Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: Weaver on January 08, 2018, 05:16:06 AM
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These two young fellows are heading northwards from Lockerbie to the Island soon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cecilward/38669375215
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2 new furbabies on their way to the Weaver household? ;D
What breed are they? The body shape - particularly the wedge shaped head & ears look very distinctive of Siamese or Siamese descent (Balinese/Javanese etc), yet the colouring and points aren't.
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I'm not sure about their ancestry, they came from a woman who breeds extremely posh unbelievably expensive Siamese cats. But we don't care about such nonsense so perhaps these are some of the mistakes.
My old Siamese Daisy, 1987-2003, was a silver tabby-siamese cross, with a posh mother who we are told tore a hole through the back door to get out of her house in Hampstead to some random tabby male and Daisy was the result.
We will know more when the owner brings the two boys up from the south at the weekend.
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They certainly look very distinctive. :)
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Perhaps they are Oriental Shorthairs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Shorthair) as they fit the Standard.
Closely related to the Siamese. It maintains the modern Siamese head and body type but appears in a wide range of coat colors and patterns.
Like the Siamese, Orientals have almond-shaped eyes, a triangular head shape, large ears, and an elongated, slender, and muscular body.
Unlike the breed's blue-eyed forebear, Orientals are usually green-eyed.
Whatever they are they certainly have some Siamese ancestry in them.... and regardless I'm sure that they will find a very happy place in the Weaver home. :)
I bet you are looking forward to meeting them. We shall expect photos ;D
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Somhairle was named by Janet after Scottish Gaeldom's greatest poet Somhairle Mac Gill'-Eain, whom Janet once bumped into having a cup of tea near Portree. It's an Old Norse name, not Gaelic at all, mangled by the Gael over the course of many centuries. I have some ideas about what it might mean, but looking it up would be cheating.
Oisín (various spellings) is an old word used in literary Old Irish to literally mean “deer”. It is sometimes translated as “little deer” which I regard as a daft mistake. It is of basically PIE date originally meaning a large animal or a bull, and has a cognate in English "oxen".
As far as I can see is the English word oxen is in fact the correct singular not the plural, but which was reanalysed as a plural because of the -Vn (accidental) final syllable and an entirely new, non existent word ox was cooked up as a new “singular” based on it (like “pea” from ("peas(e)").
The old word was PIE *uksḗn (nom. sing.), where stress is on the last syllable as indicated by the acute. (To confuse matters Irish and Scottish Gaelic use accents to indicate long vowels rather than to mark stress placement, not necessary because stress is always in the first syllable apart from in the extreme SW or Ireland, or in certain compounds in which case a hyphen is used as a warning.) [!] The old -*ēn would have later become -*īn in Proto-Celtic and so we might have had something like *uxsīn later still. Now, I suspect that a false reanalysis also occurred in Old Irish (or earlier) too, where the *-īn syllable was taken as a diminutive ending (hence also the modern idea of it being “little deer”): same class of mistake, different driver. This is suggested because an Archaic Old Irish word oss is recorded as a literary word for deer, so I argue that someone took it upon themselves to remove the supposed ‘suffix’ that imo never was. The -ín diminutive ending of Irish is a feminine diminutive (not used in Scotland, which is a bit odd) and is extremely common for example in females' names. However this is not feminine, neither grammatically or in reality.
So such a convoluted mess surrounding the oxen word in two languages. I haven't checked all of this supposition regarding reanalysis out properly yet, that would be cheating and so some of this is just straight calculation.
Janet picked the name Oisín as according to legend he was a poet, narrator, and hero near demigod of Old Irish mythology. So two poets. It's also spelled Ossian.
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Kitz wrote
> Perhaps they are Oriental Shorthairs as they fit the Standard.
Mrs Weaver said that Kitz is (of course) absolutely right, I had been mistakenly calling them Siamese because I didn't know the correct terms, and what's worse Caoimhe and Fergus are not Siamese either even though I have been calling them that, so she now tells me.
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Once again, I have made a fool of myself, going on about rejects, without knowing what I'm on about. Mrs Weaver showed me a pic of the kittens’ parents, both are extremely posh, dad is all black, the co-owned “Imperial Grand Champion Enigmatic Mr Vain” or something, whatever that might mean, and extremely gorgeous. Mum is a beautiful small cat with large white patches and some smaller stripes bits. Parents: [ https://www.flickr.com/photos/cecilward/39576834172/ ]
They are in a litter of eight.
Here is mum "Enigmatic FlashDance", in mid air: [ https://flic.kr/p/FdaBHE ]
Meanwhile Caoimhe is cuddled up in the crook of my arm, happily unaware of the chaos that is coming.
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Oh my. Mum certainly deserves her name FlashDance ;D
Dad is extremely handsome.
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<span lang="gd">’S ann tha na cait bheaga air tighinn !</span>
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With the help of Google translate I see that --
The small cats have come!
:clap:
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Caoimhe yowled long. Made poor Oisín shake like a leaf uncontrollably. Somhairle just purred. Both <span lang="gd">piseagan</span> have been brought up to see the <span lang="gd">bodach</span> and both have sat on his chest briefly. Janet has been playing with them with a feather duster, they prefer the handle end to the feathers. <span lang="gd">’S beag an t-iongnadh siud.</span>
Now they are asleep in a large cardboard box with a circular hole cut in the front if it, which Janet prepared yesterday. It was predictably a big hit, in and out of the hole. Beileag saw them and ran away!
Ciarán presumably sighed and showed zero interest, <span lang="gd">“tuilleadh chat”</span>, and went to his dog-bed.
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Google translate has assisted, once again --
piseagan kittens
bodach bodach
S beag an t-iongnadh siud. It's a little surprising that.
tuilleadh chat more cats
Only a 75% success rate this time.
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Google failed utterly there with the whole sentence, having got the overall polarity wrong. It is literally “'Tis little the surprise, that/there”, in real english “The surprise is little”, in idiomatic proper english “No surprise there”, or “No wonder”. The initial "S" is the reduced form of the copula is, Eng "is", so it's pronounced /spɪk/. The word beag is fronted for emphasis reasons, but the phonetic stress accent is on the noun phrase.
Modern insular Celtic languages are basically VSO.
Modern Breton is arguably an exception according to some, who, understandably, consider it to be V2. It all depends on your point of view though, on what you regard as a basic sentence. (Breton is still considered an insular Celtic language even though it is on the continent, because its speakers all migrated from Devon and Cornwall around 400AD, hence the name.) I can't decide, for want of basic definitions. Most laymen might think it's V2, understandably.
English on the other hand is a SVO language, as is French. German is V2.
This sentence is not a good example of VSO though because some types of copular sentences are exceptional and have obligatory strange word order. But nevertheless, the verb, is, in this case is first in the sentence. (It would be more accurate to say "verbal complex" instead of "verb", because there are generally a load of possible clause-initial particles connected with the verb, question/statement, polarity, status as a relative clause or subordinate or complement clause, and the meaning or status of the whole clause accompany the verb and in fact precede it. [Wackernagel’s Law, iirc.])
Thanks nurse, I feel much better now.
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Worst snap I have ever seen in my life, or compression has chewed it up hideously
https://flic.kr/p/23rNDtr
Oisín is looking out from the cardboard box Janet prepared for them. Somhairle is in there too.
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Ah, I understood Burakkucat's point Google's vocabulary failure. "bodach" means an old man. (Can also be used as a term of affection, exactly like "old" in English, interesting parallel. “How old Cary Grant?”)
Google is improving. It used to just not even try. Then later on it got confused with Irish. Now it is even getting the two languages sorted out. Online translation of Irish tends to be much better, probably there is better machine-readable dictionary availability.
Top tips
1. http://www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/faclair/sbg/lorg.php is your man, but it doesn't do inflections or initial consonant mutation for you. Unfortunately uses dumbed-down modern spelling for children. (May fail to match on ó é á unless you set the tick boxes to don't-care-accents ? - I forget)
Or better :
2. http://www.dwelly.info is the ultimate, but again it does not have a search for all word forms. It also uses traditional spelling (thank god, for the most part, although I do approve of the modern change to using {a} for schwa instead of Dwelly's {u}) not the dumbed-down post 1980s spelling system for schoolchildren and sheep, called "GOC".
For Scottish Gaelic I use phonetic é, ó and è ò where correct, and also á where appropriate, but only to mark non-schwa (does not ever mean 'long'). There is no í or ú in Scottish Gaelic.
Modern and Old Irish uses only acute accents, as is traditional, meaning long vowels, not stress placement (not necessarily) and never the grave accent at all.
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Cute picture. My dog Dalton the laid back German Shepherd is currently sprawled across my bed.
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more day 0 pics, dire quality from Janet's iPhone in ver bad light, I'm afraid.
http://flic.kr/p/DNr558
http://flic.kr/p/22nFqYA
http://flic.kr/p/23pBrVm
Kittens on my neighbour’s knee, it all turned into a play-fight. They finally slept for hours after their long car journey up from the Borders.
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Very cute. Enjoy your new furbabies :)
:)
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Day 1, kits on Janet’s knee. Worn out after playing.
https://flic.kr/p/Fkfu5S
https://flic.kr/p/23t5QcH
Breaking news: Janet has remembered something. It turns out that our Caoimhe and Fergus might be related to the two new kits. The breeders are good friends and share ownership of the kits’ all-black father, and there might be some link further back.
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They look so sweet curled up like that. :D
Possibly may be a link. Zoe and Ziggy have same father despite coming from different breeders and the age gap.
Dad was a Grand Champion, so its not unusual for a good quality cat to be in demand as sire. In pedigree circles the vast majority of males are sold as pet only unless they have potential for showing.
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ETA just found the breeder. Their daddy is good stock, also a Grand Champion. :) Looks like the owners show, then stud to try and keep best lineage going.
They will keep any with good Show potential themselves (or sell at premium price). The others will go as pet only & not on the active breeding list to ensure no accidental messing of lineage by cross or inter breeding. Your boys are registered non active to stop you breeding from them* Thus the breeder is being careful with the lineage and it is likely there will be a link further back with your other 2.
*Non active means they are pedigree and you could possibly show, but not breed from them. Or if they do accidentally pass on their genes, then any subsequent babies will not be recognised by the GCCF as pedigree. Mine are the same - means that you get a decent quality cat but at reduced cost... but more importantly puts a stop to any bad breeding and the cat equivalent of puppy farming.
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I know so little, never having had any contact with pedigree cats before, always rescue cats. Here's Caoimhe's lot: http://www.eireachdail-siamese-oriental-bicolours.co.uk/girls.html
Many years ago I had a small oriental silver tabby moggy whom we called Daisy. I loved her a lot, she had a sweet nature and she lived to a great age. We originally got her from an advert in the local vet's in Hampstead. Her mum apparently ripped the cat door to pieces to get out to the local male talent and the beautiful daisy was the result. Many years after she died I was still hooked on the oriental personality and yowl. So Janet unbeknown to me got two kittens (whom we christened Fergus and Caoimhe) as a birthday present for me. They just arrived one day at a hotel where we were staying, brought by their breeder ! Later on we couldn't find the kits and got hotel staff to search. In the end they were found curled up in a bundle in the bottom of a long, trailing bedpost curtain.
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Day 5 Caoimhe’s birthday: Caoimhe crawls into box in front of blazing stove never minding that Oisín Beag is asleep in it. http://flic.kr/p/JEZYfX
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I know so little, never having had any contact with pedigree cats before, always rescue cats.
Strikes a chord.
Three quarters of my life ago, the only cat I have ever owned who accepted me as servient human was a far from pedigree tortoiseshell from an unintended litter. The vet had decreed that the mother would not be capable of keeping the entire litter alive, so only chance was to farm them out, at just 5 weeks old. I’d bern staying in a hotel at the time and in a drunken attempt to impress a young waitress (which didn’t work) I volunteered to adopt a kitten.
Cutting long story short, it was a good relationship, that cat looked after me well. I like to think that in return, she appreciated the odd bit of Coley poached in milk too, her favourite treat. Happy days. :)
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Coley fish in milk. I'll remember that tip. Perhaps a belated treat for Caoimhe’s birthday.
Ciarán my greyhound is being extremely good with the kittens, as always. He lies on the bed right next to them quite peacefully. He knows which cats are bad news, from memory. Orange / Tiddy Puss whacked Ciarán frequently, making the dog yelp, so the dog is always worried if that particular cat gets too near or worse still looks him in the eye. Ciarán lets out a tiny growl if the kittens pat him or molest him in his dog-bed, but on the whole they are good in return, giving him some respect. They look at him seeming to give the impression that they think “He’s very big, whatever he is.”
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Everything in moderation, of course.
I think the poached fish was suggested by somebody (maybe a vet) as a treat, when she was recovering from surgery after a health prob. A Waitrose lady then offered to help when she saw me eyeing the fish counter and, when I said it was for a cat, volunteered that her own cat was especially fond of Coley.
The grateful cat subsequently went completely loopy at the scent it created, scrambling at my ankles as I prepared it followed by loud wailing, impatiently dashing in circles around the kitchen while I let it cool, and nearly brought the house down with her purring when finally served up. So it became a ‘once in a while treat’, always with same antics reenacted.
I really don’t know whether it should form part of a regular balanced diet. Any anyway, if it did, it would have stopped being a treat.
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My mums cat Joe, would only eat poached cod (poached in water), very fussy he was, we accidentally bought some coley, he just gave us that look of disgust, then walked away.
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Joe really is a beauty!
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Day 5 and the new kits were curled up with Caoimhe. Last night she was in a heap with two kittens cuddled up to her back, keeping her warm, whilst she was in the crook of my arm in bed. And we all fell asleep like that.
Caoimhe really has been very good with the two new tinies. The spitting only lasted about five days, and I had imagined she would attack them and then be in a state of outrage for weeks.
Oisín, I might have mentioned, is the OIr form. Modern Scottish Gaelic has the form Oiseán too (oisean confusingly means ‘corner’, accidentally). The word comes up in old songs still. “Neart Oisein Mhìn”, if I remember correctly, a big if, comes up in one of the versions of the lullaby Tàladh Dhòmhnaill Ghuirm. I do hope I remember correctly after many many years. One other version explicitly mentions the invoking the strength of the ‘bull (tarbh) that leaps so high’ too, but in that version I’m thinking of “Oisean” isn't named. Many are available for a listen on the web or Youtube. One of my favourites is Cathy-Ann Nic a’ Phì’s haunting version, it is recorded on a stunning CD that she made. Things are made more difficult because of the strong possibility that the form heard in the song is a genitive. (Vocative is, to my mind, not a fit.)
I may have suggested, some while back, that that latter new form has possibly come about by forcing an ‘expected’ masculine diminutive -án ending onto it either (i) after a weakening to an indistinct short vowel (in Insular Celtic unstressed), or else (ii) after reanalysis, after a quite incorrect analysis that the -ín was an (Irish) feminine diminutive form, so driving the creation of a new masculine equivalent. (iii) A third, to me less plausible, alternative is a reanalysis that, when encountered in certain syntactic environments, the high final vowel form is a genitive of some x, and x = -an or -án is the solution.
I’m actually wondering if some of these old references may literally mean ‘a little bull’, not necessarily invoking the hero, but that would imply that a word (which was a non-proper-name) related to OIr oss (and not **os(s)an ) survived for a good while. So for all I know a baby could be sent off to sleep being called ‘a little bull’ and strength invoked for him. If I have mistakenly identified the hero with the word in the song then mea culpa indeed. Anyway if I have misunderstood I need to de-capitalise the song.
Many animal species have got mixed up in Celtic. Locally frogs and toads. Salmon and trout sometimes. Historically, a sheep (caora) and a goat (L caper.)
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Janet has discovered that Caoimhe's parents are in fact great grandparents to the two new kittens, as she expected.