Today is a heartbreaking day for us and today both diary entries are exactly the same. We lost our beloved Kahlua and the pain is immense. Lua was our Seal Point neuter boy that we bought a few months after we got married. Kahlua was the inspiration behind my breeding and he was the inspiration for the Siamese and Oriental Cats Online Club. Our lives will never be the same without him and his loss is more than we can bear at the moment.

As you know the Pints and the Bush Rangers are moving house downstairs today into the back room which first must be thoroughly cleaned. This is quite a large job and one that I am about to undertake very shortly as I so desperately need to keep busy because neither myself, nor Graham know how to deal with our grief at the moment. The rest of my day will be spent online looking for the right place to take our boy to where he can be cremated and that is going to be a very difficult and upsetting thing to do.

Weaning has now moved one step further thanks my darling Guinness who is extremely bright and now eats directly from the plate. No more messy fingers. I can not believe how quickly she is picking up this whole weaning business. Caffreys and XXXX are still both eating from my fingers which is great and I will now be concentrating on getting them to eat from the plate as well. So far, the babies have been eating Hills A/D and mashed up, soggy Iams kitten biscuits. They were supposed to have had raw beef mince as well however, a slight incident with one of our fridges put paid to that and the mince ended up in the bin! So today I am defrosting some rabbit mince for them and I'm hoping they will really love the raw rabbit as their mum thoroughly enjoys it. I am putting off the house moving until tomorrow now as today we decided we are going to move the furniture around in our own house (very long story) and it's going to take us the majority of the day. This now means that on Monday I will be very busy thoroughly cleaning out the back room downstairs, going through buckets of bleach so that by tomorrow afternoon the mums and their babies will be firmly ensconced in the back room where they will have much more space to run about. I think the mum's will enjoy much more as well because they'll be able to see all of our other cats through the glass doors and they will also be able to go out into the cat run if they want to. It's much better for me as well because it means I'll be with them all day long which is always lovely.

I'm going to add to the bottom of each diary as well today a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Elaine, owner of Grand Premier Schimmel Superhoops (Xena) because Xena was exhibited at a cat show yesterday, and gained her 3rd GPC which means she is now a Grand Premier and Xena remains unbeaten in every open class she has ever entered. Elaine is also the owner of Ned Kelly from Drambuie's current litter. Also, many CONGRATULATIONS to Caryll, owner of Premier Schimmel Chilli Tequila (Kyla) as Kyla was awarded Best of Breed at the same show.

My Pints have now decided that they are definitely growing up and want to be just like their mum's and they proved this to me last night by deciding that if mum can eat real food, so can they. I had no intention of weaning the Pints until they were 4 weeks of age, although for all our past litters, bar one, weaning has began at 3 weeks of age. Anyway, I fed the mum's their dinner last night and I also had a can of Hills A/D in my hand at the same time that Guinness had her head through the opening of the box and was climbing out. I waited until she was out of the box and I put my fingers in the A/D and placed it under her nose. Within less than a second her nose was twitching and she was licking her lips so I put a small amount of the A/D on her mouth and it was licked off straight away. After that, there was absolutely no stopping her whatsoever. She couldn't get enough of it, to the point where she was chewing on my fingers if I wasn't getting it out of the tin fast enough for her. While this was going on, Caffreys & XXXX had also both come to the front of the box because they knew something unusual was happening. They sat at the front of the box for about 30 seconds, watching me feed Guinness, and then they were out of the box like a shot and wanted some as well. Caffreys picked up on the whole idea straight away, and just like Guinness, he ate so much that he surprised me. It took XXXX a little longer to get the hang of it as she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to be do, but with a bit of encouragement, she had it figured out and was also trying to chew my fingers. This was one of those special moments between babies and breeder that really can't be put into words. The first time that our little ones eat proper food is such an amazing experience. By the time they had decided that they didn't want to eat any more A/D I was astounded to see that they had actually gone through a quarter of a tin, which might not sound like a lot, however, for babies who have never eaten before it is actually quite a large amount. This morning when I gave the mum's their breakfast, both Caffreys and Guinness ate the A/D again off my fingers but XXXX was too busy playing games with Ned Kelly to worry about eating.

I had thought this morning that we were getting back to normal and I was ready to do a proper diary entry with more text than has gone in for the past couple of days however everything went horribly wrong when I had a disaster with my camera software. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get to the bottom of the problem and download the photos, by which time, I lost all enthusiasm.

The Pints are progressing beautifully and every day they are becoming more and more like real little cats. Their biggest problem at the moment is the fact that their mothers are still keen on curtailing their freedom by constantly trying to drag them back into the box every time they leave it. I was looking really carefully today at Caffreys and XXXX and have come to the conclusion that the older they get, the more difficult it is to tell them apart as their facial features are so incredibly similar. I am sure though that as they mature, there will be more pronounced differences which will make it much easier.

Again, this entry is short and starts of the same for both diaries and today's photos were not particularly great because as per usual, Drambuie wouldn't get out of the way and let me take some photos of the children. All babies had lovely cuddles today with my mother in law who is visiting at the moment which is lovely. I must admit that I do love showing off the babies to mum whenever she is here with us and I know she enjoys it as much as the babies do.

The 3 Pints all now climb out of the box and go for walks on a regular basis although I felt sorry for Guinness earlier today as she every time she climbed out of the box and got onto the bedding leading to the floor, Drambuie stuck her head out of the box and grabbed her by the neck to bring her back into the "home". I did tell Drambuie that Guinness was old enough now to go for little walks but she wasn't having it and flat out refused to let them stroll any more than a couple of inches. They are all at the age as well now where they are extremely playful and when they are awake and not feeding, their time is spent pouncing on each other and play fighting which is so lovely to see. You could just gaze at them for hours on end while they play because it's so sweet.

These are extremely short entries today (and probably tomorrow as well) because we are extremely "snowed under" here in the home and have an awful lot to get through between now and Friday. Our Pints are still enjoying the companionship of the Bush Rangers although Caffreys seems to take particular delight in purposely head butting poor Joe Byrne for no apparent reason whatsoever. Having said that though, all 3 Pints are being so very sweet with the Bush Rangers and when they have their little grooming sessions, they also spend time grooming the Bush Rangers who seem to thoroughly enjoy the extra attention. Apologies for the shortness of this but hopefully we'll be back to normal in a day or two.

This Day 21 stage has really snuck up on me and I received a bit of a shock this morning when I realised that the Pints are already 3 weeks of age now. I guess at some point in the next 7-10 days I'll look at attempting to wean them although at the moment they are doing extremely well with mum's milk and are making gains that I am happy with and I am sure they will "tell" me when the time is right. Now onto other more important matters, the Pints no longer reside in their box as they have now moved in with the Bush Rangers (as you will no doubt see by the photos below) but if you have read the Bush Rangers kitten diary entry for today, you will be aware of the reasons why. If you haven't or don't read their diary, then to cut a long story short, the Bush Rangers couldn't afford to pay their rent and rather than be evicted, they chose to take in the Pints as their lodgers. All 5 babies are very happy and comfortable in the Bush Rangers box and the mums seem very settled with this new arrangement. After a further check last night, I can now confirm that Guinness is definitely female, XXXX is definitely female, however Caffreys is most assuredly a male which is disappointing for Teresa and the boys as they had their hearts set on 2 girls, so it is entirely possible that XXXX may now be available to a loving, pet home. If you are having one of the Pints or the Bush Rangers, then chances are you will find photos of your babies in both diaries and not just one.