Just as with food, there are many choices when it comes to litter and litter boxes. This article explains our process of navigating through all the different options and what we ultimately chose as the best litter for us. We also give some tips about how to choose a litter box for your kitten and recommendations on litter box care.
4. Breeder Page - We have one girl that just retired and one new queen, so take a look if you are interested.
5. And last, we just put pictures up of Nala's kittens. They are 5 weeks old now, are already litter trained and running the house. They haven't quite learned to look at the camera yet - there are too many other fun things to look at!

Octomom

Bailey had her kittens in the middle of the night yesterday, July 8th. She had 8! We are now jokingly calling her the Octomom. This is our biggest litter ever by 2 kittens. Bailey is a great mom and will take care of them all very well I'm sure. And since she had 6 last time she is used to taking care of a lot of little ones. We can't wait to see what they look like and should have more information on them in a week or so.

Email Woes

We have had an eye opening month here at Little Apple. We have always relied very heavily on email for communicating with our customers. It has been a wonderful, allowing us the freedom to answer numerous questions for people at all times of the day (and night). Until late May, everything had always gone smoothly and we never suspected that we would have any problems. But then June came and we started to realize that a lot of the emails we were sending were not being received. At first, we were not aware of the extent - we thought just a couple of people were having trouble...but now we are realizing that we can't rely on email like we used to. So, we are hoping that our customers will read this and realize that if they have contacted us by email - and haven't heard back from us for awhile...it's probably because our messages are not making it to you. It's also possible that we are not getting all the messages that you are sending. It seems to make sense that the system would be faulty both ways, not just one. The research we have done seems to point to Spam systems that companies like Cox, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail set up to filter the spam coming into your Inbox. Some of the systems are made to just delete messages that might be spam before they get to your Inbox (we aren't sure which though we've been having a lot of trouble with Cox and Hotmail). This means that when I send you a message the Spam filter is identifying my email message as spam and deleting it. It doesn't let me know that my message didn't make it to you and it doesn't let you know that it deleted my message. This means you're wondering why I haven't responded to your questions - and I'm wondering why I'm not hearing back from you about my response. Needless to say - we are thinking that the phone is looking like the better option for communication. It is more difficult to get ahold of people...and you play phone tag for a while before you can actually talk :-)...and sometimes it's hard for people to call if they just have a quick question (when they would feel perfectly fine sending a quick email). But - until we can figure out what is going on with the email and begin to trust it a little more, the phone might be the most reliable. So, hopefully, I will talk to you soon :-).

Lots of changes

We have three litters of kittens in our house right now - and they are all at different stages, so we have lots of fun changes happening right now. Cheya's kittens are 12 weeks old tomorrow and they are starting to head to their new homes. We are saying our goodbyes - and enjoying getting pictures back of them with their new families. Emma's kittens are about 5 weeks old tomorrow and they are getting so cute :-). They had their first pictures taken this weekend, which you can see on our kitten page. It's fun to watch them toddling around and learning to play. Nala's kittens are just over a week old - their eyes are starting to open and we are starting to see their patterns. It looks like she has 4 boys and 2 girls...and will have some of each the colorpoint, mitted, and bicolor patterns. We will let you know when we know for sure!

Kittens!

Nala had her kittens late last night. She had six of them - and they are all big and healthy. I'll give more updates as we learn more about them - colors, patterns, etc.

And we have a picture

Here is the first picture of Emma's kittens. They are about a week old now - and their eyes are just starting to open. We have one boy and three girls. They will all be seal lynx bicolors - like daddy (Crispin). They are still very little, but it looks like we will have some very nice markings - possibly even some show quality. We will keep our eye on that!

New Kittens

Emma had her kittens this morning! She was very nice and waited to go into labor until I woke up. As soon as I rolled out of bed she came up to me and led me to her birthing room - and a few minutes later had her first kitten. She has four in all - and they are big! I'll get pictures up soon.

Play time

Cheya's kittens are so much fun right now - they are fluffy balls of playfulness. I could sit forever and watch them with their little toddler ways. They have started to move outside of the birthing room - into the rest of the house. It's fun to watch them explore the new surroundings - running into the fireplace screen over and over again (Why can't I get through?)...and playing with everything new. They are almost completely litter trained already - at only 5.5 weeks. And they are eating solid food and drinking water...and playing with water ;-). They love the scratching post - and spend hours playing on it. See how much they've grown by looking at their new pictures. They love people and run right up to anyone that comes into their room. They also love to be held - and will even fall alseep cuddled up on our laps. They are all so very cute - and so very sweet!

These are the moments to remember...

Cheya's kittens are such a joy to have around. They are already purring away as soon as you start to pet them! And some even start to purr as soon as they see me. They are growing so fast - and we are starting to see their personalities. To see what they look like, check out their individual pictures on our kitten page.

The joys of spring

A few days back we turned on our ceiling fans for the first time this year. It was an amazing amount of fun for the kittens to try to catch the blades! My eyes are constantly opened to how entertaining normal things can be to the young :-).

Exciting News

We finally have all our breeders DNA tests in hand - and everyone was negative for HCM. It is so exciting for us! We also found out that Dakota is not a cream - but a red, which we highly suspected when he and Nala had 4 seal kittens...which is impossible for a cream and a blue. And two of our breeders (Emma and Dakota) are chocolate carriers! So, it's possible that we might have some chocolates in the future. We are having fun thinking about all the kitten possiblities. Anyway, this confirms what we had expected - since all our breeders have come from lines that are consistantly HCM free, but its still nice to know :-).

Fun days

It's always fun to do things with 8 kittens around. Yesterday I was doing some sit-ups...and pretty soon I had 8 kittens surrounding me. One playing with each foot. Two playing with my hair. Others playing with my arms - and still others watching me with their head tilted to the side. Do you know how hard it is to do sit-ups while laughing ;-). Anyway, this is the constant state of things here at Little Apple, whether I'm cooking or cleaning...or working on the computer or reading...everything I do involves 8 little kittens. I'm going to be really sad when they are all gone - but so happy for the people that will get to enjoy them.

The start of April at Little Apple

Cheya's kittens are growing so fast. They are just over a week old - and their eyes are starting to open. Cheya is doing a great job with them - and all of them are gaining weight in leaps and bounds. Some of them have little fat rolls :-). It's fun to see them all chubby, especially when there are six for mom to take care of! And in the rest of the house we are enjoying all the older kittens while we still have them. Several of them will be gone at the beginning of next week. It's weird to think about how quiet our house will be pretty soon! The kittens are always making us laugh. One day they were playing with a stick toy and when the toy was put away they all kept looking up in the air for it...it's funny to see 8 kittens looking up in the air, trying to find the little feather that was flying around just a minute before! As always, they really love human attention - and will even come up in the night for me to pet them. They are all little purr boxes, and I love to fall asleep with a soft, cuddly, purring kitten next to me. Anyway, April at Little Apple is starting off very well...

Cheya kitten update

Cheya's kittens are doing really well - and we are already seeing color coming in on their ears. They are very cute and every time I go to sneak a peak at them they are laying in the cutest little poses. We think there are 2 girls and 4 boys - but we are waiting a little longer to say for sure. Cheya chose the birthing room under the television - and it's a great little cave area. It's hard to get pictures, though - because it's pretty dark. Especially when it's cloudy and snowing! It's fun to get snow - but I'm ready for spring to come and stay :-).

Cheya had Kittens!

Early this morning (before anyone should be out of bed, if you want my opinion ;-))...Cheya had 6 beautiful kittens. They are all big and healthy - and mom did really well. She is purring a lot and cleaning a lot. Six kittens are a lot to take care of :-). We will hopefully get a picture of them up here soon.

Goodbyes...and Hellos

We have been saying a lot of goodbyes, in the last few weeks...and are getting ready for a bunch more (9 to be exact :-)). The kittens are all growing up and going to their new homes. It's fun to hear how they are settling in with their new families. We miss them, but even while they are leaving us - more are on their way. We have kittens due any day now, by Cheya and Dakota. Cheya is huge this time - we can't wait to see how many little ones she is going to have. Soon we will be saying hello to a whole new bunch! We'll let you know when they arrive :-).

I know...

I know...It's been too long since I last wrote. And so much has been happening. We have been enjoying all the kittens and talking to new owners...and 3 weeks are already gone since I last wrote. Anyway, today I want to talk about Dapple our beautiful seal tortie colorpoint girl. It's always been difficult for me to capture the tortie look on camera - but this girl is really beautiful in person. Her ears, tail, and feet have a marbled look to them with the seal, red, and white. Her face is really beautiful with the marbling look as well. She has one of the sweetest personalities, is very floppy....she also loves to play. My husband (who usually can't tell the difference between the kittens) is especially taken with her - thinking she is one of the more beautiful of our kittens. With torties it's fun, because each one is unique - and Dapple is a beautiful example of the tortie marbling.

Time Flies...

...when you are having fun! I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted a blog, but we have a lot of fun happening here. The kittens are so funny some times. They basically play and sleep and eat ;-). But all three can be hilarious. We have 3 mom's and 15 kittens running our house right now - so it's always exciting around here. The mom's will lay down to nurse and pretty soon you can't see the mom any more it's just a pile of kittens - all the kittens think that they can nurse from any mother (and the mother's let them) so we have seen up to 9 kittens trying to nurse on one girl :-). It's hilarious - but don't feel sorry for the mom...she just gets up and walks off when too many come for a drink. The kittens are all eating solid food - so this milk drinking is more a comfort snack than anything else. The kittens favorite games are make the bed, sweep the floor, load the dishwasher, fold the laundry, and clean the litter box. All of which I get their help in - so it takes me 4 times as long ;-). They also like to sit on our laps whenever we are sitting down. My husband laid down for a nap this weekend and he had 6 kittens laying on him - he couldn't even get up when he was done :-). They also like to sleep with us - most of the time we have at least 6 kittens on our bed and sometimes more. They are very snuggly and sweet. I'm posting a picture I took yesterday of three kittens sleeping on their cat bed. Sometimes this bed will be holding almost all the kittens - I haven't been able to capture that picture yet :-).

Kitten Update

Wow! It's been over a week since I last posted - and a lot has happened. Nala and Bailey's kittens are growing up fast - and are more and more beautiful every day. We are very pleased with all the kittens in both litters. Nala has a couple kittens that have striking eye color, Hidden Rose and Vixen. It might not show up as well in the pictures - but they are electric blue! She also has one boy, Nobel, that is huge - he is almost as big as some of Emma's kittens and he is 3 weeks younger. And Cinnamon Spice is looking like she will be a perfectly marked Seal tortie mitted - and oh so floppy. Of course, they are all floppy and playful - and very cuddly. They also love to sleep with us at night. Bailey's kittens are a lot of fun. There are so many of them! One of her boys, Macintosh, has really deep blue eyes and is completely spineless (he's the one in the picture). He almost fell asleep flopped back in my hands today. Fuji, her other boy, is just as floppy - and purrs when you pick him up. Dapple - has the cuttest little nose...and will be a stunning tortie! And the other three girls (Aurora, Holly, and Lady Sweet), look so much like each other that I still can't always tell them apart. They love to cuddle up beside me and play with each other. And of course - I can't forget Emma's kittens. They are gorgeous and everything a Ragdoll should be. We are truly blessed to have so many wonderful kittens. We enjoy playing with them and holding them - and watching them grow more each day. They are truly a delight to have around!

Pictures

We finally had a nice sunny day - and so I was able to get some pictures of our kittens (before it clouded over again!). Check out our kitten page to see the new pictures. We also added the kittens names - these are just temporary names, until their new family gives them their real name. We like to be able to use names when we talk about them while they are here. All our kittens are named after different kinds of apples. Yep, you read right! And trust me - we will not run out of names for a long time (there are thousands!). We never knew there were so many apples! All our breeders have apple names for their registered names as well.

Crazy, Crazy

Life is getting a little crazy around here. I have been needing to get new pictures of our kittens on the website for days now, but it's going to have to be put on hold until this weekend. I wanted to at least post one picture of an Emma girl so you can see how much the kittens are growing and changing. Emma's kittens are starting to roam the whole house now and are a joy to have around. Please have patience with me, while I'm trying to keep on top of all the unexpected things that make up real life. In my dream world I would hope to have the pictures on by Friday or Saturday night - but it could spill over into next week. Sorry!

New Articles

It seems like it's been a really long time since I posted a blog - but I've been busy making a bunch of website changes. If you are interested check out some of the following new additions to our library!

1. We've added pictures to our color and pattern page to help explain all the beautiful varieties our Ragdolls can come in.

2. Want to know what food and litter we use for all our cats and kittens - and why? Check out our food and litter recommendations.

3. All of our cats medical needs are taken care of by the the K-State Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Read more about them and why we love to go there.

4. Learn more about a wonderful monthly treatment to keep your cats free from many common parasites on our Revolution for cats page.

5. And find out about all of the Fun Stuff that makes our cats and kittens happy!

And I can't resist adding a picture of one of our little kittens. This little boy is one of Nala's and he is huge! He is breaking records and was already 1 lb when he was 3 weeks old.

Dakota Gold

Dakota is our foundation stud. He is a beautiful cream colorpoint - and he just keeps getting more and more beautiful as he matures. He definitely fits the Ragdoll characteristic of maturing slowly. His color is still coming in and he continues to grow and fill out. We can't wait to see what he will look like in a couple of years! He is a lap cat and loves attention. He also loves to play. He is a wonderful addition to our little cat family. We are especially pleased with his kittens - they are beautiful, have great personalities, and are very social. Take a look at some of the pictures on our Little Apple Kitten page to see some of his babies.

Anoka

With all the new kittens coming, I fell a little behind in my breeder blogs. So, I thought I better get back to that. Anoka, is also known as Cheya (as in Cheyenne). Anoka is her apple name - most all our breeders registered names are apple names, a couple of them had names in our house before we had their registered names done, and the old names are still used. It's hard to change a name, I guess ;-). Cheya, is a beautiful girl. She loves her belly rubbed...and her head...and well, let's just say she loves affection. She is also very playful. She has produced some beautiful kittens for us...in fact two of our current breeders, Crispin and Bailey are hers. Her kittens have wonderful personalities, extremely soft fur, and beautiful eyes. Just like her!

Bailey's kittens

Bailey is doing a really good job keeping up with 6 kittens. She is a good mother - and is fairly relaxed for a first-time mother. She doesn't seem to be happy with her nesting arrangement though! We keep several areas available for the cat's use for nesting, but when you are the last to have your kittens (like Bailey) some of the spots are already taken. She hasn't quite figured this out yet and keeps trying to get some of the other girls to share. She also has tried to make some new nesting areas (like under our bed, under my shoe rack in my closet, and under my nightstand). I think she finally is satisfied with the night stand - she wants to be as close to me as possible at all times...and 8 hours at night is too long to be away from me! Anyway, they are beautiful kittens and we can't wait until their colors and patterns start to show.

And the record is broken

Hi Everyone! Bailey had her kittens last night - in the middle of the night. We thought at first that we might have some New Years babies to go with our Christmas babies when we first noticed she was going into labor around 11 o'clock. But her first kitten was delivered at 1 o'clock on January 2nd and then 5 more came after that. Yep, you read right - 5 more, meaning Bailey has 6 little kittens. She broke not only the record for most kittens in her first litter (which was previously 4), but also the most kittens any of our girls has ever had (our biggest litters up to this point have been 5). It's exciting, and I'm tired ;-). About 10 years ago when I was first starting college I remember being able to stay up until 4 in the morning and I would bounce back right away the next day. I guess it's not as easy now! I hope to have some pictures up today or tomorrow.