You wouldn't know it from the photos below but our babies had a lovely morning playing outside in the cat run today. It's been such a nice day so the door has been open all day and the Herbs spent most of the morning in the run having great games stalking each other which was lovely. Tarragon is still the most agile of all the Herbs and spent a lot of her time constantly scaling the wire on the run, right to the top. It dawned on Graham and I this morning after we fed the Herbs their breakfast that we no longer need to put down to large plates for them. One plate will suffice as the boys are firmly settled in Linda's home now so the one good thing that came out of Parsley and Sage leaving is that there is one less plate to wash up. The Herbs still haven't missed their brothers, mind you, Sheridans is more than making up for them going as he now thinks he's the "man" in the house so the poor girls are constantly finding themselves being bossed about by Sheridans. Today was a nice day for me in the respect that it's Sunday so I've been taking it easy for once, hence the lateness of the diaries going online and the Herbs were left to their own devices for a while today as we went to our aquatic centre to buy some more tropical fish. While we were out, the babies were beautifully behaved. They had the run of the house which they do now all the time, even during the evening, and they didn't destroy a single thing. Of course we did have the foresight to remove the toilet paper stand prior to leaving the house :)

Yesterday was so very difficult for me, not only my grief for losing Pluto, but also having to say goodbye to Parsley and Sage as Linda took them home with her. After Linda left, I just sat at my desk and cried which is not unusual for me at all when I have to let my babies go. I know that both boys are going to be so loved by Linda and this is an aspect of breeding that makes it all so worthwhile. I must also say a huge thank you to Linda for the most beautiful gift that she bought me, from Parsley and Sage, as well as the card with lovely words in it. I truly have been spoilt and will treasure it always as a parting gift from my boys and their fantastic new mum. Thank you also to Emma for visiting with Linda and for offering to be the designated driver for the day. I am sure that made it so much easier on Linda as she could then sit with her babies on the way home and not have to worry about driving. My house seems so much quieter now without the boys and Cacao spent yesterday looking behind the sofa, behind the TV unit, upstairs, and I presume she was looking for "her" 2 missing babies. The rest of the Herbs don't appear to be missing their brothers too much but that could be because they are now able to rest peacefully as opposed to being sound asleep and having the boys jump on their heads and bite them. I am just hoping that for the first few days at least, Parsley and Sage will be kind to Milo and George, their new big brothers, and won't torment them too much. The next of our little ones to leave us will be Rosemary but fortunately, that will not be until Friday of next week so at least I will have my remaining 4 Herbs for a bit longer. The little ones have had quite a lot to put up with in the last couple of days because Drambuie has been screaming her head off in full call. This means that whenever the Herbs are sleeping, she is walking around the house yelling out, waking them up, sniffing them on the off chance they are entire males and giving no one any peace at all. Vicky and Charlotte came to visit their girls today, Tarragon (Misty Blue) and Chives (Jasmine) aren't they beautiful new names for my girls :) Yet again I was very spoilt because Vicky and Charlotte gave me a lovely bath oil and beautiful fragrance candles so that I could take some time out for myself and relax which was very thoughtful. Charlotte also brought over a toy for her new girls to play with during their visit and both girls had a great time playing with Charlotte and their toy. Even Sheridans got involved although he didn't want to share the toy and kept growling when he got hold of it. So our Herbs have had a lovely day with their visitors, as did I.

As I knew Sage and Parsley were leaving us today, I wrote this diary entry yesterday afternoon. Had I not written it then, it would not be online today as my darling Pluto left me last night for Rainbow Bridge and I can not face writing entries today. As it is Sage and Parsley's special day, I am just relieved that I had the foresight to prepare this yesterday because it would be very unfair to Linda to have not put her babies special entry online today.

Well here is where our diary will start to change slightly. Once the babies have reached 91 days of age, the diary will actually be completed, however it won't be closed off as one more entry will be done for the days that our babies leaves us. Today is a very sad day for me as both Parsley and Sage are going to their new home with Linda. I think everyone in our house is going to miss those boys far too much and I am positive that tears will be flowing when I say my good byes to my boys whom I must now start to think of as Linda's boys. Letting babies go is still one of the hardest parts of breeding for me and it does not get any easier with each litter. I'm going to be lost without my little man Parsley because he is truly the most loving of babies and he likes nothing more than to sit on my shoulder or on my lap for purrs and cuddles. He just wants to be with us all of the time and is a real little people person. I actually don't know how I'm going to be able to hand him over to Linda when the time comes which will be very soon. As for my darling Sage, well, remember when we first thought he was a girl in which case he was going to live with us forever and then at a few weeks of age, she suddenly turned into a he and we were so very disappointed as we had totally fallen in love with him. Well even now, we still wish he had been a girl and could have stayed with us because he is so endearing, also so very mischievous in that way that only Orientals are. Out of the 2 boys, Sage is the biggest, he's going to be a very large Oriental when he is fully grown but oddly enough, he is not the bravest of the two. That is Parsley as he will face up to anything and is phased by nothing. Sage looks to the rest of his litter mates for reassurance if he is feeling a bit scared and will be the first to run as opposed to stand up and fight. And do you know that I can't even say that my food bills will go down once these 2 guys have left because it's Thyme and Sheridans that actually have bottomless pits for stomachs so when I sit here typing this, racking my brain to think of even just one good thing to come from my boys leaving, I can not come up with a single one. All I can do is hope and pray that my boys will be happy and content with Linda and her husband and I know that Linda is going to give them the most amazing home where they will be smothered with love and spoilt rotten and hopefully, I will get updates via email and the odd photograph once Linda has had time to settle them in. The boys will find it a bit strange at first as they will be sharing their home with 2 other adult males but I don't think it will take them too long at all before they feel at home. I absolutely HATE writing these entries on the days that my babies leave as I find it so terribly hard and I wish I could turn back time and make them 3 weeks old all over again just to have them here for some extra time. I don't know what I will do with myself without the boys but as with all of our babies, I guess that my job is done now and I've had all the fun parts of their lives, watching them develop and change into the beautiful babies that they are now and perhaps it's time to let them be with their new family who will enjoy them and love them for years to come. As with most of our entries, on the days that babies leave, the only photos in the entry will be ones of Sage and Parsley however the photos may not be online until much later this afternoon though.

During dinner last night, the Herbs really made us laugh. We had put them upstairs so we could eat in peace and all you could hear was thumps and bumps up the stairs. Then suddenly, a white thing came flying down the stairs helped along by a few babies. It turns out that the white thing was a vet bed that sits on the floor upstairs (as the babies like to lie on it) and I don't know who, but some of them had decided it would be great fun to slide down the stairs on the vet bed. Fortunately this morning, the Herbs decided to create havoc upstairs for a change instead of destroying my work area which I did appreciate. Although they obviously had lots of fun and games overnight because I had left a load of paperwork sitting on my desk overnight and this morning it was all over the floor. I'm lucky that it was all still intact I guess and that they hadn't shredded it. Then this morning after I put the washing on, I sat the hamper near the stairs to be taken back up whenever someone next went up there but the babies found it first and were overjoyed with the new toy. Unlike the wastepaper bin which is much smaller, they could fit 2 of them in the hamper while they roll around the floor. I let them do this for an hour or so and then put the hamper back in it's rightful place, much to the disgust of Tarragon.

As I write this entry I am desperately hoping that the Herbs will calm down a bit. They have been on the rampage since I first out of bed. Nothing in the house has been safe at all. So far this morning they have: got into one of the kitten packs that arrived this week, put toys in their water bowl, pulled the tablecloth off the table......twice, knocked over my wastepaper bin..........three times, pulled one of the monitor covers off the monitor, they have chewed 2 new chunks out of my chair and knocked over something with a huge crash and we still don't know what that something was. Normally, their antics are very funny, but first thing in the morning, when I'm trying to prepare kitten mixture for tinies, sterilize syringes and get the washing sorted out. And if I tried to move off my chair or from anywhere else they shouldn't have been, the little darlings bit me! There has not even been one single good baby this morning, every single one of them has been involved in mischief. Chives and Tarragon now have a new toy as well, it's called the plug on the bath chain. When the babies are play upstairs, Chives and Tarragon are now always seen in the bathtub wrestling with the plug chain. It was originally Chives that started this, however it didn't take too long for Tarragon to also become involved. I have now decided I'm going to give up writing this entry today because Parsley climbed up onto my lap with the guise of being sweet and wanting cuddles and 2 minutes later, Tarragon and Chives have joined him, wrestling is occurring on top of my lap and my arms are being chewed. Rosemary, bless her, has now just bitten me on the ear for the 3rd time! I cannot work under these conditions any longer so I've decided so today's entry will end here and you can thank your little darlings for that :) (Mind you, I don't know what else I would have written anyway.)

This is a fairly rushed diary entry today as I had to go out briefly this morning and will have to go out again this afternoon. It's very difficult to leave the house at the moment obviously because it has to be timed right so that I go after the 2 tinies feeds and am back before the next feed 2 hours later. Thyme scared me today because I was coming down the stairs and some of the Herbs had been upstairs and they went to follow me down however Thyme thought she would take a shortcut so she dove straight to the banister onto a stair! This is something I obviously want to discourage her from doing because i have visions of her having an awful accident. Unfortunately, another problem with the Herbs roaming around upstairs is the darn toilet paper. Even since Sheridans taught them how to unravel rolls and rolls of it, we've had lots of mess in the bathroom. It doesn't help that we humans forget to put the rolls up high. Mind you, the Herbs never would have started this bad habit if they hadn't been encouraged by Sheridans! Even though it's been horrid weather outside today, the babies have all been out in the cat run, along with the adults. Tarragon was very proud to show off her climbing skills by climbing up the wire right to the top and then hanging up there gloating at everyone else who was still on the ground. This is very unlike Tarragon as she is normally the "sweet" baby in the litter that doesn't get into too much trouble.