Zimbabwe Seven

Category: Uncategorized | Date: May 19 2008 | By: zimbabwe7

Photo above : Arwen showing off very pregnant tummy!

The Tikki Hywood Trust is delighted to introduce our two newest arrivals. Evenstar and Quickbeam who were born on Saturday 10 May 2008. The glowing parents, mother Arwen and father Mufasa are very proud indeed, as are we.

 Arwen about to pop…….

This is the first litter for both serval. As Arwen is only 23 months old (she was born in June 2006) we were rather concerned that she would reject her first litter. Thankfully she has jumped at the opportunity of being a “paws on” mother. Evenstar arrived first at approximately 9:00 pm on Saturday evening, and then several hours later, Quickbeam was born. Both kittens are calm and suckling well from Arwen. Arwen is currently separated from Mufasa for the safety of the kittens (approximately three weeks to a month before the babies are due we remove the male. Even though the babies are Mufasa’s, serval males are very aggressive towards the young and more often than not will kill the young), in the wild the female will separate herself from the male and the raise the babies alone. Serval adults only remain together for mating.

The reason we felt that this would be a good pairing - Mufasa is a gentle cat, with a calm nature. His coat is much darker than Arwen’s and physically he is slightly shorter and a lot stockier than Arwen. Geronimo, whose is Arwen’s father, was a very tall serval with the most amazing characteristics, Tilly, Arwen’s mother, was orphaned and during her time in captivity was very loving until she started breeding - where she became very defensive and aggressive towards anyone who entered her enclosure. These are all important traits for an animal who is ultimately going to be released.

Each day we sit with Arwen talking gently to her so that she can realize that we do not want to hurt her babies and for us to monitor the kittens’ development. A week after the kittens were born their eyes opened, even though have not got total sight as yet. They are still deaf, but as soon as they start hearing it is very important that they learn to trust us, so that we are able to manage them in captivity.

We will keep you up dated as to how the kittens start developing and growing up.

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