Cats, Genealogy and mtDNA Haplogroup group U* and H

The year 2008 will soon be over, and 2009 is rapidly approaching, and I want to get one more blog entry in before 2009. Teaching, as always, is wonderful yet totally exhausting, both emotionally and mentally. During the school year, I’m consumed with my job and my students. Luckily for the 2008-2009 school year, I am blessed, again, with a wonderful group of students. It is winter break, and time to update my poor neglected blog.

Cats at Casa de Dulce y López


"Donut Head" wearing a cone after surgery.

The world of cats at Casa de Dulce y López has been blessed with the addition of Laguna. She has managed to charm every human and cat in the house as well as being a spark that keeps life at the Casa interesting. We had expected Pojoaque to be a small cat like his brother Nambe, but he is a huge cat. We also expected Laguna to be the large cat, and at eight months, she is still very small. Unexpected outcomes can be so delightful. After years of having a Casa full of elderly cats, it is so enjoyable to lay in bed at night and hear rapid paw steps of kitties chasing each other back and forth in their favorite game of chase.


Pojoaque

The world of the feral cats at Casa de Dulce y López hasn’t been as blessed. Ildy and Clara would disappear for over a week every once in a while, and finally, they never came back. I knew that loving feral cats would have its share of broken hearts, but I didn’t expect them so soon. We still have Sophie, Nambe and Juan, plus an exact mini version of Nambe and Juan has joined the group. We’ve wondered if he was their father, yet compared to Juan, Nambe and even our Pojoaque, our new gray guy is so small. Sophie is very close to letting Jim get near her, but someone in the past broke our Sophie’s heart. Brokenhearted kitties have a hard time trusting humans again.



Genealogy Updates

In the past six months I have updated and added hundreds of new people to my genealogy web pages. In earlier posts I mentioned all the great sources I’ve used to research medieval British genealogy, but I forgot a few important ones.


Kidwelly Castle

Some Notes on Medieval English Genealogy not only has some great resources itself, but also has links and leads to others. I’ve found their Some corrections and additions to the Complete Peerage very helpful when working with Cokayne’s Complete Peerage.



Foundation for Medieval Genealogy and Charles Cawley’s Medieval Lands: Charles Cawley has very carefully checked his sources for his work, and his work is very impressive. His entries are mainly noble or royal folk.


Warwick Castle

GEN-MEDIEVAL/soc.genealogy.medieval and their archives: There have been times that the good folks who post on soc.genealogy.medieval have helped me out of deep fogs of confusion. Also, they make me question my own work, which I find always is very helpful.

mtDNA

I had both my nephew’s and my mtDNA tested recently with the Family Tree DNA group. My nephew’s, or my Lopez male’s mtDNA happens to be U*, and my or my mother’s mtDNA is H. It seems that the U mtDNA is the oldest in Europe and people with mtDNA U were in Europe at the same time Neanderthals were there. The MtDNA H is one of the youngest mtDNAs in Europe. I’m not totally sure what all this means, but there has been an interesting outcome to my adding my results to the Family Tree DNA mtDNA matching database. I’ve found a lot of Hispanic New Mexicans with the mtDNA of H. We can find shared New Mexican ancestors, but these ancestors are via my father and not my mother, who has the mtDNA H, and whose female ancestors are likely from England.

My “mother line” is incomplete, as is my “father line.” I can find New Mexican ancestors who can be traced back to Native Americans in New México and the Valley of México, as well as to Spain, Portugal, Greece and even Belgium, but my oldest Lopez ancestor was living in Villa de Alburquerque in 1750 and married there in 1726. My oldest mother was born in Medville, Crawford, Pennsylvania about 1803. Like my father’s genealogy, I can trace other ancestors back to England, and even to the Norman conquest of England, but both mother and father lines stop the present day U.S.


Alburquerque, New México

My father line:
Carlos López (NM), Ramón López (NM), Celso López(NM), Ramon López (NM), Vicente Antonio López (NM), Diego López (NM), and possibly Miguel López (?)

My mother line:
Nancy López (NM), Eleanor Blair (NE), Mabel Cecilia Atwood(NE), Stella Ann Cole (PA), Celia Walker (PA), and Sarah Ann Ross (PA)

More information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_U_(mtDNA)

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=mm020

http://www.olypen.com/amelia/helena/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_H_(mtDNA)

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=mm024

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Map-of-human-migrations.jpg

Sophie’s Pride

As I mentioned, my cat Pojaoque was given to us by a stray, feral cat who was living in the neighborhood. My husband had been watching the family dynamics of this cat and her two daughters and son for a while. When two new kittens showed up, he began to think we needed to do something before the neighborhood was over run by the kittens of this female cat and her two daughters. Of the kittens, we were only able to adopt the black cat, who is our beloved Pojaoque. We weren’t able to adopt his gray brother unfortunately, but that was basically the mama cat's choice.

Clara hiding in the grass.

My husband had already been feeding the mama, her two girls and son. He had gotten them use to all going into a very large cat carrier we have. We asked out Vet about options for feral cats, and found out there is a group in Albuquerque that holds a clinic once a month on the second Sunday just for the purpose of spay and neutering feral cats. It was perfect. We didn’t want the neighborhood over run with feral cats, yet we couldn’t imagine the possibilities that might happen if the animal shelter picked them up. All we had to do was catch them all, and kept them from eating or drinking through the night before surgery.

It took my husband three tries. He had all the cats in the carrier the first time, but while he was transferring them to the other carriers he lost all but one. Our hungry strays came back nonetheless, and this time, we used a clipboard to transfer one at a time to other carriers using the clipboard as a restrain for the others to keep them inside the carrier. We had them all trapped and ready to spend the night in our living room.

Sophie and a Tortie Girl, The vets clipped their ears to let animal control know they were "fixed" and being watched over.

Early the next morning, a colder than usual Sunday in January, we were lined up outside the Humane Society which lends their facilities to the Spay and Neuter group. Many of us there were planning on taking back the feral cats and committing to watching over and providing for them. For the next three nights, our living room was our feral cat’s recovery room. I almost hated to let them go, except that we desperately needed to clean the carriers out, not to forget what the carriers were beginning to smell like after three days of feral cat pooping and peeing.

We’ve been taking care of them since. They hang out in our yard, sleep on our front porch, and greet us when we come home after work. They trust us as far as feral cats will trust anyone. There are times that we will be outside sitting on our porch, and the ferals will come out of hiding to join us. They won’t let us too near to them, but they know we will give them food and fresh water. I talk to them all the time, and sometimes Clara or Idly will meow back at me. Oh yes, they all have names.

Nambe, Pojaoque’s brother

We named our black kitten Pojaoque in honor of one of our cats that had recently died named Tesuque. Tesuque had been one of the all time great cats, and Pojaoque was a pretty amazing kitten. Pojaoque is the sister Pueblo of Tesuque. These Pueblos are the Native People living north of Santa Fe, New Mexico long before the Spanish arrived. I carry some of the ancestry of the Northern and Southern Pueblos, and I grew up near these two Pueblos.

We decided we needed to give the feral cats related to our Pojaoque names of other northern New Mexico Pueblos. So Pojaoque’s brother, the gray kitten, became Nambe. His older gray brother, who really more closely resembles Pojaoque, became Juan after San Jan Pueblo. Their two Tortie sisters are Ildy, after San Ildefonso Pueblo, and Clara after Santa Clara Pueblo. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we named the mama cat Sophie because she seemed to make a choice of giving us Pojaoque, while she refused to let us have Nambe. Of course Sophie came from the movie titled Sophie’s Choice.

In the last six months we’ve watched the family dynamics change greatly. At first they were a very tight-knit group. Something happened just recently to change this. The two Tortie sisters, Ildy and Clara, disappeared for eleven days. The night before they disappeared, I heard cats fighting so I went out to make sure they were alright, but there were no cats in sight.

Sophie

Shortly after the Tortie girls were back, I heard another cat fight and went out to check again. This time I saw Sophie run out of the bushes and across the street. The two Torties are almost always together. Usually Juan and Nambe are together, and Sophie is often alone. While the Tortie girls were gone, Sophie was always with Nambe and Juan. There are time, like before, when they all gather around the food eating together as a family, but now it seems like they have an understanding that they will take turns.


Something was unsettled in the feral kitty world, but I think in time it will all settle. They may no longer be Sophie’s pride, but we have promised to feed, care for and shelter all of them for the rest of their or our lives.