Yeah, that’s how far behind I am. But hey, I do have some pictures, so that’s a start, right?
There are SO MANY more, but there’s a limit to what I can get accomplished in one day. Maybe more tomorrow!
As the fall has shifted into winter, we officially have turned the heated cat bed back on, and cats have returned to piling on warm things.
(Mac, Nemo, Nightfall, and Mister)
Or trying to squish themselves into beds.
(Mac, Youngsmile, and little Ms Flare).
Or pile upon the dishwasher.
(Nemo, Balance, Mac, Youngsmile, Mister, Squirt)
This little kitten is one of the most amazing additions to our household. Flare is a seal tortie point colourpoint shorthair and is currently tearing up the show rings in Canada, and has already won our hearts (and likely a permanent place in the household). She is astonishingly bold, just fiery enough to be entertaining, and ever so sweet.
She’s also super long and super kitteny.
And obviously very photogenic, even when sleepy.
I love her crazy blaze.
And her beautiful head.
And the fact that she too has created this picture. I think we have at least 4 or 5 versions of this. Yes, her eyes are really that blue.
She loves her Uncle Nemo too, as everyone else does. Nemo continues to be the most important and most wonderful cat ever.
We also have twins atop the microwave (who are, in fact, at least a little bit related).
Mister’s becoming an actual cat as well, even with the fake pregnancy.
She’s long and yawny and likes Macavity quite a bit.
This slightly blurry cat is SiamJewels Parfait, who is currently ridiculously, over the top pregnant with Balance’s first kittens. In this picture, she’s only a little pregnant. :)
She is also Jellylorum’s litter mate. :) Jelly got all the balls in that litter (even from the other boys, I fear) but Parfait’s very pretty and sweet, so that’s a good start.
Last but not least, Camouflage is finally growing up. He’ll get to hopefully actually make kittens with Mister in a month or two.
There you go! Cat pictures! And….
The macaws showing off their new playstand.
And finally, two dogs and a tinycat.
Tah-dah! September!
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
GROWLTIGER was a Bravo Cat, who lived upon a barge;
In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large.
From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims,
Rejoicing in his title of, ‘The Terror of the Thames.’
(He has a little growing up to do before he can really be a Terror)
Once upon a time, back before the house fell into the depths of the Orientals, we had discussed several different breeds of cats that we might want to have in our household, and eventually narrowed it down to essentially two: Bengals and Orientals.
Obviously, we chose Orientals, which was absolutely the right choice for us and our household. But, those gloriously spotty Bengals are all over the place at cat shows. Some of them had temperaments that weren’t exactly what I was looking for, and for a Bengal, I wanted the best of the absolute best.
Sometime earlier this year, I kept hearing the judges talk about a specific breeder and his cats, and they kept gushing about temperament and how wonderful these cats were, and one in particular.
And, a couple months later, we started talking with that specific breeder (whose name is Alexandre) quite a bit more, as he imported a lovely Oriental stud and wishes to start breeding Orientals.
In talking with him, I also got to meet his cat, Bengallys Achille, who is the most astonishingly sweet, well tempered, beautiful boycat I’ve seen in some time. And, being a boycat, he helped make some kittens….
Somehow, thanks to the wonders of kitten pictures and stories and discussions of how lovely it would be to have a Bengal show alter, and how much potential this one specific kitten had, I ended up the owner of one tiny leopard spotted poofball.
With the very first picture I saw of him, I knew what his name was going to be… one of the only names in Old Possum’s Guide to Practicalcats that I could never, ever use for an Oriental. If you’re not familiar with the poem, I suggest you go here and read it and see why.
He walked into the house like he owned it, and is pretty sure the whole world belongs to him.
He is the most awesome tiny leopard, full of playfulness and purring and boinging and occasional leaping upon the other cats and delight. He’s absolutely perfect for this house, and a hilarious contrast to the rest of the household.
I love him. And he’s already nearly bigger than Flare (who is nearly three months older than him) and will likely top out somewhere in the higher than 15 pound range. :)
He’s tagging along to a cat show with me next weekend but can’t make his official show debut until February thanks to the winter/holiday break.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
So many things have happened in the past *sigh* two months since I’ve updated this. I’m going to summarize and then start trying to go through the various and sundry pictures I have.
Parrots:
Strawberry is a boy bird, and is very happily living with Radish, and being red heads together.
Everyone else is still doing wonderfully, eating up a storm, playing up a storm, talking up a storm.
Got a new Austin Air Purifier which I freaking love to death.
Got a new Java tree for the macaws (mostly) to hang out on upstairs, which is also super awesome and they love it.
Have most of a post written about co-housing, but need pictures and things, and to edit more, so it’ll come soonish.
Going to Canadian Parrot Conference next month — come say hi if you see me!
Dogs:
Crow turned 10.
Noire turned 8.
I don’t understand how my puppies have gotten this old. Thankfully, they also don’t understand it, and still act like they’re young dogs.
Cats:
New/old breeding cats, Flare and Parfait, who have been here for several months now. Details on them on the practicalcats webpage — http://practicalcats.ca/queens.html
Had what we thought would be three (one not entirely planned) litters of kittens collapse into one litter of kittens and two false pregnancies. First kittens are due around November 10th.
Currently in the end of the cat shows for the year, with two potentially nationally winning cats (Flare and Youngsmile), which is awesome.
Next post will have more cat news, because he deserves his own post.
Life:
Insanely busy (and very happy) with work.
Dealing with some physical things that seem to be fixing themselves.
Could use some more sleep and at least six extra hours in the day.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
This is going to be a shorter post simply because there’s just not that much research out there on the subject of parrots kept in isolation vs those kept with other members of their species.
The few pieces that are out there are pretty clear that social isolation is not good for Amazons and African greys (the two species that have been most researched).
From page 2 – 3 of http://endcap.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/0
Birds are routinely
denied two of their most fundamental natural behaviours:
flying and socialisation. It has been suggested that the
denial of these activities can cause both physical (Graham
1998) and behavioural abnormalities in captive parrots (van
Hoek & ten Cate 1998; Garner et al 2003b; Meehan et al
2003a, 2004; Meehan et al 2003b). Parrots kept as pets are
often housed alone or in pairs in small cages incapable of
accommodating flight (van Hoek & ten Cate 1998)
The biggest research on the subject came from UC Davis’s studies with Orange Winged Amazons in the early 2000s. Once upon a time, there was a great summary posted online, but it appears to have disappeared. For now, this is the best link I can find — https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.e
Isosexual pair housing resulted in a more active and diverse behavioral repertoire, eliminated the development of stereotypy and reduced fear responses to novel objects without imparting significant risk of illness and injury or jeopardizing the ability of parrots to relate positively with humans. Thus, it appears that pair housing can significantly improve environmental quality and positively affect the welfare of captive parrots.
And finally, some more recent research on African greys. From Science Daily:
Scientists at the Vetmeduni Vienna examined the telomere length of captive African grey parrots. They found that the telomere lengths of single parrots were shorter than those housed with a companion parrot, which supports the hypothesis that social stress can interfere with cellular aging and a particular type of DNA repair.
If you know of more research for or against pair keeping, please leave details in the comments!
Next up will be ‘setting yourself up for success’ and finally ‘introducing more challenging parrots’.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
As the previous posts on communal housing make pretty clear, I’m a big fan of having at least two parrots of each genus or species in my household, and if possible, housing them together.
When I brought home my first parrots, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Around the same time, there was a beautiful movie released about the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a flock of mostly cherry headed conures (Psittacara erythrogenys, previously Aratinga erythrogenys). The local rescue had several of the unreleasable wild birds for adoption, and I even asked about one to find he was already adopted. I did get to meet several of them and thought they were just a really neat species.
And then I moved to Canada, where cherry heads are really, really rare. 9 years pass… :)
( Read more...Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
This is part 2 of a multi-part series. Part 1 is here. This post is significantly more personal observation based than the previous one.
If you own parrots, I have a challenge for you. I want you to try to find me an image of your parrot’s species in the wild. And then, I want you to find me an image of your parrot’s species in the wild alone (zoomed out, please, no cheating for super up close focus :)).
I’m guessing the latter is going to be nearly impossible for most of the commonly kept species in captivity. I’m also guessing that if you do find a picture of a parrot alone in the wild, that parrot is in a nest.
In the wild, almost every species of parrot lives in either small family groups (parents, children, sometimes young adult children that have not yet mated on their own) or in large flocks.
The most commonly kept parrots in captivity are budgies/parakeets, cockatiels, and lovebirds. And they are all huge flocking birds. Check out this amazing video of budgies in the wild narrated by David Tennant.
I won’t get into nature vs nurture, ‘nature’ as a concept, evolution or anything else here. I will just say that for myself, I cannot find a reasonable argument against parrots generally choosing to spend time with their own species given the option.
And yet, in our homes, most parrots live alone. Most parrots are raised alone, and many can live out their lives without seeing a single other parrot.
( Read more...Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
Yeah, it’s been forever since I posted pictures again. This set will be all cat pictures, because there are so many.
( Read more...Collapse )As the title will hopefully show, this is the beginnings of a series of writings that will eventually be collated into a single page on the rational parrot page. However, I’m not currently in a mental or physical state to sit down and write it all at once, and I like the feedback, so I’m going to do blog posts first, refine my ideas, and then create an easy link for those who want to share it.
This information is based on science (studies will be linked in later articles), observations that I’ve done, observations that other people have done, and ethology (wild behaviour). This is, at the heart of it, my opinion, based on what I have seen and what I have learned. As with anything else out there on the internet, please take this with a grain of salt, and take from it what applies to you and what resonates with you. I will, to the best of my ability, back up my opinion with the sources and realizations that created it and continue to refine it.
The topic of this writing is a controversial one, specifically, the idea of keeping parrots in pairs or flocks in our households. Once upon a time, and to some degree still, many people said that a parrot who had another parrot that they lived with would not want to interact with people, that they’d lose their relationship with them.
This is true. And false. There’s two pieces here that I’m going to address separately.
( A whole lot more.Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
Sorry for the radio silence — I’ve got a post I’m working on but they’re not up yet. :) For the meantime though…
Please share widely — a 10 year old cat is often challenging to rehome, and the more people who pass this along, the more likely she can find her new people.
I have a friend who is looking to rehome his adult cat due to some life changes. She’s located in Brampton, Ontario. Here’s his writeup and some pictures.
Her name is Sexycat and she is a 10yr old female calico in perfect health. She has the softest fur and loves to have it stroked while laying in a sunbeam. She is quite intelligent and know several words including “birds”, “what’s this”, “up up” and of course “bang” (she will fall down on her side). Her favorite foods include triple chocolate cookies, ringalos and fresh baked blue berry muffins. When she came into my life she saved me, now where my life is going, I need to save her. Please, help me to give her the home she needs and deserves.
Please contact Nick at barcas03 at yahoo dot com if you’re interested in giving Sexy a home.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
From the end of March to the end of April, I was at a cat show almost every weekend. During that time, the posting here fell to nothing, as you can see… but the pictures didn’t stop. This is going to be photo heavy, and by that I mean ‘brace yourself’.
Brief summary of how we ended the cat show year (which ends on April 30th):
Deuce is now Grand Champion SiamJewels Doppelganger.
Nightfall is now Champion ClassicOri’s Noble Nightfall
Macavity is now *brace yourself* Champion and Supreme Master Grand Premier SiamJewels Macavity. He also ended up the 10th best all-breed alter for 2014-2015. :)
Showing won’t start again in any real earnest until July, so now you get to have me update things again. :)
Also, we now have a cattery website — Practical Cats Cattery where you can go and get a cheat sheet of who is who. :)
( Got crossposting to work again!Collapse )
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
http://www.rationalparrot.com/blog/2
“(At least we all heard that somebody purred)
Which is incontestable proof
Of his singular magical powers:
And I have known the family to call
Him in from the garden for hours,
While he was asleep in the hall.
And not long ago this phenomenal Cat
Produced seven kittens right out of a hat!”
— Mr. Mistoffelees, by T.S. Eliot.
Thanks to the last line I quoted above, I have always, always wanted to name a breeding queen Mr. Mistoffelees, called Mister for short. And, thanks to an off hand conversation with our dear friend and cat-enabler, Jessica, a few weeks before we picked up the German kittens, we’ve ended up with exactly that cat.
( Read more...Collapse )This happens with some frequency when I go to a cat show and then get an awful cold and also am lazy.
But I will celebrate by giving you some cat pictures and then in the next post, some news that everyone on Facebook already knows!
( Read more...Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
One day, I will write up an entire post on why I’m working towards housing parrots together. In the short term, this Youtube link from Natural Inspirations Parrot Cages makes a whole lot of my points for me (although I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, nor do I think all parrots should be communally housed — but it should definitely give you some food for thought).
I’ve seen some amazing behavioural changes in Theo since he moved in with Tlalli, which I pointed out before. He’s more social, MUCH more willing to come out of his cage, is working on learning to talk, has begun flapping his mostly unfunctional wings to the point that he’s regaining breast muscle after years of atrophy.
( Read more...Collapse )You knew this was coming, didn’t you? You knew that the time would come that the kittens would discover the warmy bed, and the crisis would begin.
( Read more...Collapse )Boy, this one is overdue. Told you I had a lot of blog to write.
I have been to a number of parrot club meetings over the years, and have never once found one that met all my requirements. The biggest issue has been with flighted parrots — many of the clubs that I’ve gone to either refuse to believe that a person can safely keep a flighted parrot, or freak out if a parrot goes to the meeting and flies. The second one is about positive reinforcement and good training — I really prefer to be around like minded individuals.
I decided to give it a shot again and went to the January meetup of The York Region Parrot Club, and it was absolutely awesome. I spent half the meeting with parrots flying to my shoulder, and made special friends with a few greys who were absolutely the social butterflies of the evening, and then listened to a great presentation on trick training. We joined that evening. Madam Tlalli will be attending the March meeting with us, which should be a really interesting adventure.
Anyways, as part of being a member, I was on the Facebook group in which (to no one’s big surprise) a number of parrots are posted needing new homes. A few days after the January meeting, someone posted about a parrot, and I had the gut feeling I was doomed.
See, my SO has wanted a Poicephalus for literally a decade now, and I’ve been making faces at the idea because he wanted a Senegal, and I don’t really like them much. Something about the way they look and the way they interact with the world just doesn’t do it for me. I suggested a Meyers, he made faces, and we were at an impasse. And it never really seemed to be the right time.
( Read more...Collapse )No bad news here, just some… interesting times at the Rational Parrot household, which is going to get broken up into some separated posts, only because there is SO MUCH.
Two weekends ago, we went to our first cat show of 2015, and had an amazingly good time. Deuce and Macavity did spectacularly well, Nightfall and Balance were not as successful at winning ribbons, but were extremely successful at the important part, which is doing a cat show without losing her mind. And Youngsmile got to catch up with her fans.
And then, while I was at the cat show, I got an IM from a friend of mine who breeds gorgeous, breathtaking, heart-rendingly wonderful working German shepherds. One of her dogs needed to be collected ASAP, was near to me, and could I go get her?
So I did. And then I flew to Texas for work for a week, thus completely abandoning my duties as ‘German shedder carer’.
Bella (that’s the GSD) is the granddaughter of one of my absolute favourite dogs ever, Nike, and we talked very seriously about possibly keeping her, but she’s extremely herdy with cats, and that’s just not something we can deal with now.
( Read more...Collapse )Here’s where I pause to insert my official comments on a couple of things. One of the most important parts of buying a dog from a responsible breeder is that the dog has a safety net. Bella is in the process of finding a new home (which will be extremely easy because she is so, so, so sweet and good tempered, just not a great match for a house full of OSHes), and will always have someone to watch over her. Christine’s dog needed somewhere to go, and she moved heaven and earth to find someone who could do so quickly — because she cares.
If more people took that level of responsibility for the lives they bring into the world, there would be a hell of a lot fewer rescue dogs and cats around. Just something to keep in mind.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
It’s been a little over a week since the glorious day that we brought home Balance, Camouflage, and Nightfall, and we’re getting to know their personalities as well as integrating them into the household. It’s a very fun, but somewhat time consuming task.
There’s four different steps to household integration, that generally go in this order.
1) Comfort with the general house. All the kittens took a day or two to be okay with the space of the house, with walking around through the rooms without hiding, and with being okay with us walking around and making noise. When they’re not free in the house, they stay in our spare room and get lots of cuddles there.
( Read more...Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
What a long story this one is, touching so many different people. It is, in many ways, the story of how I got involved in cat shows and owning purebred cats, and it’s definitely the story of how we’re moving to the next step.
In March of 2013, a fawn solid boy was born to Siam Jewels, and we started an arrangement with Jessica that he would be bred by her and shown by her… and I caught the show bug something awful. In May of 2014, we brought home Youngsmile, a German import who was being retired. In August of 2014, we brought home Siam Jewels Doppelganger with the same idea as Mac, thus continuing our association with Jessica.
And in summer of 2014, we began another project related to all of those above, one that came to a happy conclusion yesterday. We began talking to Bestcats/Classicoris cattery in Germany about importing a kitten for breeding and showing, and after waiting for the right cat in the right litter, we made arrangements to bring home a kitten.
And, over the next few months, things sort of snowballed…. another gorgeous kitten of the colour that I love most was born, and ended up coming home too. And then, we crossed the line from ‘insane cat show people’ to ‘owning a cattery’ with the final cat, a gorgeous girl that is co-owned with Jessica and will be one of the founding queens of our cattery… which means, sometime later this year, there will probably be kittens. :) And of course, our cattery is Practicalcats, and the new webpage will be up soonish.
( Read more...Collapse )Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
Hi all! Quick website functionality note: if you’ve tried to use comments previously and they didn’t work, try again. They probably work now. :)
Onto what you’re all really here for — pictures, stories, and life.
( Read more...Collapse )I hope your new year is ending up as awesome as mine is! 2015 is a year that already has some big, big plans taking place, and a lot of fun things will happen… and a lot of simple, happy, day to day life too.
Originally published at Rational Parrot Blog. You can comment here or there.
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