Both diary entries start off exactly the same today because we've had a rather radical change concerning the Pints and the Bush Rangers. First though, I must say a big thank you to: Kim; Sue of Aupeline Bengals and Sokoke; and Rita of Boberg Siamese for their help, advice and the sharing of their own experiences with me. The only way that we breeders are ever going to continue to breed confident, healthy babies is if we have an open lifeline of support to each other. This is so important for all breeders, regardless of how long or how little they have been breeding. Right, now onto our radical change. As anyone who has been reading these entries knows that I have not been particularly happy with the babies and their eating habits. Some days they will eat, other days they won't and I've always felt that they could weigh more than they do. So I've had a long, hard think about a number of aspects of my kitten raising to try and come up with a solution to solve the weight issue. In my opinion, one of the biggest problems is all this commercial "wet" kitten food such as tinned food and pouches. I do personally believe that they do not help at all when it comes to keeping babies at the correct weight and I think that by feeding these foods I am putting too much rubbish in their bodies. With this in mind, and having been giving excellent advice from my breeder network, I made the decision to stop virtually all commercial foods and as of yesterday lunch time, the babies have been on home cooked meals and absolutely no tinned or pouch kitten foods at all. The home cooked meals consist mainly of different varieties of mince, i.e. rabbit, lamb etc. and with things mixed in there such as egg yolk, a bit of cheese, some natural yoghurt, sometimes some pilchards in tomato sauce which they love. Now these home cooked meals are obviously taking quite a lot more time to prepare but it is definitely worth it and is definitely making a difference. The babies absolutely love these home cooked meals whereas before, when they had the wet kitten foods, only some of them would eat it and others would turn their noses up but as soon as I put down a plate of food for them now, they all can't wait to get to the plate to eat it. Our babies are currently having between 5-7 wet meals a day, so now the majority of those meals are all the home cooked ones, one of the meals will be either Liquivite or Hi Life which is one of my preferred wet foods, and the other will be something like cooked chicken, or scrambled eggs, or steamed fish. The new diet is working wonderfully well so far but the one thing I must be sure of to make sure that they are still getting the correct amount of vitamins etc. which may be lacking in the home cooked meals. I'm very lucky in that Kim is advising me on this and will be making sure that the babies are getting everything they need. I will add here also though that the James Wellbeloved dry kitten biscuits are still left out 24 hours a day in their bowls. I do not want to cut out all commercial foods altogether and I know that some people do have concerns about dry kitten/cat biscuits, but I can say that our adult cats all do extremely well on the James Wellbeloved. Now onto the babies themselves...........................

Since the new diet started yesterday the biggest surprise of all has been Ned Kelly which I am sure will please his new "mum", Elaine as she and I are in touch on a very regular basis about Ned and his size. In the space of 24 hours, Ned Kelly has gone from a baby who had no interest whatsoever in real food, to a baby who is not only first to the plate, but is also last to leave AND, if I have to move him to rearrange him around the plate to fit everyone else in, he quite literally growls at me because he thinks I am taking him away from his food. This is such a remarkable difference for Ned Kelly's attitude towards eating and I know that when Elaine reads this she will be over the moon. Joe Byrne needs no such encouragement when it comes to meal times. The boy is a pig! He is growing at such a rapid rate and his energy levels continue to astound me. I tried so hard today to take photos of him playing but there is no way on earth that I can keep up with him. As soon as I point the camera at him and go to take the photo, he's out of range of the lens within less than a second. The only complaint I have about Joe Byrne and Ned Kelly is the fact that they much prefer Graham's pouf to my company in the back room. Graham is milking this for all that it's worth and he loves the babies out there sharing his workspace.

I am not responsible for the majority of the photos today as Graham took some last night while the babies were playing throughout the home. Now whilst the photos of the babies themselves are great, the same can not be said for the floor which has not been hoovered since Monday afternoon due to lack of time. However, I figure, well at least the state of the floors will give Anal "would be breeder" and Drools "pet owner" (my affectionate names for them of course) something else to gossip about................................yet again! So I should be able to rest easy in knowing that I have given them today's topic of conversation and while they are talking about me, perhaps they are leaving some other poor, undeserving soul alone. Now as for our babies, they are doing quite well and still enjoying their forays around the home. Each day they get just that slightest bit braver and already Joe Byrne has found a "favourite" spot to sleep on. This spot is in Graham's work area. He has a pouf which rests under the desk and Joe Byrne has no problems at all climbing up it and then playing and sleeping on it which Graham thinks is lovely because Joe Byrne wants to be near him. When I was putting the babies in the back room after dinner, 4 of them were already curled up sleeping but Joe was missing. Sure enough he was out like a light on the pouf, totally oblivious to the fact that his litter mates were already tucked in for the night. You will notice of course that there are only 2 rather miserable photos of Joe Byrne, because Graham normally doesn't take photos of the babies and he fell into the trap that I did with Drambuie's last litter. That is that the Red babies are so vibrant and so photographic that you quite easily forget to take photos of the other babies. So naturally, I will have a lot more photos of poor Joe in tomorrow's entry.

WOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOO Joe Byrne eats dry kitten biscuits! This is wonderful news. I was sitting here working away and heard some crunching and turned around to see who it was as the mothers and babies were all wide awake and playing. I then saw Amaretto and Joe Byrne at the biscuit bowl, both chomping away like mad. Joe is the 2nd of our babies to eat the biscuits. Both babies do seem to have much more of an appetite now but it's no surprise really as they are running around the house so much. This is such an incredibly quick entry today sorry, with rather pathetic photos. It's just one of those days where I've had some running around to do and I just seem to be behind in absolutely everything which is also why the diaries are so late going online today. Tomorrow, I am not going anywhere at all and hopefully things should be normal again. As you can see by the photos below, Joe Byrne is making the most of exploring the entire home and I really had to giggle at his method of climbing up the stairs. Guinness who is half his size, bounds up them like you wouldn't believe, whereas Joe hasn't quite got the hang of it yet.

Well Ned Kelly is now coming along in leaps and bounds with the weaning and by yesterday lunch time he'd moved from Liquivite onto A/D which he gobbled up from the plate which is excellent news. As he was doing so well, for the last meal of the evening (last night), I decided to give him a helping hand. When everyone else ate, he just went up to the plate, didn't know what to do really and ran off to play so yesterday when everyone was eating, I put him right in front of the plate, dipped his little ginger nose in the food and he put his head up, licked the food off his nose and then his eyes lit up. He finally understood what he should have been doing all along. There has been no stopping him today. As soon as I put food down, he joins everyone else at the plate and starts eating straight away. Sometimes a little encouragement can go a long way :) His brother, Joe Byrne, is turning into quite a piggy now and he will eat anything and everything that I put down in front of him. The only thing neither of them will touch yet is the kitten biscuits but I know they will when they feel the time is right. Their litter training is also absolutely faultless at the moment and we've not had any little accidents now for at least 3 days which is extremely good for kittens who are still so young. It has now dawned on Joe Byrne just how much he is growing now because when everyone else was falling asleep after breakfast this morning, he was still quite awake (nothing new there) so he decided he would climb up the towel that hangs over the front of the bed when the babies are sleeping. Halfway up the towel, he managed to bring the towel, and himself straight down on top of the pile of sleeping babies who were not impressed at being woken up by a black lump falling on top of them. His mother then had words with him and I have no idea what she actually said but it did the trick as he then settled down to have a nap with the rest of the babies.

Today is yet another of those manic days where there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done that I need. I also visited my good friend, Lynny of Tumbili Siamese as I haven't seen her in ages and she has some lovely babies there, sired by our own Ice. It will be great to have cuddles with someone else's babies as I only ever get to see my own. I have nothing else planned..........................yet, until Saturday (we are having visitors all weekend), so I'm hoping to get the kitten diaries back to normal tomorrow.

Joe Byrne had some wonderful cuddles with his mum and dad, Lee and Susie yesterday afternoon. It was great to see them both again and Joe really enjoyed his visit, so much so that every time Lee tried to put him back down, Joe Byrne refused to leave his arms as he was perfectly content just chilling out and playing with his new day. It was really lovely to see Joe interacting with his family. Susie took some photos of her new boy and I just hope that they turn out much better than the ones I seem to take of him. Fortunately, Joe was fully awake during their visit and they were able to see him in action and I think they know that will be taking on quite a lot with Joe. He is such a beautiful, beautiful, cat, so cuddly and so loving, however, he is so incredibly stubborn which Lee and Susie have now seen for themselves. That boy does not understand the meaning of the word "No" and as far as he is concerned, if he wants to do something, then he will not give up until he achieves it. We also discussed the fact that we think he is going to be quite a big boy. He towers over his brother, Ned Kelly, who is incredibly petite and has his grandmother's build I think whereas Joe Byrne weighs more, and is larger than Caffreys and XXXX even. Joe Byrne is also making much use of the fantastic vocal chords he was born with as Lee and Susie also were able to witness yesterday. He even showed his new mum and dad what a clever boy he was by going in the litter tray, only to then try and climb out with poo still attached to him which mean a quite clean up. Both boys are taking much more interest in weaning now which I am really very pleased to see. Joe Byrne will not eat from the mum's plate when they are being fed (if he is in the mood), he will also lap up Liquivite straight from the saucer as well so he is doing incredibly well with weaning. Ned Kelly on the other hand is quite a bit slower which does concern me a little because I would like to see him with much more weight and looking a lot bigger. Having said that, he does run around an awful lot and is using up tremendous amounts of energy when he is awake and playing. I just need to get him to eat loads more so that when he is burning off that energy, it isn't affecting his weight so much. Up until yesterday morning he really had no interest in food at all whereas his brother and the Pints are all eating proper meals now. However, I syringe fed him some Liquivite yesterday and he totally loved it, so ever since then I have been putting some Liquivite on a saucer for him at feeding times and he laps it up straight from the saucer so this is a really good start. I'm also going to try him with some A/D today to see if he will take to that as well.

Photos are few and far between today, as well as being rather boring. Again, this is due to the lack of time I have today sorry. I will try to get some better photos for tomorrow's entries.

I'm feeling rather tired today as we stayed up to watch the Calzaghe v. Lacey fight which didn't start until 2am. It was worthwhile though as Calzaghe was just amazing and it was one of the best fights I'd seen in the last 12 months (apart from Hatton of course!). So this, combined with the fact that I was out all day yesterday, means that I have mountains of things to catch up on today around the home, and we have family visiting for the day as well as Joe Byrne's owners who will be here this afternoon. Just like the Bush Rangers, the babies had their first foray into the world outside the back room. After dinner the babies were all wide awake and playing so I opened up the glass doors allowing the babies into the whole of the downstairs of the home.

Ned Kelly and Joe Byrne just could not believe their luck, they were out of the door like a shot and ran into the lounge/dining area where they explored everything that they could see. Ned Kelly spotted dad's jacket hanging on the back of a chair, and spent a good 10 minutes playing with the zipper on it, trying to chew it and batting it about with his paws. Joe Byrne on the other hand wanted to explore the whole of the "under dad's office" area, climbing up on everything he could see. Neither baby was phased at all by their new world, not even when the dogs came back inside. Ned Kelly did fluff up his tail, but was happy to sit and watch the dogs whereas Joe Byrne paid them no attention at all as he was having way too much fun. I guess that soon it will be time for the babies to meet the rest of the "family" which is something I have been putting off because they still seem so incredibly tiny to me however, they can't be confined to the back room forever. I think that starting next week, they'll be given run of the home (under my supervision of course) for a few hours during the day so they can start to get used to even more aspects of family life.

Both diary entries are exactly the same today and unfortunately there are no photos at all. The reason for this is that we weren't home for the majority of the day as QPR played at home. It's my first proper day out since the babies were born which was really nice although I did wonder what they were getting up to in my absence. In the morning before I left I double checked that everything would be okay for the babies. Both litter trays were cleaned out, both water bowls were filled with fresh water, the kitten biscuit bowl was full and there was also a plate with some slightly softened biscuits on that as well. We didn't actually leave until 12 noon, so the babies also had 2 wet meals before we left as well. When we arrived home that evening I was pleased to see that the room was still in one piece and no damage had been done thank goodness. The first job on the agenda was to feed the babies straight away and they did look at me reproachfully as if to say "you went away and left us to starve all day long". So we had lots of lovely cuddles after dinner and the babies soon forgave me for abandoning them.