Grooming

Because the Helki has a "new" fur type its been an experimental game trying to find the best way to groom their fur. When the kittens go to their forever homes, basic grooming questions are asked, so I felt that it would be a great way to write what I know, so far.

A Helki while it looks like a short hair cat is really more of a medium hair. The undercoat is thick and while it sheds it is rare that you will notice much fur comnig off of your cat. The coat holds the dead fur in as filling and insulation. For this reason I think it is good practice to comb a Helki coat out once or twice a month. Dead fur tends to also dull the coat and keep the skins natural oils from spreading through out the coat. A groomed Helki will still show the plaited/scaled look with a glimmering shine.

At home I use a Furminator to do most of my grooming. Nothing else seems to get deep enough into the coat. Most people don't bathe their cats, I do bathe mine for shows. About a week before a show I will clip nails, clean ears, comb the fur, and bathe the cat. The best products for bathing a Helki are oatmeal based. I will often times take a packet of dry oatmeal powder and rub that through the fur. Then a quick rinse with hot water. Then a shampoo of a moisturizing shampoo. I have yet to find a product that compares to Garnier moisturizing shampoo. I have even tried Focus 21 Sea Plasma Shampoo and not felt that I got as good of results. After the shampoo and rinse I towel dry the cat and then let them air dry. This can take a while depending on the thickness of the coat.

I have learned some great tricks for the showhall from a Chartruex breeder that seems to work for the Helki as well. First off you should know that the Helki coat is longer then the Chartruex, so if you are familiar with these techniques then please do it sparingly until you get into a comfortable place with the grooming of your individual Helki. So here it is, the simple trick to a quick Helki groom is to bring several washcloths, dampen one and run it through the Helki coat backwards. I also will spritz the coat with texturizer and sea plasma always from the back of the cat forward, so that the spritz gets into the coat and doesn't just lay on the top. Currently I only do this a few times through out the day of a show, as I don't need to have the cat in front of a judge, but I like to be as prepared as much as possible. When doing this I also try to make sure the cat is not damp when being petted by others.

At home I always do the best I can to give the cats a great diet. I prefer to feed them some raw as well as commercial food. The Helki is a cat that loves fish, in the same way an Oriental Shorthair loves poultry. I am the type that believes that human or animal we crave what we need. So I do like to put some Salmon oil in their commercial food once or twice a month.

Moulting is definitely something that happens with the Helki. There is normal seasonal moult that is easily handled if you are maintaining a good grooming schedule. Then there are moults I've seen at different stages of life. These are a bit more dramatic. Kittens usually moult between 4-6 months old. What you will notice is a once full fluffy coat is now a bit coarse and flat. This usually grows back with in two to three months. The next major moult happens around a year to a year and a half of age. Females at this age can drop most of their coat during this moult. Leaving them with only a some fur along their spine and tail. Males lose less coat but I have seen some neuters at this stage look like the females. Most males at this age will not lose much and it will be even less noticeable then the kitten moult. Some however will lose fur at the base of the tail and buttocks, any pantaloons will moult, a naked patch on each side of the belly, and some fur on the head and jowls. This moult also takes a bit longer for them to grow the fur back. Some never do grow back all their coat, but those are not to be used for breeding. Now I know breeders might be freaking out because some people would have already bred a cat by a year. The Helki female rarely goes into any major heat until she reaches a year and a half. So it is a bit easier to tell who you will want to breed that way. After this major life changing moult, most other moulting is routine and you better understand the moulting cycles of your individual cat.

So far that is what I have learned from this breed and I will update this article when any new and helpful information is found.

Food

I'm such a stickler when it comes to cat food and like many people fed my small group of cats an inexpensive cat food which they would gobble up and I would have nothing left to feed them but my dinner until I got paid :(

With this breed project I've had to grow my number of cats and read about feeding a high quality food to the cats early on. I got them Iams kitten food and Iams original. I was pissed about the price until I found that they were eating less often and the Iams lasted and the cats weren't really begging for food all the time.

With so many bred mothers and a huge mass of kittens on the way I began making kitten glop which we call Cat Pudding and feeding that regularly. Even my old man cat Glenn loves the pudding and the mothers milk is strong and kittens get fed regularly.

At the cat shows many food companies advertise and bring samples. EVO was one of them. It a high protein food for the cats with a lot more meat in it. The cats loved the sample they got but I again went back to the Iams. Recently AmunRa was shown in Reno NV and while he did well he probably could have beaten all of the competition if he had more muscle mass. I asked my mentor and she probed about deworming. Ra was wormed for roundworm and tapeworm and I haven't seen a problem since then. She said then its what you are feeding them, he needs more protein to build muscle. Right then I knew she was right. She had told me and told me I needed a better quality food and now I really know why.

While I wont be showing Ra for a while, I do want him to have strong musculature. Many of my males don't mature until they are about a year and half old. I think he will be peak then but until then its time for some protien shakes! j/k buit he will be getting a higher protien meal now. I will also be feeding the EVO to my other prospective show cats.

This is good because now I can be a bit more stingy on the cat food and hopefully get some of my fatties down in weight and build up my thinner cats. We will still feed raw a few times a week and any meat leftovers from dinner will also be fed to the cats.

I have to say I gave out the cat food earlier and each cat has their bowl. Even the kittens wanted some EVO. Since I put their individual portions out not one of them has come begging for my lunch and the house is almost eerily quiet. The mothers are feeding the kittens and I haven't given them pudding yet. Its a very neat thing to experience and I wanted to share in detail. ^_^