Day 20 - August 14, 2005

Again both entries are the same because the last 24 hours have been a nightmare and I am at my wits end. Since yesterday lunchtime, Amaretto will not have anything to do with the babies at all. She wouldn't go in the box, she refuses to feed them. She sat up on the fish tank watching them run around the room, screaming their heads off while she ignored them. I removed her totally from the kittens today because she has now injured 2 of them and drawn blood so she's not allowed in the room now. I have had Sambuca and Cacao in the room this morning in the hopes that one of them will take to the babies and prepare to be a surrogate mum, even though they wouldn't have any milk, they can still do the other "mummy" things such as grooming, washing, teach them how to be little cats etc. (all the things that a human can not ever be a substitute for). So far however, neither of them are prepared to get to know the babies. All the babies are now on a mixture of evap milk and the mashed up JW kitten biscuits which they eat out of my hand. Feeding is taking 10 times longer because as well as using a syringe, I am also hand feeding with a more solid mixture. Each meal lasts around 40 minutes and when you take into account the washing of all the feeding utensils, sterilizing syringes, the time required for preparing the food etc. to say nothing of having the washing machine going non stop because weaning is such a mess, I now have very little time to get anything done. My one saving grace is that as the babies are that little bit older now, they sleep longer between feeds, i.e. 3 - 4 hours. I now need to get the babies eating from a saucer as quickly as possible because at the rate it's going, Retto won't be feeding them at all again so I really need to get them as independent from her for meals as quickly as I can. The stage we are now up to is that all 7 babies will eat the mixture straight from my fingers. Twix will eat straight from the saucer (at times), Iced T will also lap the mixture from the saucer, and everyone else is up to the finger stage. I've also now gone back to giving the babies Nutri Drops because they are getting nothing at all from Retto which is really worrying. When they see Retto walking about the room, they all go running after her and she hisses at them and climbs up high where they can't reach. I feel so sorry for the babies because they do not understand why their mum has rejected them, but it's not Amaretto's fault, her nipples are sore, and when the babies try and feed, it hurts her. So it is not her fault at all. Already now, they are looking at me as being their "human mum" because when they are awake and walking around they come straight over to me, follow me around the room as they do Amaretto and they all now climb my legs and chew on my fingers. Right now I need about 10 pairs of hands and 6 pairs of eyes just to try and keep up with the feeding. At the moment, I'm not enjoying the babies anywhere near as much as I should be because I'm just so desperate to get them all eating so that they don't lose any weight and by the time I've finished feeding each baby, what is normally an enjoyable experience is now fraught with worry.

Day 19 - August 13, 2005

Due to the vampire babies actions last night, weaning began a few days earlier than planned. At the 9:30pm feed, when I came out of the kitchen and into the back room, there were babies everywhere. They were waiting for me at the kitchen door, they were over at the barrier near the other door, under the chair and all shouting at the tops of their voices. We have often raised 2 litters together here but not ever have I come across anything as noisy as these babies, particularly as they are not even 3 weeks old yet. I figured that the only one to appease them all would be to fill their tummies, so I heated up the evap mixture and I added some very soggy, mashed up JW kitten biscuits, soaked them in the evap. mixture and by the time I was finished with all 7 babies I was covered from head to foot in kitten mixture. It was absolutely everywhere. The babies all loved it which delighted me. What didn't impress me was that Amaretto could see the dilemma I was in, sitting on the floor, surrounded by screaming fur kids, climbing my lap, climbing into the plate of mixture that I was dipping my fingers in so the babies would eat from it, and she turned her back and went and sat outside in the cat run, as far away from the noise as possible. I swear she was laughing at me! The photos are all a bit of a nightmare today as I do not know who is who at all. Graham took them during one of the feeding sessions and I am at a loss as to trying to tell the Chocolate Bars from The T's.

Day 18 - August 12, 2005

Day 17 - August 11, 2005

There really is no entry at all for today due to the fact that I lost Tiny T and buried her today. Not only that, my entire day today has been spent sitting up in the bedroom with Drambuie who is due today so I have not been on the computer at all, other than very briefly. I've actually only seen the babies every 2 hours when I have come back downstairs to feed them. They are doing well though and are now very adventurous to say the least.

Day 16 - August 10, 2005

Freedom! Getting out of prison! That is the only thing on our Chocolate Bars minds. The photos in today entry which were actually taken last night, will show you exactly what I mean. At 16 days of age, the babies have had enough of being in their box and when they are awake now and not feeding, they are climbing out of the box and starting to explore. Oddly enough, when they do this, Amaretto just leaves them to it and she wanders off out into the cat run, she doesn't even stop to make sure they don't get lost. Of course this could be because she knows I'm in the room with them. Some of our babies had their first taste of Hills a/d last night. Amaretto was eating some (I usually feed her when I feed the babies) and I had some on my fingers and sure enough, the greedy little Chocolate Bars wanted the a/d and not the milk mixture. I am just so pleased that they don't have any sharp teeth yet or I would actually have no fingers left at all. They absolutely loved it.

Day 15 - August 9, 2005

Our Chocolate Bars get noisier by the day and when I feed them now (all except Twix) they actually try to eat the syringe and they also try to eat my fingers. To me, this is a very good indication that they will soon be much happier having some special kitten mixtures made up for them which is not just milk based. To this day, Twix has never really accepted being syringe fed. She only ever eats from her mum and obviously it is not doing her any harm because she is the largest of the Chocolate Bars. She did actually used to be the largest of all 8 babies however Mr T has now overtaken Twix and is 13 grams ahead of her. I am convinced that by Sunday, our babies will be out of the box and exploring. Already now, on a daily basis when they are awake, they keep coming to the front of the box and climbing out and I keep putting them right back in. Don't know why I bother really as they will just get back out again. I have now put up a small barrier in the back room so that our other cats and young kittens can still get in and out but when the babies start exploring they will not be able to leave the back room.

Day 14 - August 8, 2005

It's now almost time for the lunch time feed/weigh (remembering that the diary goes online hours after I write it) however I opened the pages up ready to start at about 10:30am and still have not typed a single word until now. I really am struggling as to what to write about this morning. I must say a big thank you to Kim for her advice yesterday with regards to the babies and the house situation. For those of you who aren't aware, Kim also has a kitten diary on her web site with photos of her fabulous babies :) The dilemma that I had was that as the babies were moved downstairs to the back room yesterday, this meant that our other cats and younger kittens were not able to go out into the cat run because when I moved the babies down, the glass doors were closed so that Amaretto and the little ones had peace and quiet. Normally, our babies don't come down to the back room until they are 3 weeks old and then they don't mix with our other cats until they are 5 weeks old. Yesterday, our other cats were sitting on the other side of the glass doors crying because they couldn't come in to be with me or to go into the cat run. Taking Kim's excellent advice, today the glass doors were opened up and everyone had access again to me and to the cat run, and also to Amaretto and the babies. Everything went really, really well. Sheridans stuck his head in the box, took one look/sniff and ran a mile. He was most unimpressed. Amarula was absolutely fascinated by them and kept putting her head further and further in the box just staring at them. Sambuca is sitting on the vet bed in front of the box, she stuck her head in and Retto swore at her so now she's calmly sitting there waiting for an invitation and guarding Amaretto and her babies. Tia Lusso stuck her head in, was absolutely horrified to say the least and ran off as if demons were after her and hasn't returned lol. Kahlua stuck his head in but didn't think much of it at all :) Cacao is currently keeping Ice company so she hasn't met the new arrivals yet. Drambuie didn't care one way or the other as she's more concerned about her own babies who are due in just 3 days time. None of the Chocolate Bars were phased at all by visits from all these strange cats, they were happy just to look at them and then go back to sleep or feed from mum. They didn't really care at all. When I was feeding Crunchie this morning, Sambuca sat on the office chair right next to me just watching everything I did and make sure that I wasn't "hurting" him which was really lovely. Poor little Crunchie now has blue on him too (see The T's diary for an explanation). When you look at the photos below, you should be able to pick out Crunchie quite easily in the bed photos because of the little mark on the very top of his head from yesterday morning's incident.