We are 5 weeks old now!

Day 34 - September 28, 2007

I must first warn you all that there will probably be no photos until Monday now. Reason being is that today has been a very hectic day, tomorrow I have quite a lot to do, and we friends and a kitten family visiting on Sunday so I really don't have a great deal of time at all.

Our Ray J's are full of energy and they are such happy little people. Jonesy really is going to be an extremely big lad I think. Barry is also going to be quite a decent size whereas Ray is showing more elegance and a more slender build than either Barry or Jonesy. All 3 can be very vocal children and they do have increased energy levels, or so it appears when they are tearing around the kitten room. When I took the babies their dinner tonight, I noticed straight away that Jonesy was missing. I searched high and low, and I could hear him squeaking but do you think I could find him? In the 2nd kitten room, we have some furniture stored in there, all packed against the back wall, so I had to start pulling all the furniture out and sure enough, here was Jonesy. I don't know how he got in behind and under it all, but he didn't appear to be able to get back out and the poor little guy was very relieved at having being rescued.

Day 33 - September 27, 2007

Entries today are incredibly short due to lack of time.

Today has been "Get Jonesy" day because whenever the babies have been awake and playing, both Ray and Barry have taken it in turns to fight with their big brother. I am of course delighted to say that both girls gave as good as they got and are more than capable of standing up to Jonesy. The Ray J's are a lot more active now and their appetites are starting to increase as well which is great. What isn't so great is the charming little nuggets that one of the Ray J's left by the door for me first thing this morning. I know it had to be one of them because the nuggets were too large to belong to one of the Chefs. I don't know who the guilty party is but as that is the first little "accident" we've had, then it's acceptable :)

Day 32 - September 26, 2007

I'm pleased with our babies' weaning progress to date as all 3 of our Ray J's will eat from the plate. Barry and Jonesy still have the keenest interest in food whereas at the moment, Ray can take it or leave it. She does eat, but certainly not as much as the other 2 which is evident by the weights below. I have also now seen all of our Ray J's clambering in and out of the litter tray. I did wonder as I emptied the tray last night which baby was starting to litter train because there was evidence that a baby had been in the tray and used it. They really are progressing beautifully at the moment and none of the babies are causing me any problems at all. I've put their weights below so you can see for yourself how well they are currently doing:

Baby	Colour	Current Weight
Ray	Brown Oriental Spotted Tabby female	386g
Jonesy	Cinnamon Oriental Spotted Tabby male	483g
Barry	Chocolate Oriental Spotted Tabby female	421g

Day 31 - September 25, 2007

Sorry, they are just "photo" entries today :)

Day 30 - September 24, 2007

The Ray J's and the Chefs kitten diaries are both exactly the same today but, as you can see below, there are individual photos of each baby which should make up for it :) I actually am beginning to hate the individual photo sessions :( This morning, I went up to the kitten room, camera in hand, positioned baby number 1 on the small scratch post, took 4 photos and the camera batteries died. I removed baby number 1, took batteries downstairs to put on charge, fine the power lead, take it up to the kitten room, open the door, and all the babies start running out. Five minutes later and a few choice words, I managed to stuff all the babies back into the room. Set up the small scratch post again, plug in the camera, realise that the power socket is on the other side of the wall, but yes, the lead stretched that far. I then picked up the camera, only to find it is much heavier than normal, look down and see Barry swinging off the darn lead <sigh>. It took me close on an hour just to take the photos for these 2 kitten diaries because the whole time I was taking them, the babies were climbing all over me, they were chewing on the camera lead, and trying to swing from power lead. This isn't taking into account the babies who were trying to climb down from the scratch post while I was trying to take their photos. So I do hope our new families and our diary readers can appreciate the effort that went into the photos below :)

Day 29 - September 23, 2007

There are no photos in today's entry, solely because I'm having a day off :) I probably could have found the time to take a few photos but sometimes it's just nice not to feel pressured into getting the diaries online because the photos are the most time consuming aspects of each kitten diary.

For the first time ever since he was born, Jonesy has found a human "soul mate". You may remember from previous entries that I always say how Jonesy screams when he is picked up because he can be a bit of a whinger, yet today, Karl was having cuddles with him and to my absolute astonishment, Jonesy was cuddled in to Karl, perfectly content, and he didn't utter a single sound. I've never seen him like this with anyone else before. He wasn't the only kitten though to be happy to be with Karl. Out of our 3 Ray J's, it is Barry whose pattern is coming along the best at the moment as his pattern is the most clear and defined, and it will be interesting to see what she looks like in a year's time or two. When she lies down and stretches out, she has very defined spots, albeit still with some linkage at the moment however that is starting to break up. Jonesy's pattern is definitely not as clear at this stage and I'm not sure if that is because he is Cinnamon and a lighter colour, or if it is a case of out of those 2, his pattern is not as good as Barry's. Regardless of their patterns and colours though, the Ray J's really are very interesting children and Amaretto has done us proud. It's quite odd because a number of breeders have commented to me on what a "very nice" litter the Ray J's are, yet to be honest with you, I'm not seeing it myself. To me, they are very interesting babies, and apart from the fact that I adore their patterns, I don't see that they are anything special at all. I certainly could not look at the Ray J's and pronounce that they are stunning because they're not, but they are certainly interesting.

Day 28 - September 22, 2007

The diary entries for the Chefs and the Ray J's are both exactly the same today. You may have noticed from today's kitten diary photos that the "posh box" is gone. The reason for this is that for the past 48 hours, the babies have been going underneath the posh box and sleeping under it, along with both mum's. No matter how many times I picked them up and put them back in the box, they climbed straight back out and went underneath. I figured I was fighting a losing battle so I removed the box altogether and put some bedding on the floor where the babies were sleeping. They all seem much happier now so the posh box has been relegated to the garage which I'm actually rather sad about. Last night, at around 10pm, I was due to feed Heston again and I chose that particular time to decide to try and wean the babies. What on earth possessed me I do not know but I spent 20 minutes in the kitchen preparing some baby rice, some food for the mum's and a mixture for Heston. I trundled back upstairs with my hands totally full, I gave Sami and Retto their food, I fed Heston, and I then put the plate with the baby rice/evaporated milk mixture onto the floor. I introduced Ray to it first, and she started eating straight away with no encouragement at all. Barry felt I was trying to poison her and she flat out refused to lick the mixture from my finger. This then left Jonesy and it should come as no surprise to anyone that before I even had a chance to dip my finger in the mixture and wave it under his nose, he had walked through the entire plate <sigh>. Once I cleaned him up, I then put a bit of the mixture on his mouth and nose. He realised that this was actually food and I encouraged his head towards the plate where, like Ray, he started to eat. As I was already covered in the stuff, I figured I would wave it under the noses of our Chefs as well. Gordon seemed to be the most interested, although Heston was quite keen as well to try and lick it off my finger. This morning, the process was repeated all over again only this time with more success. All 3 of our Chef's ate from the plate, (for this meal I had also mixed in a Natures Menu kitten pouch), but more importantly, Heston ate from the plate. I was over the moon. She is such a tiny little thing but here she was happily eating and I didn't even have to syringe feed her at all for that meal as she ate quite a lot of the mixture. Whether or not I can get her to do the same during the next few days may be a different story though :) Again today though, the rest of the Chefs were not particularly keen on what I was offering to them and thanks to the Chefs we ended up with food throughout the entire bedding. They are still very young however and we will get there in the end.