I have added a feature to the site that should make it more convenient for some of you to keep up with our current news. Just add this feed to your favorite RSS reader, and whenever there is an update to this site (like the horribly cute photo to the right) you will know!
This is a very coarse and rough video, shot with a first-gen iPhone. What it lacks in quality (which is a lot) it makes up for in cuteness (which is a lot). Ariel's babies having their first adventures outside of the box.
It has been a while since we bred our cats, but bred them we have! Our oldest breeding female, Ariel, spat out a record-setting SIX babies on March 23rd. Prior to this her record was five, but she and our breeding male apparently decided to make up for lost time! All six of them are healthy as hell, and as of today they are exactly 4 weeks old, so we decided it was time to post the news and start contacting the folks who requested to be on our waiting list.
Little side note: we actually have FOURTEEN kittens right now; 6 from Ariel and a staggering EIGHT from our newest, youngest mother, Zoe. Zoe's babies are too small to discuss right now, but suffice to say that for ONCE we may actually be able to clear our ENTIRE waiting list and probably have some left over, so if you hesitated to contact us in the past because you didn't want to sit on the waiting list for a long time, well, now might be a really good time for you to contact us!
Here are all three of the "white" ones. It is a little too early to tell if they are all Platinum solids or if one of them may be a Blue point, but whatever the case they are agonizingly cute.
Here are two of the three Blues (and you can see the other one in the background). They are surely Blue, although again it is a little too soon to tell if they are solid or mink. One thing is for sure... they want out of the box!
UPDATE: The kittens found a home! Thanks to everyone who contacted us!
Greetings! This is the first update we have posted in quite a while! Due to circumstances beyond our control we had to slow waaaaaay down on breeding, but that is now behind us and we have resumed full operations. During our unfortunate lull Ariel did end up producing a litter in March 2011, but we did not have the time or energy to place them all. We currently have two male kittens, a Blue Mink and a Platinum Mink, who are roughly 9 months old. We want to find a good home for them, but we will only place them as a pair and will NOT break them up since they have spent so much of their lives together and are quite close. Accordingly, we are willing to place them for FREE, yes FREE, as opposed to our usual fee. If you are near Nashville, TN and can drive to pick them up then you would not pay so much as a dime! If you are further away and need the kittens shipped then you would only pay for the costs of shipping (which are admittedly fairly high) while the kittens themselves would still be free.
We would prefer that we place the cats with someone locally--within driving distance of Nashville, TN--and preference will be given to candidates who are close enough to pick them up, but if you really want them and are willing to pay for their shipping we are certainly open to that! Please contact us at deborah@tonkinesekitten.com to reserve them or for additional information.
Here are some recent photos of the pair, taken on December 25, 2011.
Here is a full body shot of the Platinum Mink boy.
Here is a close headshot shot of the Platinum Mink boy.
Here is a close headshot shot of the Blue Mink boy.
We sincerely apologize for the recent lack of cute kitten picture updates. We have hundreds of new kitten pictures because we had one litter born February 14, (already all spoken for) and another born March 25--3 stout little boys--and we would love to share the best shots, ranging from spectacular action pics of ninja kittens flying through the air, to diabetes-inducing cute photos of wee toddlers cuddled with Mamacat and learning to swip at each other.
Unfortunately, we recently found our best pictures have been repeatedly stolen; some of the worst offenders are large, for-profit web sites loaded with advertising. Various photo thieves have:
1. Removed our web site logo from our photos, then offered our photos for sale as their own work.
2. Used our best pictures to redirect people to their web site, instead of ours.
3. Committed fraud on people who thought they were buying one of our Tonkinese kittens, by putting our photos on their web site, then claiming the photos of one of our kittens was the kitten they would receive. The list goes on...We now know more about copyright law and DMCA takedown letters than we ever wanted to. The stress and hassle to get some of these people to stop using our photos for profit has been immense. We are fine with "fair use"; some photos have been used as forum avatar icons, and a few cute photos have been posted on non-profit, no-ads sites. But it's unfair and upsetting that much larger web sites have stolen our photos to profit from them, whether it's selling them outright, or stealing web site visitors; we have some photos highly ranked in Google searches, but when people click on the photo, they wind up at a web site crammed with spammy ads instead of our web site.
In short, to fully protect our rights, we can't "publish"--put any kitten pictures up on our web site--until they are FIRST officially registered with the U.S. copyright office. Previously, we had just registered the copyrights once per year. We survive on a very low fixed income, and it costs around $95.00 to register a batch of photos with fees and deposit mailings. We still haven't resorted to advertising--many web ads annoy us too--but we are finally putting up a Paypal button to ask for help. If we receive at least $95.00 in donations, we promise to post at least 150 new kitten pictures within two weeks of reaching that goal! It is embarrassing to ask for help like this, but I'm afraid our web site will be pretty boring until we can scrape the copyright fees together. Also, if donations happen to exceed the goal, ALL will be spent on the Tonks! Their scratching posts are in serious need of new carpet :)...
UPDATE 09/07/2011: Donation of $10.00 from Karen Z. THANKS KAREN!
UPDATE 04/27/2011: Donation of $25.00 from Jeff Kest. THANKS JEFF!
Happy New Year! Earlier this year we suffered a total hard drive crash that took several years worth of our cat photos, videos, web site layouts and emails, and it has taken us quite a while to get back up to speed. Anyone who contacted us prior to December of 2010 and asked to be placed on our waiting list should contact us again just to make sure we have record of you (or make record of you if we lost you). Now that we are functionally operational again we should be able to resume regular posting.
While this is unfortunately several days too late for Xmas 2010 these pictures are just too cute not to post, so here you go!
"You HAVE to know... I mean, srsly... you MUST know... I will kill you in your sleep for this indignity."
Waiting for Godot Santa
Tucket dreams of sugarplum faeries. Mostly how crunchy and tasty they would be.
My experimentation with formatting video for Youtube is largely complete, and this is the first video clip! Just some random shots of babies and mother, set to appropriate music.
The latest batch of kittens are doing great. We have started them on KMR supplements, so they can grow to be the big, strong moosecats we like to breed. It is fun to watch them figure out how to use the feeder, how to drink directly from the bowl, and to watch Grandma Tucket wash their faces not because the kittens need cleaning but because Tucket likes KMR too!
We decided to shove the kittens into coffee and tea cups, mostly just because we can, so here is a smattering of the set.
The first 3 shots are just typical cuteness, but when I saw the last shot I was struck by the resemblence between the kitten and Yoda, so before I could stop myself I edited the image to properly reflect a Yodaesque hue. If this were a LOLCat image I might be tempted to caption it "Strong in the force, Yodakitteh is!".
Ariel, our Platinum breeding female, gave birth to a litter of 5 healthy kittens on August 11th!
There are 3 girls and two boys; 1 Blue mink male, 1 Blue mink Female, 1 male point either Platinum or Blue, and 2 female points either Platinum or Blue (can't tell yet).
The top photograph shows a very tiny 1 week old baby encountering its 18 week old sibling. Next, we recruit the 18-week-old kitten from the previous litter to supervise. Next, a baby cooperates with teacup poses for a moment because it is too tired to fight. Lastly, Ariel is pinned and all 5 babies hook up to the taps.
We were able to sucessfully place all of Tucket's last litter. Here is a photo of Apollo, the last of the litter and scheduled to leave next Saturday. When they stay with you for 18+ weeks you get attached.
Once again I must apologize that Deborah and I once again let the site updates slide. We have been extraordinarily busy in our personal lives and we have not had the time to devote to site updates as much as we would have liked.
Our top female, Tucket, had a litter of 3 kittens on April 12th! We got two Blue boys and one Platinum girl, and they are doing exceptionally well. They potty trained faster than any litter we have ever had, bascially in one afternoon! They are about 14 weeks old so they are of course eating dry food, have received vaccinations, etc. They are growing kitties that are ready to go.
And therein lies a problem. We usually keep a wating list of 15-20 names, and this time EVERYONE had to decline taking a kitten at this time! Problems ranged from deaths in the family to sudden illness to moving cross-country to good old-fashioned "I'm broke". So we are in the utterly unprecedented situation of having a litter of kittens and no homes for them. We will of course keep the kittens as long as it takes to place them, but if you are reading this and want a kitten NOW, please drop us a line at deborah@tonkinesekitten.com and we'll do our best to hook you up!
The first two shots were taken around 2-3 weeks, and the last three shots were taken a few days ago.
I'm sorry that Deborah and I once again let the site updates slide, but as most of you might infer we did find homes for the last litter quite some time ago. The two Blues went off together to live across town here in Nashville, the Platinum male went to a couple in Pigeon Forge, and the Platinum girl went to the San Franscisco area of California. We are currently in the planning stages for the next litter, which may be as soon as mid-April.
In response to all of the emails we have received over the years complimenting us on our wonderful cat photos we have decided to start selling them. I have a professional photography business (Don Stratton Photography) where I already have a system for displaying and selling photo prints so it seemed logical to tie it in here. I have set up a gallery of images called "Tonkinese pictures" that anyone can access and order prints in a large variety of sizes and price ranges. As time goes on we will add more of our better photos, as well as let future owners order prints of their kitten(s) when they were newborn babes.
Here is one of the first 14 photos that are ready to order, a teeny-tiny little Platinum baby letting the world know it is here. If you see a picture on this site that you would like to purchase then drop us an email and we'll do our best to accomodate your request!
You know the hardest part of my job on this site, besides coding and photography? Trying to come up with clever banter to accompany the pictures we want to post.
Deborah has not been feeling well, I have not been feeling well, but the kittens are absolutely adorable and virtually demanding to have cute pictures taken of themselves and posted to our site. They are at the perfect age where they eat dry food, drink from a bowl of water, use the litter box, and are still agonizingly cute animated balls of hellion-fluff that love to sleep with us, paw through our hair, run up my jeans, etc. So, since I had to take some close-ups today for a lady that needed to see their eye color I thought I would go ahead and share them with the rest of you. These are not, by any possible reckoning, some of our best photography work. The poses for two of them consisted of sneaking up on them while they were resting quietly and "PSSSTT!"ing in their face until their eyes were open, and the other two just got picked up in one hand and shot with the camera in the other hand close to a nearby window with BARELY adequate light.
And yet, they are still squee-inducingly cute. That just how they roll, yo.
For those who follow the site frequently, hoping that we will post more pictures of the current litter and waiting for your turn to come on our waiting list, you may be closer than you think. This litter we have had a record number of last-minute cancellations, due primarily to the harsh economy. Some people got on our list almost two years ago when times were rosier, and since then they have found they cannot easily afford one of our kittens for one reason or another, so they have regretfully had to back out. This means that those of you who contacted us in recent months and were told that you would probably have to wait several months may find you are father up the list than either of us dreamed of. For those of you who have not contacted us because you assumed you stood no chance of getting a kitten anytime soon, you might want to reconsider and ask to be included on the waiting list. You never know!
Once again the pic of the day includes Tucket, who lately seems to always be cuddled with a photogenic baby. Her grandma genes seem to have kicked in to high gear recently; she was always doting and attentive, but in the last few days she has spent almost all her free time sleeping with the babies. Ariel certainly appreciates the babysitter, and the babies appreciate having constant attention... they are never more than a few seconds from having one or both mothers tending to their every need. Yet another reason why we have the sweetest, most social, best adjusted kittens of any breeder you will EVER encounter. :)
