At the moment, everything seems so surreal. I am feeling really down about having now lost 2 of Sambuca's babies. As I said in Sami's diary entry for today, it all feels as if I'm just living in a nightmare right now and would just like to wake up and find that everything is okay. But the cold, hard facts are that this is not going to happen, and that we still have our Chocolate Bars, T's and Dancers, and to them, nothing has changed, life just goes on as per normal. In a way they are right, because even with the problems upstairs, unlike many other things in life, we can never just give up. Our cats and our other babies are still here, still creating havoc and are still very much a massive part of our lives and family. I am sure there must be a light at the end of the tunnel somewhere even though right now, this would appear to be a long way off.

All of our Dancers now use the litter tray, a few of our Red babies even use the large adult tray as well. Samba is my biggest problem at the moment with regards to refusing to eat from a plate. It doesn't matter what I put down for the babies, he will not touch it at all and let me assure you, he's been offered just about everything under the sun. Everyone else now eats from the plate just fine. As I'm writing this entry, Lambada has just climbed up my legs and plonked himself down on my lap which is really quite sweet. He's obviously been watching what the Chocolate Bars and the T's do and figured if it's good enough for them, then it's good enough for him as well.

Most entries are the same today, incredibly short with no photos sorry as I have had people here off and on all day and quite a lot to do.

Neither Amaretto or Drambuie are particularly happy with me at the moment because when I feed the babies now, I put them out of the room and they don't get to eat the kitten food. There are a couple of reasons for that with the first reason being that the mum's are gobbling up all the kitten food and while they do that, the babies are trying to feed off the mum's instead of from the plate. The other reason is that because the babies are getting quite a lot of different varieties, the food is upsetting the mum's digestive systems as they are used to a much blander diet. The Chocolate Bars and The T's are still prone to the Whiskas varieties but fortunately, they are nibbling at the dry kitten biscuits much more often now which is great. At the moment, they are little terrors and into absolutely everything. Meal times are horrific because as soon as they see me get up from my chair and go into the kitchen, they come running in after me and I can not get the door shut in time. Poor Graham was trying to make breakfast this morning while I was preparing their breakfast and next thing you know, both humans and 12 kittens are all in the kitchen at the same time which was an absolutely nightmare. It's just as well that once the newspaper rattles, everyone comes running back into their room because they know they are going to get fed.

For the next couple of days, diary entries may be a bit shorter with slightly fewer photos as Sambuca gave birth yesterday which means I am quite literally run off my feet with babies at the moment. I will do entries each day but as I'm sure you can appreciate, they are very time consuming and I can't let the diaries take priority over the babies and the time I spend with them.

Just prior to starting this diary, I glanced over at the babies who are all sound asleep at the moment and I nearly had a coronary because I saw one of the red Dancers, however, his head was at a funny angle and was very, very pale. My heart was in my mouth as I moved over to see what had happened. The head, didn't actually belong to that Dancer, it was Cute T's head as he was using the red Dancer as a cushion! I can not tell you the relief I felt, to say nothing of feeling rather stupid. Anyone who believes that breeding just involves playing with cute kittens has absolutely no idea of the stress and worry that we go through every single day. We've now worked out a new feeding tactic for the Dancers during the day. Whenever they are hungry for milk and won't touch any food on the plate, I put Drambuie up on the other office chair (she likes being up there), and I then put all 6 Dancers up there with her and I make sure the blue pyramid is nowhere near the chair so that the Chocolate Bars and the T's can't get up there. Drambuie is content to stay on the chair and feed her little ones and they are not then fighting for nipples with the other 6 babies. Of course the only thing then is I must sit here until everyone has finished feeding because it would be horrific if one of them fell off the chair by accident. Once they've all had enough and are settling down to sleep, I pick them up and put them back on the cat bed on the floor with everyone else. This system seems to be working out quite well during the day which is a relief.