I am 2 weeks old now!

Liquorice' weight gains have dropped quite dramatically during the past few days since his mother come back into call. Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about him as he is a big, strong, healthy boy and he is still gaining each day but they are much smaller gains than they should be for a baby who is a singleton. I'm not going to get involved though at this point in time because she can't call forever can she???????? :) I will just continue to monitor him and see how he does. At this stage, very little has changed with our Liquorice, although I think he does get more beautiful as each day passes. He is simply content to snuggle with his mum and feed, and sometimes, when he is feeling energetic, he attempts to crawl/walk around his kitten box. As 2 of our babies left us today I didn't really have the time to take any photos so I will make sure there are some in tomorrow's entry.

Poor, poor Liquorice :( He is sharing his room with a screaming, hormonal mother. How on earth this boy has managed to make any weight gains is totally beyond my comprehension. Cointreau screams all day, she screams all night, and every time I go into the kitten room, she is not in the box feeding her son, she is rolling around all over the floor, making love to the scratch post! To top it all off, I have a horrendous cold, I'm way behind due to yesterday's events and it's going to be a manic few days trying to catch up with everything. As you can see by the photos below though, Liquorice is showing no signs at all of being bothered by his mum's screams. It's really not the longest of entries because as I said, I have loads to get through and it's been a long day so far and there is still an awful lot to do.

There is no entry for today as Sambuca gave birth and I've not had a chance to be on the computer at all as I've spent the day with Sami in our bedroom.Tomorrow the diaries should resume as per normal................hopefully!

Another day passes, and I'm rather pleased with today's "box" photos because you can actually distinguish his features as opposed to seeing photos of a black blob in a box which makes a nice change! The bad news is that yesterday afternoon, Cointreau decided to come back into call. Liquorice is a mere 10 days old and she is screaming the house down. My biggest concern was that she would stop feeding her baby or caring for him due to the hormonal changes in her body. You can imagine my relief when I popped him on the scales today to find he had still gained 15 grams in the last 24 hours (he is currently 241 grams) so I am really pleased. I'll be monitoring him closely now to see if the calling has any effect on him which I am hoping it won't. He is doing really well though and is an absolute darling. I think it is safe to say that if I didn't already have Liquorice's mother, father, and grand mother, all of whom are part of our breeding cat family, then this man would be going nowhere (Yes Julie, I'm sure I know what you are saying as you read this!) however, sometimes I must be practical (not sure why really?) and find our man the perfect home at some point.

The only actual real change with Liquorice today is that overnight, his cord fell off, finally! At long last I managed to take Liquorice out of the box to get some photographs. As for how I managed this without Cointreau snatching him from me, well that was easier than I thought it would be. Liquorice didn't moan too much during his photographic session and so long as I stroked Cointreau with one hand while I took photos with the other, she was perfectly content. I have to wonder though if these photos are actually any better than the ones I take when he is in the box? He really is an absolute little treasure and at some point during the next 13 weeks or so I am going to have to make a decision as to his future. What I'm waiting for is to see whether or not he ends up as nice looking as his daddy. If he does, then I will try to find a loving, pet/show home for him but he is still so very young and there is no rush at all yet to decide his future. As each day passes, he seems to be come more alert, more active, and definitely more used to be handled and stroked. It will be interesting to see how he (and indeed his mother) react when they get new room mates hopefully this week as Sambuca is due tomorrow.

Day 8 - April 30, 2007

There's no photos in today's diary entries because I'm still trying to catch up with all the chores that didn't get done due to the rather manic weekend. I'm hoping that by tomorrow morning everything will be back to normal.

Liquorice is doing extremely well and is not giving me any cause for concern at all. He is very content to be fed by his mum and to snuggle up with her for sleeps. At the moment, he is a very good child but I have no doubts that as he matures, this is bound to change somewhat. One thing I have noticed about Cointreau's eating habits is that she is eating very little of the James Wellbeloved biscuits and is choosing to mainly eat the wet commercial/cooked meals, which I am not overly pleased about as even though the pouches are a complete meal, I still prefer the cats to have the biscuits as the main part of their diet. Mind you, this is not affecting Liquorices' weights in any way at all and he does appear to be thriving.

Day 7 - April 29, 2007

The first week of Liquorice' life has simply flown by and this morning he weighed in at 202 grams which I am extremely pleased about. I didn't get the chance to take any photos today because 2 of our Racers were leaving us and we also had visitors so it was a very manic day as you can imagine. Liquorice was able to meet his other "mum and dad", Marcelle and Jim and I think both of them were quite proud of the progeny that their darling boy Bailey had produced.(Liquorice is Bailey's grand son). Jim also got to meet Ashanti whom he had not seen for a very long time and I think he was quite amazed at how much Ashanti had grown :) Liquorice enjoyed cuddles with Marcelle and Cointreau was happy to let Marcelle hold her baby for much longer than I expected. Sure enough though, when Cointreau felt he was gone from the box long enough, she didn't hesitate to try and take him out of Marcelle's hands.