I am 8 weeks old now!

There is no entry today as it's been quite a busy day and I've not had the time to write anything sorry.

Already Liquorice is starting to pick up and gain back some of her weight. In the past 24 hours she has gained approximately 30 grams which I am delighted with. Her mother is still calling, but there is longer breaks now in between the screaming so I'm hoping she'll be finished in another day or two and then we can all relax a little. Tomorrow will be the start of "door opening day", I can't do it today as I'm going to be in and out of the loft most of the afternoon and really I don't want to be doing that with babies running around. Liquorice does however, continue to bolt at the door every time it's opened because she is dying to see what is on the other side. So far she has made it down to the 3rd stair, she has met her great grandmother Cacao, and her father, Ashanti, and she has not been impressed by either of them. But Liquorice being Liquorice, believes in fight not flight, and I had to smile as she made herself look as "big" as she possibly could with her arched back and her hair sticking straight up, looking both of them in the eye and just daring them to come one step closer. This girl can certainly take care of herself :)

Problems, problems, and problems, we have problems! Let me start with Liquorice' problems (which are related to Cointreau's actually). I looked at Liquorice this morning and thought she looked "off". Her coat was open, and she looked as if she had lost weight and just looked off colour in general. I went back through her weight charts and saw that there have been a couple of days in the last few where she has either lost or has gained minimal grams. The cause is very obvious as I discovered when I found a few small patches of vomit resembling sour milk on the carpet. This is definitely Liquorice because the other 2 litters are all fine and well. I knew straight away what the cause is as we have been through this countless times with some of our queens. The problem, in a nutshell, is Cointreau. She continues to call, this is not good for her, nor is it good for Liquorice. The first step is to make sure Liquorice isn't dehydrated so while everyone else has been getting normal meals today, Liquorice has been getting Hills a/d (wonderful service from Best Pet Pharmacy! I order this yesterday online, it was delivered this morning. :) The idea behind the a/d is a) it will put weight back on Liquorice, and b) it will ensure she remains hydrated. I know that I should have picked up on this a couple of days ago, but with everything that had gone on with Edinburgh, apart from being so darn tired at the moment, I just wasn't concentrating as well as I should have been. Now I am sure Linz is reading this and is becoming panic stricken, but honestly there is no reason to worry. Even I am not actually that concerned because I am monitoring her closely, to drop a little weight won't do her a great deal of harm at this stage as she is a big girl. She continues to play and be active, so I am going to keep her on the a/d for a while, she is also still eating from the normal food trays, so this is a minor glitch and one that we will certainly overcome. At the moment I am choosing not to remove Cointreau from the room, as she is already in on about day 4 of this cycle, which means she should soon go back off call, so we are going to ride this one out. This brings me to the problem of Cointreau. For those who don't breed, then breeding queens should have no more than 3-4 calls before they are mated again as they are at risk of Pyometra which can be fatal as I know myself from personal experience with one of our girls. There is a history of Pyo in the line as Cointreau's grandmother, Cacao, had a full hysterectomy after just 2 litters due to Pyo and it can be hereditary. I spoke about this today with Teen, at great length. We do both feel that the best thing for Cointreau with regards to her health, is to let her finish this call, wait for the next one and when she next comes into call, she is going to have to be mated. The GCCF have a recommendation that says we must allow 17 weeks from kittening before another litter is born. This means that there must be 17 weeks between the birth of one litter and the next from the same queen. So according to their own guidelines, she could be mated again quite soon. This is, however, only a recommendation. At the end of the day, no one knows our queens as well as we do. Some of the factors to take into consideration here is that a) Cointreau is still a young girl; b) she is extremely healthy and bounces back within days of giving birth (unlike her mother); c) she only had 1 baby in her last litter so far less stress has been put on her body than if she had given us a litter or 5 or 6. So with these factors in mind, the next thing for us to do is speak with our own vet, take Cointreau in there, and have our vet assess her before we do anything. We are just hoping though, that once she finishes this call, she will not come back into call for at least a month.

Well it's times like this that I wish Liquorice had not have listened to me. Yesterday I said I would take some nice photos of Licorice and today I told her she was to be a good girl while I tried to take photos of her for her new mummy. Did she comply? Yes, boringly so! The little minx barely moved a muscles so instead of getting some nice, individual photos, she looks virtually the same in all of the photos. I just give up some days, I really do. Cointreau's calling is totally relentless and she is starting to upset the other mum's and the babies because she will not shut up. All she does is scream, over and over. This is the 3rd time she has come into full blown call (each time lasting approximately 5 days) since Liquorice was born. Even poor Liquorice isn't that keen on going near her mum at the moment.

Sorry Linz :( I tried desperately hard to get some decent photos of Liquorice for you today but she was not having it all. She would rather be playing and having fun than posing for photos but I have told her that tomorrow I want some nice pics of her for you and hopefully she will oblige. Actually, the best time to photograph her is usually when she's sleeping because at least then she will stay still! She is a bundle of love, mischief, and curiosity all rolled into one package and she is going to be trouble when she starts to mature but at least when she is with Linz she will have Lulu to create havoc with. She did make me laugh today because I have put a small water bowl in the kitten room now because they actually have one of those automatic water thingies in there which I felt might be a bit large for some of our smaller babies, and what did Liquorice do? Well as soon as I put the bowl down, she went straight over to it, she lead Canberra, Dublin, and Washington to it, and sure enough, I ended up with 2 Capitals with soaking wet paws! Liquorice herself had a drink and I swear she sat back and laughed at the wet Capitals.

Due to our devastating loss of Edinburgh during the early hours of the morning, there will be no diary entry today.

These are quite short entries today with no photos but hopefully tomorrow, things will resume as per normal.

Liquorice felt that she should celebrate her 7 week birthday by turning into a sloth! That girl has barely moved out of the bed all day long! No there is nothing wrong with her at all, she is perfectly fine and is just being lazy :) But you're only 7 weeks old once so she's entitled to spend her day how she wants. Of course the worrying aspect is as she has been so lazy during the day, I just know that all night long we will be hearing thumps and thuds from the kitten room because she will be tearing around like a lunatic. The only time she has ventured out of the box today is when it was meal time and there is no way on earth Liquorice is ever going to miss a meal. She loves her food as much as she loves playing.