Nothing Much
Sometimes my mind is a complete blank when I’m trying to think of something to write here. Oh, it’s not that I don’t know of some educational topics that I could cover, but if I write about them, I want to do it right. That is, give you a good understanding of the issue without talking totally over your heads. In other words, take something serious — and occasionally scientific — and make it into something that is interesting, understandable and relevant for a cat owner. Sometimes that’s easy for me — in case you hadn’t noticed, written language is one of my skills — but other times I’m completely useless. So tonight instead of writing something fun or useful, I’m mostly just rambling.
I don’t know if I mentioned it on the blog, but Galia has had a color change. You might not notice it if you aren’t looking for it - and even then, unless you see her in person you still might not notice, but she is a black SMOKE and white, not a black and white. Remember when I wrote about silver — the inhibitor gene? A refresher if you don’t remember, or if you’re a newer reader who hasn’t slogged through all the previous posts… The inhibitor gene or silver gene, as we sometimes call it, inhibits the placement of color on the base of the fur. So next to the skin the fur — depending on what color it would otherwise be — is white, pale gray/blue, or very light cream. The gene is variably expressed, meaning that in some cats, the color will only be inhibited for a small section of the hair, while in others it may prevent color on nearly the entire hair. On Kefira, for example, her hair is nearly all white, with color at the very tips only. While I became a silver breeder accidently, I’ve fallen in love with it — especially silver torbies like Kefira — and am one of the few NFC breeders around that really likes breeding for silver.
Back when I talked about the inibitor gene before I posted pictures of Dilan and Taiba. Both of them are tabbies, so we call their color “silver” or a variation thereof. Dilan is a red-silver (cameo — for who knows what reason in CFA!), while Taiba is a blue-silver patch tabby or blue-silver torbie.
Now Miss Galia, she’s not a tabby. You can see quite clearly in her pictures that she is a solid colored cat with white. I know, that sounds silly. Solid somehow indicates that she’d be one solid color all over. Strictly speaking, I guess you’d call her a bi-color. But genetically, she is a solid colored cat with the white spotting gene. And she also has the inhibitor gene. If you look at the base of all her hair, it is nearly white. The description of a smoke says that at rest they should look like solid colored cats, but in motion, you’ll see the lighter color. That’s Galia exactly.
I think black smokes are stunning cats and I’m so excited to see her color develop. With Finny being a silver, I knew that if he and Kali both carried solid (they are tabbies — the dominant gene, while solid is recessive) that they could possibly give me a smoke, but I didn’t think either Galia or Charlie were. It’s just been in the last week that I can really see Galia’s smoke showing up, but there’s no doubt. Put them side by side and look at their fur and they are very different.
I think the kittens are drawing straws for who has to keep lisa-mom and Ken-dad trained in the proper way to sleep with kittens. Every night this week a different kitten — just one! — has shared our bed. Tonight will be either Crenshaw’s or Pepino’s turn. 
Oh! I just remembered! I didn’t share the helpful kitten photos with you all. I just posted them to the discussion groups. I told them I didn’t know why I’m always so tired. After all, I have very helpful little kittens. At least Galia and Charlie. First they helped me do the dishes last night.
Then after they finished with that, they helped fold the laundry.
While I don’t have pictures of their efforts, they are also very happy to help with the litter boxes and with sweeping the floor. They make sure I don’t miss anything by batting at any bits that fly up from the broom. Such helpful little kittens!
Guess I had more to say than I thought, huh? It’s like they teach you in writing classes, sometimes you just need to start writing, then the words will come.