Oscar Approving His Latest YouTube Video Upload

Click the title to go directly to his video. It was easier to get the piano shot in the background video than to get him to stand still on my desk. He almost deleted an entire folder!

Getting Ready to Update the Kittens Page

Took this Sunday evening about 5:15. Left to right: Berta, Kevin, Michael, Eric and Bella. And proud mama, of course.

Oscar is Our Gabatta Diva

Oscar is going to look like his (F1) Aunt Gabatta. Long, long, long legs, short tail, huge ears, fantastic personality. Just posted a new Oscar and Henry AJSavannahs YouTube video yesterday and Oscar is our acrobat AND a total sweetheart. He goes from 90 to nothing in about two seconds, recharges, then starts off again.

He's also very vocal and a bit of a diva-drama queen like our F1 Gabatta. But in a good way! Henry, now Henri, is going to Florida to live with Becky and Jerry who have our F2B kitten JoJo (formerly Vester). It's just impossible to separate them for photos or movies.

We often receive questions about whether our females or male kittens are more affectionate or bond better with other pets. We can't tell any difference, all our Savannahs are equally loving and everyone lives in multi-cat or multi-pet homes with no conflict, animosity or drama.

That stated... all our families have faithfully maintained our mandatory two-week quarantine and introduced their new family member slowly, and it's worked beautifully. If your current pets are not Tasmanian Devils who hate everyone, then you should not have any problems adding a Savannah to your home.

Hope to get new photos of Kboo's kittens up Sunday. Their eyes are open and they're starting to toddle around, big time, so the movies won't be so boring!

More Oscar and Henry Glamour Poses

These photos were taken after they wore out chasing each other around the room and over and around Jason. Oscar can still go under the Little Tikes toy, but Henry gets stuck on at least half of his attempts.

They both purr constantly and get sidetracked very easily but they LOVE their Whirly Gig toy and have created a new game. It's called Knock it Under the Door at Nap Time and They'll Come Play With Us. And it works. We put them in their room for a nap and if we don't take the Whirly Gig, they'll never go to sleep. They have us well-trained!

Oscar top, Henry second photo. Oscar left, Henry right in bottom two photos.

Oscar in October. Henry Happily Harangues

They are miniature adults, not kittens. Oscar is already running and leaping around his crate, pouncing on Henry or on imaginary playmates.



You'll see his pink lower lip in the photos. Jason watched him run full-blast into the side of the crate, shake his head, then take off again.



We've had several kittens who did the same thing, Dale and Ernie, both F3Bs with Ayo as their grandmother. So maybe it's an Ayo-thing.



Henry LOVES to talk, talk, talk... constantly. He always has something to say and we have to listen. If he could take his paws and turn my face to his, to make certain I'm listening, he would do it. He roams around, but is not nearly as Indiana Jones as his brother.



These two are so much more mature than JoJo and his brothers. They did not want to be weaned and Ayo kept them babies longer. Oscar and Henry are ready to conquer the world. Part of it is that they're not with Ayo 24/7 since she carries them around, then bathes them to distraction (Jason says destruction). We lock her out of their Great Dane crate -- but still in their room -- except when we're with them to supervise.



Poor Jason has been on a round-the-clock, two-hour feeding schedule for the last 23 days. Think they were five days old when we realized Ayo was over-cleaning them. I don't know how he does it. I couldn't handle the routine or laying on the floor.



He has them even more spoiled than usual. Not bad, just extremely people-oriented.

A few of our AJSavannahs families had asked for the webcam for streaming video; we took it in this morning and Ayo did not like having anything new near her kittens. We'll plan on setting up the webcam in two weeks when they're weaned.

F2B Kittens Oscar and Henry

Sorry about the watermark. If you got here from our Kittens page, then you already know that several of our photos have been stolen and are being used in a Portland, Oregon pets for sale ad. The scammer has Harvey as an F1 and at only 19 pounds. Almost 10 pounds off his true weight! Guess I should be glad they're not listing me for sale, too, since I'm in three of the four photos. So now you're all stuck with watermarks on photos as well as our AJSavannahs YouTube videos. I'll just need to remember to leave more border to not cover kittens when I add the logo.

F2B Kittens Sambu and Toki

Sambu (Terry) and Toki (Jimmy) are very happily settled into their new home with David in California. He's not set up on the AJSavannah Family Blog yet, so I just had to share these photos. Sambu is flying from his cat tree and landing on a very soft king-size bed about eight feet away.



Sambu and Toki are F2B kittens from our F1 Kboo and F6A Mbau. This is the same pairing that gave us my sweet Harvey. Their brother Howie is as beautiful, just that our other David, in Florida, (who also has our F2B Tessa from Kboo and Mbau) hasn't sent recent photos! (No pressure there...)



Age five months in these photos, Sambu already weighs 13 pounds, Toki a bit less. We wanted these boys to stay together and were very happy when David obliged. This is the delivery that stranded me in Charlotte, with Andrew coming to our rescu. Andrew has our F2B kittens Zeus from Gabatta, Fina from Kboo, and F3C Isis who is Ayo's granddaughter.



Toki , above, showing off his Happy Tail, below, his beautifully contrasted coat. Although smaller than his brother (who isn't???) Toki has always managed to more than hold his own in any altercation, real or imagined.



Sambu has Kboo's sweet face and I think he's almost as pretty as Harvey. We expect him to be about 90% of Harvey's size when full grown, based on his birth weight and weight at age five months. Toki will be a large Savannah, but always dwarfed by Sambu. Even though Toki has the much larger personality.



We're expecting F2B kittens from Gabatta and Mbau late October. And should know in about a week if Kboo is pregnant, also from Mbau. If yes, her babies would be due mid-November.

Harvey's Daily Hat Trick

Harvey is still stealing and dumping his huge ceramic water bowl at least four times a day. Jason made a copper band to hold it to the wall, similar to the clamps you use on a dryer vent. Harvey still manages to take the heavy crock out of the band and play hockey with it, dumping water everywhere. I think we're doing at least one additional load of laundry each day, just for the towels we use to clean up the water.

He's so big and clumsy, his coordination hasn't caught up to his size yet, that we can't let him dump water because his feet get wet. Then he slips when he tries to run or jump from the furniture to the floor. Dangerous for him. Nerve-wracking for me.

Next thing we're going to try is to invert a large plastic cooler and cut a hole in the bottom, the diameter of his ceramic water crock, just below the lip. We'll put a concrete block, maybe two in the bottom of the cooler and latch it, still upside down. Then we'll set his heavy ceramic crock into the hole we cut and resting on the lip. He shouldn't (ha!) be able to lift the crock out, or be able to push over the cooler since it will have concrete blocks in the bottom.

Shouldn't... but he's extremely intelligent and extremely large and does what he wants. He's still a kitten and plays like one. Just that his toys are larger than everyone else's.

We're surprised he hasn't taught the others to dump water. Everyone else puts toys in water, or stands with front feet in the dish and splashes water out. But no one dumps the water dish. And no one plays hockey with the heavy ceramic crocks. Just Harvey.

Jason just asked me to weigh a crock to give you an idea of Harvey's strength. Empty, the crock weighs 4 pounds 2 ounces. With water, 2/3 full, it weighs 6 pounds 12 ounces -- almost SEVEN pounds -- we should get him a bowling ball, but then he could do real damage. We've never caught him taking the crock out of the copper band, but we've sure cleaned up his spills!

The joys of living with an F2B Savannah... he's worth it, he's also rotten. And thank goodness he's better at creating mischief than he is at teaching our other Savannahs how to misbehave!!!

JoJo (Vester) is First Again!

It's appropriate that this newest post is about Vester (now JoJo). He went home this week and took over as if he'd been there forever. He was purring and stomp purring and taught himself to fetch while Jason was visiting with Becky and Jerry.



JoJo was always the first of Ayo's kittens to do anything: he was the first "over the wall" of their kitten bed; the first to purr (and the last to stop purring); the first to pounce on his mother; fly off the cedar chest; jump into my arms... he just leads the way into every adventure.

Received this email a few minutes ago. And once again, JoJo is the first of our kittens to fetch in this manner. He's very intelligent, and gorgeous (he's blossoming fast), and I'm prejudiced!!!

From Becky (fantastic photos are hers, too):

"Jerry and I were just playing fetch with JoJo. I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom, and Jerry was lying on the bed.

I threw the toy and JoJo jumped up on the bed and gave it to Jerry, Jerry threw it and he brought it to me, I threw it and he took it to Jerry, Jerry threw it and he brought it to me. This went on over and over again until he just plopped. He never got confused and returned it to one of us twice in a row, he always alternated.

A cat playing fetch is amazing enough, but how JoJo plays fetch is absolutely incredible."

We are SO happy Becky and Jerry fell in love with our Vester (previously Vesper, we THOUGHT we had a girl...), now their JoJo.

I think Becky needs her own blog!

Another Feather Frenzy Movie

New movie of our F1 Gabatta and her sister Ayo's F2B Savannah kittens on YouTube, watch it on the AJSavannahs Kittens page.

Aaron is a wild thing and has to be in the middle of everything. He wound up in Jason's arms so the other kittens could play.



Olivia is still recovering from her spay surgery, so she's not in the movie.



Emmett is like his Aunt Gabatta and would talk his prey to death, always announcing his approach.



Vester can almost fly, throwing himself around and changing direction in midair.



Jericho prefers to stay back and watch for his opportunity to dash in and make off with the feather toy. He is very, very fast, using his paws like a prizefighter landing a series of punches on an unsuspecting opponent.



And Murray... who LOVES to run up, tap me on the leg, then take off full-blast before I can grab him... Murray was surprisingly low-key with the feather toy. He leapt like Vester, punched like Jericho, twisted like Aaron, and was very thoughtful in his play. Murray usually runs in with total abandon, then zooms around the room til someone, anyone, decides to chase him.

Murray is available and we expect him to look very much like his mother when he's mature. He certainly plays like her, with wild abandon. And he has her huge, gorgeous upright ears, sweet face, very long legs and short thick tail that's in a perpetual state of Happy Tail (fulled out like a bottle brush). Given the size of his feet, along with our history of very large F2B male kittens, we also expect Murray to be a large cat when fully grown at three years of age.



They were worn out after playing so hard, I don't think anyone moved til morning.

I still have another 10 minutes of video that I need to convert. Everyone but the kittens' new families will be totally bored. But if you're waiting for your baby to come home, then every second is absolutely riveting!