I was brought up on a farm in Cumbria and love all animals but particularly cats and horses. My first cat, at the age of 10 years was a long haired tabby farm tom. I watched him being born, spent hours among the haybales playing with him and when he grew up he came out riding with me on my pony and even slept on the ponies rump. He was my constant companion.
As a teenager I moved to Somerset and met my husband Graham. Graham is an engineer and we were fortunate enough to be able to travel and live in various parts of the world. Keeping pets was difficult but we usually had one or two adopted from other expats who were moving on. Our last family posting was in Brunei and, it was here that I first got involved with siamese/tonkinese cats. We bought two lovely kittens that were not pure bred siamese but had the lovely blue eyes, one was a female seal point (with white paws) and the other was a tabby point male. Unfortunately we lost the boy but the female "Squeaky" returned to England with us, this was back in the 80s and she only just survived the quarantine.
After a couple of years we purchased a lovely Blue Burmese boy "Benny". Squeaky and Benny mated and had one kitten, my first tonkinese, although at the time I wasn't aware of this.
For my 50th birthday Graham suggested that I have a kitten; at this time I had no cats and we had moved back to Somerset. Graham was still working abroad, the kids were growing up, so I wanted a cat for companionship. My first thought was for a siamese, like "Squeaky", but I was unable to find a traditional style siamese. Graham preferred the Burmese, but none were available at that time. Having scoured the internet I came across the tonkinese, these cats were perfect, they had everything I was looking for, tradional siamese shaped body, lovely blue/green eyes, playful, athletic, intelligent and talkative. Enter "Sky" and "Comet", a blue female and a chocolate pointed male, purchased from Hillary Goodburn (Hylily). Since then Hillary has continued to support me and helped me set up as a breeder. Sky is now neutered but her daughter "Venus" is carrying on her bloodlines. Venus's daughter Carina (second litter) will hopefully become my Show Cat.
When I decided to become a breeder my main aim was to introduce new bloodlines as I feel that the gene pool is a little small. I therefore purchased two traditional siamese, "Luna" and "Prima". Both have now produced litters and one kitten from each of these first litters have been retained - "Maia" and "Gemini" (First Generation). Now that I have secured new bloodlines for the Tonkinese I can concentrate on doing the same for the Old Style Siamese; the gene pool for them is possibly smaller than the Tonkinese. In 2010 I applied for another prefix from the GCCF for my siamese - SIALAXY. Hopefully there will be kittens produced in 2011 to bear this prefix.