All 3 kitten diaries are extremely short today with no photos at all. The reason for this is that at 2:30am one of our ladies was rushed to the vets for an emergency C-Section. It has been an extremely long night, with no sleep and it has been a very long day.

Liquorice only came downstairs once this morning and that was very, very briefly. To be honest with you though, I barely noticed but when she was downstairs, she seemed to be having a marvellous time, as per usual. She is such an energetic girl and when she is awake, she never really stands still. In her mind, there is always somewhere else to be, or something new and fun to do. She does still enjoy her cuddles with me, but she has become so independent now and like a lot of other babies, she is going through that stage where cuddles are no longer important, playing is important. But that's okay, so long as I understand the rule that I can cuddle here if she is sleeping, but I am not allowed to cuddle her if she is playing, then it works out okay.

Liquorice is in her element.......................she has full house access and is loving it :) Do you know, when this girl sees one of the adults, she prances straight up to them, raises her head, looks at them, and then carries on her way. I think, like her dad, she believes that everyone in the world will want to be her friend and the thought that someone might not love her as much as we do is an alien concept to Liquorice. What a little treasure she is. We received Liquorices' registration paperwork back last week which I totally forgot to mention, so Liquorice now has the lovely posh name of "Schimmel Solitaire". I do love this name and it was chosen by Marcelle when Liquorice was a tiny baby. I know that Marcelle keeps up with the kitten diaries and I think it would be very safe to say that she is incredibly proud to know that darling Bailey's progeny has progressed so beautifully. I don't know if Linz is aware that her baby Liquorice, will always have 3 mummies, the main mummy of course is Linz herself and she will be Liquorices' "always" mummy, but for the rest of her new baby's life, there will always be 2 other mummies keeping an eye on her progress, Marcelle and myself.

Liquorice reminds me of her dad in so many ways. She is totally unphased by anything new that she hasn't experienced before and this was proven to me yesterday when yet again, she managed to escape into the downstairs part of the home when I was going through the door. Straight away, Ice, Tia Lusso, and Sage went to see who this little black invader was, and Liquorice was walking around, looking at everything, sniffing everything she could, and not paying the blindest bit of attention to the 3 adults who were very curious about her. No matter where Liquorice walked, all 3 were right on her heels, sniffing her, and she didn't even bat an eyelid. She is such a confident child and did not care at all that 3 adults were towering over her the entire time she was exploring. Today she has actually been fairly well behaved which makes a nice change and she hasn't gotten into anything that she shouldn't have, instead, she has been in a happy, playful, cuddly mood. Of course this probably means that she will spend the rest of the afternoon, and this evening, creating havoc :)

Do you ever wake up some mornings and just know that it's going to be one of those days? Well, that's me today. Sambuca is screaming like a banshee in full call, Dublin flat out refused to eat breakfast, and during the evening, Drambuie keeps opening the kitten room door to let everyone out of the room! One of our ladies isn't due for about 2 weeks and she is the size of a horse, another lady due in a few days' time is refusing to use her kitten box, and Ashanti sprayed IN one of the flippin' water bowls. If I wasn't a cat breeder I would go back to bed let me tell you!

Liquorice will be the death of me I swear! I went into the kitten room last night, and here she is, playing games up on top of the fridge in the kitten room! I have no idea how she got up there, nor do I want to know, however I do wonder if she had given any thought at all as to how she would get down? Then this morning, I went into the 2nd kitten room to give breakfast to one of our pregnant ladies who is due very soon, and despite me trying to keep Liquorice out of the room, as soon as I had opened the door she was in like a shot and was exploring. I took the lunch tray upstairs to the babies and mum's today, I took some photos for the kitten diary, as I came back down the stairs and opened the stair barrier, out shot Liquorice so she could explore the downstairs part of the home. Then 20 minutes later, here she was in the bath tub, running up and down the length of the tub. I wash my hands of this child, I really do. Like her father, Liquorice is under the impression that she can do what she likes, when she likes, and no one is going to tell her otherwise. I am sure I have said this countless times, but I am starting to feel very sorry for poor Linz and Lulu, neither of which really understand what they will be letting themselves in for.

All 3 kitten diary entries are the same today with no photos. I couldn't do any diaries today as we had something rather "special" to do today which involved a long journey meaning that we were out all day. All I will say is that we had a wonderful time and all will be revealed soon enough ;) Prior to leaving the home this morning, the babies had been fed 2 meals, the 2nd meal remained left down for them, and obviously they had copious amounts of kitten biscuits and fresh water. The door to their room was left open so that they would have plenty of room to run around because at this age they can not be confined to one room, apart from when it is "bed time". Upon our arrival home, the first thing I did was dump our stuff in the kitchen, prepare a tray of food and went upstairs with it. I was fully expecting to see all of our babies come running to me like they usually do if they haven't seen me for at least an hour. To say I was disappointed was an understatement when I was halfway up the stairs and there wasn't a baby in sight. The reason for this however, became very apparent! Drambuie is the bane of our existence I tell you! She had only helped herself and the babies into our bedroom. We had made sure the door was shut prior to leaving the home, but I don't know why we bothered really because when I got to the top of the stairs, I saw our bedroom door open, and the babies tearing around like little hooligans in there <sigh> It's not that we mind them being in the bedroom, the problem is that if they don't want to come out, it can be a nightmare trying to find them. So I started removing all the babies, got to about 6 babies, stopped did a head count, yes definitely 6, went back in the bedroom, found 2 more, took them out, went back in, found another 1, took that one out, did a head count, thought I counted 10 babies. But to make sure, I then counted that we had: 2 Siamese, 3 Black Torties, and 5 Blacks, nope, I couldn't count right the first time, I was missing a Black Tortie. And of course it had to be Dublin. It took me a full 40 minutes to find the little minx. She refused to come when called, I must have lay on my stomach peering under the bed for a good 15 minutes. I pulled absolutely everything out of the wardrobe, still couldn't see her, came downstairs to tell Graham someone had nicked one of the kids, went back upstairs, back in the bedroom, and as a last resort, I opened the wardrobe door again, but this time I reached in under the unit that the TV sits on and sure enough, there she was, perfectly comfortable, not a care in the world, and most indignant that mummy had removed her. This only confirms that Dublin's registered name couldn't be more fitting!

Well at 9 weeks of age, Liquorice is an absolute darling and she is doing extremely well. She has now passed the 900 gram mark so I'm delighted with her progress. I honestly can't say for sure whether or not she is eating any of the James Wellbeloved biscuits yet as I've not seen her go near the bowls. Of course that isn't to say she doesn't eat them during the night when I'm asleep. As time passes, Liquorice becomes even more mischievous and even more playful which I wouldn't have thought was possible. She just loves to run, wrestle, pounce, and play games. She is also an incredibly brave little girl because yesterday afternoon, she was sitting on the bottom step, talking to me through the barrier, so I opened the little kitten door in the barrier, and out she came. It made no difference to Liquorice that Ice and Parsley were both right on top of her, sniffing her, and following her as closely as they could. She just went for a little walk in the hallway and then ventured out to the back room where most of our adult cats were and not once did she bat an eyelid at all these strange cats. Instead, she just merrily pranced along, excited that she suddenly had a new "world" to explore.