Diaries today are very short, due to our battle with Ock, but at least there are photos, albeit "sleepy" ones.

Pistachio has decided he is one of the "gang" now as you can see from the first few photos below. He insists that he now must join the "big kids" when it is feeding time at the zoo (as I call it) and despite the fact that our older cats were not quite sure who this invader was that just stole their food, he was totally unphased. Even now, Graham and I are both absolutely gutted that Pistachio is a male. We both think he is incredibly gorgeous and would dearly love him to remain with us. Pecan, Macadamia, and Cashew are all doing extremely well. Today all of our Nuts have spent an awful lot of time playing very rough, boyish games, of wrestling and beating each other up. It can be quite scary to watch sometimes. You will also note from the photos below that despite Cashew being a big boy now, he still continues to feed from the mum's although this is more of a comfort thing than an actual need for food.

There are no kitten diaries today. Please read the Water Babies' kitten diary for an explanation.

It has been one of those days whereby every time I have attempted to start today's kitten diaries, my attention has been drawn elsewhere and as a result, it is now 1612 and I am only now just starting to type the entries. This means unfortunately there are no photos in any of today's diaries and all I have really done is just scribble a few lines. We have 2 of our older Oriental Black kittens leaving home tomorrow which meant I had to spend a minimum 2 hours doing their paperwork and preparing for them to leave. Tomorrow, there WILL be photos, one way or another :)

There has to be one in every litter! Pecan! That boy has serious issues! We had a wonderful kitten family visiting today and it was during this visit that I noticed Pecan doing something that has me quite worried...........................he was out in the hallway, with Morse, playing fairly roughly in typical Pecan fashion but.........................he suddenly stopped playing grabbed Morse by the neck of the neck and prepared to, well I don't really want to say actually, so let me just say, prepared to do something extremely similar to what his father does with women. This boy is a mere 9 weeks of age and I am rather desperately hoping that this is simply his new style of play and he is not maturing at a ridiculous age. What makes it worse is that Morse is actually male, and not female. Go figure. Still, this is going to be Marcelle and Jim's problem, not mine :) :) :) All four of them are little terrors though and there have been some incredibly feisty wrestling matches taking place today, quite volatile ones in fact. It's times like that where I like to be sitting up on something high where I am in not in danger of babies running into me at full speed.

As per usual, I took photos of our younger 2 litters first, and then by the time I went to take photos of the Water Babies, the Nuts and the Detectives, I had taken just 2 photos of Pecan and the flippin' camera batteries died. I now have them on charge but that will take a while so I don't know whether or not I will get any other photos in today's kitten diaries for these 3 litters.

Well, would you believe that also, last night, our Nuts were still just so wonderfully behaved children? Today, has been a totally different matter. When I came downstairs to prepare the kitten's breakfast, and to warm up another milk mixture so I could feed Heston, I couldn't believe the havoc our Nuts were creating. As you can see from this photo below, Pecan was in the bathroom. He has now learnt that he can get into the bathtub and back out, and that he can get from the bath, to the basin, and up onto the windowsill <sigh>. Cashew, much to my horror, was under the small fridge in the kitten room. I rapidly grabbed him out, blocked off the front of the fridge again and told him off as that is not a safe place for babies to be. Macadamia was not only up on the windowsill in the kitten room, but he was actually scaling the wire frame that keeps the cats/kittens safe. Pistachio was underneath one of the bottom bunk beds, springing out at every other baby who passed him, scaring the heck out of him, so we have had quite a number of little "Basil Brush" tails on the babies this morning :)

Our Nuts have been extremely well behaved today, for the first time in ages actually :) Normally, at least once a day, one of our Nuts does something that they shouldn't but all they have done today is play nicely together, pop their heads downstairs for a bit of a wander, sleep and eat. Not necessarily in that order either. I keep going up to the kitten room to "spy" on them when they aren't expecting it just to see if I can catch them doing something that they shouldn't be but each time I go up there, they are being little angels. Of course the worrying thing about this is that quite possibly, by the time evening comes, they will be absolute terrors and will thunder around the home all night long.

Entries are not the longest today and there aren't many photos sorry. I'm still trying to catch up after our lady's long labour and also today I had the pleasure of Diana's company for a little while as she came to visit her 2 babies. Having Diana in the home is like having part of the family here and it was nice to just take a bit of a break and sit down, chat and do nothing at all :)

Our Nuts are trouble. There really is no other way to describe them. Today I caught Pecan balancing on the rim of the bath tub as he walked the entire length. While he was doing that, Pistachio was up on top of the small fridge in the kitten room <sigh>. I can understand that yes, at 9 weeks of age, they all think they are "big kids" now, but they really do need to calm down just a tad and remember that they are still babies. Out of the 4 of them, it is Cashew and Macadamia who are spending the most time downstairs at the moment. Both of them love it down here and neither of them are phased when Washington growls at them, or when Ashanti has his nose stuck up their bum :)

There are no entries today in any of our kitten diaries. It's been a long 24 hours as one of our ladies went into labour. The labour lasted from 9pm last night until just after 9am this morning and we also had one of our older babies, Ice Maiden leaving home today. Entries should resume as per normal tomorrow.

Message for Diana: If you are reading today's entries, can you please call me ASAP on my mobile?