Day 90 - March 29, 2004

It's been a fairly quiet day today for our Little Warriors and I must be honest and say I'm rather grateful for that. We seem to have a lot going on here at the moment so it makes it much easier if everything is running smoothly with the little girls. They are still loving their freedom during the day where they can go wherever they please. I don't think Sabre's too happy though as poor Calisto simply will not leave her alone. As soon as Calisto is ready to have a nap, she goes over to Sabre, cuddles right into and sleeps. It doesn't matter where Sabre does, Calisto follows her. Giving the babes the run of the house has been the best thing we could do as they are all now used to the dogs and everything else that goes on so very little surprises or scares our Little Warriors. As you can tell by the photos below, my photography gets worse by the day! Let me assure you that my babies look much better in the flesh than depicted in these photos!

Day 89 - March 28, 2004

Now I remember why we couldn't wait to get out of the house yesterday and it has nothing to do with babies. Cacao is in full call and is screaming at the top of her voice which might not have been too bad however so is Amaretto. Unfortunately, Ice is refusing to mate Amaretto at the moment so it looks like our next planned pregnancy has been put back yet another month. The girls were pleased to see that we didn't "abandon them" today like we apparently did yesterday so they have been making the most of it by tearing around downstairs like lunatics all morning. The girls are very annoyed that they no longer have access to our bedroom for part of the evening as Kahlua (our neuter boy) resides in our room due to the girls calling. Unfortunately the only photos I managed to get today were 2 pics of darling Gabby so I'll try and get photos of everyone tomorrow.

Day 88 - March 27, 2004

I can't tell you very much about yesterday at all as we went to football yesterday so obviously was not here with the Little Warriors for a lot of the day. They couldn't understand yesterday why there weren't allowed downstairs as they normally are but I didn't see the point in letting them down for a few hours only to have to put them back in the upstairs part when we left. The babies had 2 meals in the morning before we went, however when we returned last night and I fed them, the girls all told me that they hadn't been fed in 3 days and they were absolutely starving. My Little Warriors are also Little Liars. They were pleased that I did a search under the ottoman for them last night and was able to produce another 2 mice and then spent the next few hours playing with their mice up and down the hallway.

Day 87 - March 26, 2004

Our poor Little Warriors are in for a rough day I think as Cacao is in a very funny mood. This morning she wasn't interested in any of her babies, but fortunately around lunchtime I saw her curled up with Xena. Every time the girls come hurtling down the stairs straight over to her she totally ignores them and walks off so they follow her and she then turns around and screams right in their face. Needless to say we've had a lot of babies with arched backs and bushy tails this morning. Like yesterday the door separating the 2 floors was opened early in the morning but it took a while for the babies to venture down as they went back to sleep after breakfast. Xena was the first one down and she made sure that everyone knew she was around. I think it was Ice and Tia who both went upstairs to tell the babies it was time to get up. Calisto spent the majority of the day curled up with Sabre on Sabre's bed. Every time Sabre moved away, Calisto got even closer. As usual, Gabby has spent a lot of her time sitting on my shoulder trying to stop me from working and Xena had an extra meal today which consisted of my Vegemite on toast.

Day 86 - March 25, 2004

Well I finally bit the bullet late yesterday afternoon and made the decision to allow the Little Warriors to join the general population. There are 2 main reasons for this, the first being that I am sick and tired of having the door between the upstairs and downstairs locked all the time, I'm also sick of having some cats in some rooms, other cats in other rooms because this means changing cats/bowls/litter trays/beds around constantly and I refuse to do it any more. The 2nd reason is that as some of you are aware, we are keeping 2 of the Little Warriors ourselves (Calisto & Hera) and it is about time that those 2 girls realised that our house has other cats (and pets) beside them! So anyway, yesterday afternoon, I unlocked the door separating the 2 floors and opened it right up which meant that Cacao and the Ori's could come through. It was a bit tense because we have only just gotten Tia used to be back in general population with no babies to worry about and the last thing I need is for Tia to think she is still a mum. Then of course the other problem is Kahlua, our neuter male Seal Pt pet who is a grumpy old man. I had visions of him hissing at a baby and then both mum's tearing him to pieces. I'm thrilled that it went very smoothly. We had a bit of a hairy moment with Kahlua & Xena as Xena went up to him and then she got scared and turned into a kitten with the fur from hell. Kahlua was a sweety and just looked at her and walked off. Later on, I noticed the 4 babes on the back of the lounge with Kahlua sitting on the arm of the lounge just watching them and showing no aggression at all. It was never a problem with Ice and Amaretto as both had spent time with the babies before and just love the babies to death. Of course, a problem did arise in the name of "Gabby Girl". Once she discovered she could come downstairs, she keeps coming up to my computer chair, crying until I pick her up, and then she snuggles right in at my shoulder purring away while I pat her and I'm getting very little done as a result! She's just truly irresistible though and I could hug her all day long. Out of the 8 babies we have recently had here, Gabby is the biggest time waster and I will admit that she is also my favourite and I don't know how I'm going to let her go when the time comes. They babies and Cacao are still separated of an evening because there's no human's downstairs then to supervise but from here on in, they can have the run of the house. At 9.30 this morning, they were thrown in with the rest of the cats and the door was left open so everyone could go wherever they wanted to. I'm really pleased that we've had no altercations or problems of any sort. The girls have a water and food bowl near the lounge where they sleep and as a result of them now being downstairs I can monitor their dry food eating and so far have noticed 3 out of the 4 Little Warriors eating the dry food. It's much easier now for me as well because when I give them their wet meals, I no longer have to traipse upstairs with plates of food. The girls are so funny now they have the whole house to explore and no other animals are safe from them. All 4 are so outgoing and have no fear of anything, even the dogs. They have been chasing each other throughout the whole of the downstairs, poor Kahlua has been knocked of the lounge 4 times now when the girls have jumped on the lounge and pushed him off. Even poor Ice didn't escape from being jumped on, however, his reaction was to smack the girls on top of their head with his paw while Cacao looked at the girls as if to say "I told you to settle down".

Day 85 - March 24, 2004

I'm happy to say that our Little Warriors are back to normal eating habits today. They were really funny last night running all over the bed like crazy babies. Even Xena who was always the quietest of all the girls, now comes running straight up to me when the others do. I was pleased today to see that both Calisto & Xena were quite happy to sit on their bed in the kitten room while I vacuumed the floor. Normally the babies take their cue from "mum" and run a mile if the vacuum cleaner appears, but today both girls just sat in the bed watching me clean up their mess. Gabby has become even more "clingy" lately. The minute she sees me, she is straight at my feet, crying to be picked up. Every time I feed the babies now, she no longer runs straight to the plate with the others. Instead, she comes to me for a cuddle before she will eat her meals. Calisto was busy for a while last night teaching the other Little Warriors how to climb up the bed curtains. Fortunately she wasn't very successful and couldn't understand when she was swinging off the curtains, half way up, why no one else had joined her.

Day 84 - March 23, 2004 (12 weeks old today!)

I simply can't believe we're up to 12 weeks already with our Little Warriors. The girls were most unimpressed with me today as it was vaccine day. I did try telling them that this was their last set for vaccines for the next 12 months but they didn't really care. Calisto was the only one who put up a fuss, the others were as good as gold so Andy and I managed to escape with no blood drawn. They tucked into a big meal upon their return and that seemed to cheer them up. For some very strange reason, the vaccines have had the opposite effect that they normally would have. When the babes are vaccinated, they generally come home, have a meal and then sleep for hours on end and don't have a great deal of interest in food. The Ori's decided to do the total opposite. Over the course of they day they ate 7 "wet" meals!!! I was absolutely stunned. The girls normally have only 3-4 wet meals per day however yesterday they were just starving.