We have taken a LOT of photos of our Tonks over the years. Here are some of the best.
Lots of information on Tonkinese cats, culled from many sources and our own years of experience.
Pictures sent in by the owners of our babies.
Presented just for history sake, and a few cute photos.
Want a kitten? Have a question? Start here with our most frequently asked questions.
Drop us a note at deborah@tonkinesekitten.com
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Posted 2008-06-02 by Don
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Teddy, the last kitten still available from the current litter, has found a home! He was picked up this afternoon and shuttled a short 10 minute drive across town to his new home right here in Nashville. With that, we can officially call this litter over and done.
Here is one of the last photos we took of him. Bye-bye, little man, we love you.
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Posted 2008-05-16 by Don
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We have one kitten available!
Update 06-02-2008 - Kitten placed
Much to our considerable surprise we have had a unusually high number of people on our kitten waiting list decide to pass on the current litter, for reasons ranging from sudden family emergencies to a previously unstated desire for a coat/color/pattern/gender combination that is not currently available. Out of the litter of 5 kittens we have a single Blue male that is not currently reserved, so this beautiful and friendly kitten is now available. We have nicknamed him "Teddy", because he looks like a cuddly little teddy bear (even more than his littermates do). We think he will grow up to look a LOT like his father, Woz, and already shows signs of being one of the most affectionate of all the kittens in this litter--which is saying a lot, given how very affectionate Tonks generally tend to be. He is very demonstrative, and seeks us out so he can snuggle in our laps and get his head skritched. He's often the first to greet me in the morning with tiny little peeps that say "hi, pick me up and love me now!".
He's had his first series of kitten shots and deworming, he is fully potty trained, eats both canned and dry food, and is ready to go to a loving home now. His price is $600. If interested, please email us at deborah(at)tonkinesekitten.com. We are located in Nashville, TN.
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Posted 2008-04-09 by Don
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Sometimes a photo doesn't need a clever caption to set it up. I took this photo, showed it to Deborah on the camera, and she said "GO POST THAT TO THE FRONT PAGE NOW!! Enjoy the agonizingly cute babies... we sure as hell are.
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Posted 2008-03-17 by Don
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The kittens turned 4 weeks old today! Everyone is doing spectacularly well; this batch seems a bit more advanced for the age than the last couple of litters. They opened their eyes early, they started reacting to motion and sound early, they have almost perfected facial recognition, they trundle all over our bed (in anticipation of bolting across the room), they have learned to fight each other, they have a SHOCKING bite now and like to use it on your fingers, and they drink milk supplement from a syringe.
This one is saying "I can has birfday cake with that milk?"
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Posted 2008-03-13 by Don
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KITTENS AGAIN!
Ariel unleashed a litter of 5 wee demons on February 18th! We have 3 Blues and 2 Platinums, broken down as 4 boys and single Platinum girl. As of today they are about 3.5 weeks old and doing very well.
Before anyone even THINKS it, sorry... all 5 were spoken for well before the LAST litter was born. We typically have a waiting list backlog of 1.5 litters, but since we haven't been able to get Ariel and Tucket to breed at the same time we are a bit behind. As mentioned before we do not expect Tucket to breed more than one more time, so we will likely have an ever-increasing wait.
Here is one of the first "awwwww" shots from this litter; Ariel has pinned the baby under her arm. Poster reproductions available upon request at modest charge. ;)
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Posted 2007-11-06 by Don
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The last of the current batch of kittens are gone, off to live new lives; one of the browns went to Chicago to become an office cat, and the other brown and the Platinum went off to Brooklyn to live a life of what I am sure will be spoiled decadence.
This is the last litter we will charge $500 for. We have not raised the price in years, even as other regional breeders price tags shot through the roof (really... $1500 for a cat? Are you other breeders insane?!?). During the same time our name and reputation have built up to the point that our kittens are reserved up to 3 litters in advance and demand has far outstripped supply. So, we are raising the price to $600. We are still willing to discuss the possibility of discounting a second kitten that is going to the same home, so feel free to ask.
We have every reasonable expectation that we will breed again in about a month. That probably puts a new batch out around May 2008, not April as I mentioned below, but as usual that is not cast in stone and it is always possible the date could continue to slip. Hey, we breed when we breed, and that is just reason #487 why we are better than the typical breeder.
Here is the last picture of this crop of kittens; towards the front and left we see Tucket and Ariel, and towards the back and right we see three babies, getting in some last-minute quality time with the whole family before being shipped off to far destinations.
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Posted 2007-10-06 by Don
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I forgot to mention it, but all the kittens from this litter are spoken for. Actually, they were spoken for many weeks ago... that's what our waiting list is for. We do not know when we will breed either Tucket or Ariel again, but even if it was tomorrow there would not be any babies ready to go until about April of 2008 so those of you who E-mail us asking for kittens now or in the near future are out of luck. Anyone who thinks they might want a kitten or two in Q2/08 are welcome to contact us and ask to be put on the waiting list. As of today there are probably a couple open spots left for the next litter, so hurry and get on the list!
Oh, side note: for those who have not noticed it, the custom icon for our web site is a small image of Tucket. You have no idea how hard it is to get a 16x16 pixel image to be at all identifiable, but thanks to my mad Commodore 64 skills I was able to make something that at least Deborah can recognize as her beloved cat, and that is all that matters.
In keeping with the tradition of posting shots from the current litter regardless of the news topic here is a nice shot of one of the brown babies, who has discovered the joy of sleeping in the laundry basket.
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Posted 2007-10-02 by Don
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Today I added a new section to the site, "Photos of our wayward babies", where I will be posting photos that are send in to us by the proud owners of kittens from past litters. Some of them look just like our cats, and some are strikingly different, which just goes to show that you cannot really tell how babies will turn out until they are a year or two old.
The current litter is in full rampage mode, having long since been cut loose of the birthing box and left to destroy an entire room. Sure, litter training is hard on the carpet, but we buy cheap carpet for the kitten room and change it out every few years once steam cleaning stops doing the trick. ;) Here's a shot where they all have dinner together.
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Posted 2007-08-27 by Don
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Everyone is doing great, and have evolved to the "photo op" stage of life, so I thought I would share a couple of the recent images. Yes, they ARE horribly cute. I suggest diabetics click away from this page NOW!
They haven't made it to the stage where they toddle more than a couple of feet, and they still haven't figured out how to climb out of the "playpen" (a box with tall sides, padded with sheets and towels), but that will come soon enough and we will get tons more action shots to post.
In the top photo we see the blue girl and one of two brown girls, learning to chew each other up while nestled on a towel. In the bottom photo we see (from left to right) a brown girl, a blue girl, and a brown girl. The white boy's head can just be seen behind the rightmost brown baby... we'll get a better picture of him later.
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Posted 2007-08-10 by Don
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KITTENS!! KITTENS!! KITTENS!!
Our eldest mother, Tucket, has delivered a new batch of kittens! They were born August 1st, and there are 4 in the litter, all healthy and stout as horses. By my informal calculations that means these babies will be ready to go mid-to-late October, depending on the kitten. Here is a highly staged photo-op of the babies, taken about 15 minutes ago by throwing out my favorite gray photo backdrop on the bed and piling wiggling kittens in the middle of it until Tucket lays down with them.
Tucket is about 8-9 years old, and we feel that this is likely going to be the last litter we ask of her... and this spells the eventual END of us breeding Tonks! We have only one other female who can breed (Ariel) so this means we will be producing half as many kittens as we used to, and when Ariel is done we will STOP BREEDING TONKS!
If you or anyone you know ever thought about getting a Tonk, I'd seriously consider doing it now. Tucket has the best genetics we have ever seen in a breeding female, and her like will not be readily seen again.
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Posted 2007-07-10 by Don
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Deborah found some old prints we have of Woz (our breeding male) retrieving a bone, so we scanned and cleaned up the best one and stuck it on the last page next to the section where we talk about the amazing tricks they can perform. Since it is so damn cute I figured I would also gratuitously show it here as well. :)
Yes, he really is fetching a bone. It is a small spare rib bone, and we can toss it and have him bring it right back and deposit it at our feel like the wee doggie he is. Once, just to see how far I could push it, I got him to bring it back 39 times. 39 times! He got bored for about the last dozen, but he dutifully did his job until he got so sick of it he just laid down on it.
Just another example of how kewl Tonks are. Try getting your average muttcat to do that!
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Posted 2007-06-07 by Don
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Despite our local paper, The Tennessean, screwing up our E-mail address people were still able to track us down (hopefully the correction the following week helped too) and we placed the last two kittens (shown at right) last night. They went as a pair, my preferred way and an absolute requirement in this case as their new home did not have any other pets to play with. The new owners let us know that they are settling in very well and credit our fine job of hand-raising them.
Bye bye, wee ones! The last ones to leave the litter break our hearts the most.
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Posted 2007-05-26 by Don
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DAMN IT!!
Our local paper, The Tennessean, managed to screw up the ONLY important piece of information in our classified ad! The ONLY thing we needed them to get right was our E-mail address, so instead of "tonkinesekitten.com" (singular) they listed it as "tonkinesekittens.com (plural). We were pretty damn clear on this point, as it is a common screw-up, and they still fscked it all up. I am still fairly livid right now, and this is likely the last time we ever run an ad in that useless rag.
We prefer to be contacted via E-mail, so instead of a phone number we included our E-mail address. Very fortunately for us it turns out that tonkinesekittens.com (plural) is no longer an active domain, so forutnately all the people who MEANT to send E-mail to us will have it "bounce" back, and hopefully that will give them the hint they need to find us, either via Google or calling the damn Tennessean. For those of you who DID manage to find us, WELCOME! :)
As you can see from the picture to the right, when I am angry the whole clan is angry. ;)
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Posted 2007-05-25 by Don
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The first baby is gone! In the pictures below, it is the kitten on the left in each shot (nice coincidence), the Platinum boy. He was spirited off to his new home in Indiana by his new owners, who yesterday drove the nearly 5 hours down to pick him up and turned right around and drove the 5 hours back! Here is one of the last shots we got of him, sleeping with the Blue boy.
So, the ones left are the Blue girl and boy. In the photos below the boy is in the water case, and the girl is to the right of the pendulum toy. With only two of them I should be able to get some group photos soon.
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Posted 2007-05-17 by Don
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Wow, the world must be coming to an end... we've updated the web site twice in one week after years of neglect! ;)
It's funny what a few days will do to your perspective. We now think one of the previously-assumed Blues is really a Platinum in disguise! It has stayed remarkably pale, while its bluer brethren have continued to darken down. It's still awfully hard to tell, but in the pictures here he is the one on top of the water, and to the right (far side) of the pendulum toy. In the water image the other kitten is the mink male, and in the pendulum photos the other baby is the solid female. They are Blue for sure... um, probably. ;)
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Posted 2007-05-08 by Don
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We have been rather busy the last year and a half, and this left no time or opportunity to breed our cats. Well, that all changed around December of 2006 so we decided to go ahead and breed a litter with our newest mother, Ariel (seen at right, just days before delivering, about ready to explode!), who we also raised from an earlier litter. Ariel delivered three babies on February 14th... yep, Valentine's Day! They are all Blue; a boy and girl are solid and the other boy is mink.
I want to address the 4 most common questions we get:
-We are in Nashville, TN. That is mentioned elsewhere but it is the #1 question we get ("I want a kitten! Where are you?") so I thought it was worth saying again
-The kittens born 2/14/07 have an asking price of $500. This number has steadily risen over the years and will only go up in the future (Note: it is now $600 as of 02/18/08). It is true that we have placed a couple of cats for free, but that is very much the exception and is extremely rare, so please do not bother asking for free cats.
-We breed quite sporadically, so as of today I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA when we will breed again. Remember, this is not a business for us, this is just for fun. We sell kittens when we have them, and we don't work on anyone's schedule but the whims of the breeding adults.
-We have shipped kittens via same-day commercial airline service (maximum was a 4 hour flight, 8 hours from my door to a door in Colorado!), and while not cheap (~$200) it sure is effective. Our kittens have also taken 8 hour car trips, should you live as close as say Chicago and wish to pop down here to pick them up.
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