Yesterday was absolutely manic however the Planets were able to have some lovely cuddles with some of their new owners and visitors. Lily and Geoff visited their girls, Venus & Jupiter, and Anne-Maree & Robert came out to have a look at the babies and they had some cuddles with Saturn which was really lovely. Typically, the babies were more interested in sleeping than they were in showing themselves off but I'm sure their owners will be back in a few weeks time when they are older and more active. I explained to Neptune that her new owners, Sam and Dean will be along to see her in a couple of week's time and told Mars that when we find someone who will love him as much as we do, then he will also have visits from a new family. In the meantime though, he will just have to make do with cuddles from us :)

Our Planets had a bit of a culture shock today as I decided I would vacuum the back room. Normally, I sweep and mop the floor out here, although the babies have heard the vacuum before when I've done the rest of the house. I was incredibly proud of our Planets as none of them were scared at all of the noise of the vacuum In fact, as I was hoovering, one of the came running over to see what it was all about. Sambuca on the other hand disgraced herself by running away as soon as I turned it on, with no thought at all for her babies being "eaten by the machine". She took off into the cat run and left them to fend for themselves. Remember me saying yesterday how Mars ate the kitten mixture most of the day? Well today, he's gone back to not wanting it again <sigh>. Thank goodness he isn't 5 weeks old yet or I'd be starting to worry a bit. Everyone else still eats like there is no tomorrow which is really great. It's a bit of a busy day today as Thyme (one of the Herbs) is leaving me and we have visitors around later as well.

Mars has been really fighting me with the weaning over the last few days and has hardly touched anything until today. For the first time in a couple of days, he ate loads of the mixture. Fortunately, he's still gaining weight on a daily basis and I'm hoping that he will soon get the hang of eating from the plate. I was really surprised to see 2 of our little Planets eating the dry kitten biscuits already. I'm not sure who because I wasn't going to disturb them while they ate but it was lovely to see them chewing on the biscuits. All of them now also drink from the small water bowl so they are coming along in leaps and bounds. Jupiter has now started to climb up my legs, the first of the Planets to do so and I'm just hoping that she doesn't encourage the others to do it was well. They are all extremely active in their games now and already, Saturn can now climb onto the other office chair, (along with the Musketeers) so we are really approaching that time with them where nothing is safe, and nothing should be left on the desk overnight. I think that when they are about 5 1/2 weeks old, I'll be opening up the door for the back room and allowing them access to the rest of the house and allowing our other cats etc. to come in and meet the babies.

Well here's a turn up for the books! When I was weighing the Planets yesterday, I thought I would have a look and determine the sexes of the Planets, remembering that we haven't sexed them since they were born and it turns out that Neptune & Jupiter are both female and not males as originally thought. This means that Saturn and Mars are male (and I'm not 100% sure about Mars!), and Neptune, Jupiter and Venus are female. This is quite nice as I do like to have more girls in the litter than boys :) I'm delighted to say that almost all of our Planets are now using the litter tray. Obviously, we still have little accidents which is quite natural as they aren't even 5 weeks old, but it's lovely to see that they are getting the hang of it. All the Planets except Mars, now feed straight off the plate with no encouragement at all. So it's a case now of putting food down in front of them, without have to spend time with each baby individually trying to get them to eat. I'm really pleased with this as they are still so young but seem to be picking everything up really quickly. Unfortunately, there's no photos today because as I had yesterday off, I'm very behind in absolutely everything but I will have photos in tomorrow's entry.

Apologies for no entry for this day. It was my birthday so I actually took part of the day off which was quite nice. Tomorrow's entries will resume as normal but will be done much later in the afternoon.

I'm amazed at how all of a sudden our Planets have become so adventurous. It's as if someone told them that they are now 4 weeks old and should be running around and climbing everything which is exactly what they are doing. Even little Mars is as active as everyone else which is really lovely. They are so great at this age of their lives and I do spend a lot of time watching them and laughing at them as they play. They all wrestle each other and the Musketeers and they now are climbing on the little pyramid and the little cat stand. Soon there will be no stopping them at all. Mars isn't as interested in the weaning mixture today as he was yesterday however the other 4 Planets are all really getting into the feeding stage now and are happy to eat straight from the plate which is really good progress.

Our Planets have now reached 4 weeks old and it's such a relief. The first 3 weeks have been such very hard work and I'm delighted that our 5 Planets are all doing quite well. Last night at 11pm, the most amazing thing happened. Mars, after all this time of being syringe fed while everyone else was eating from the saucer, finally ate from the saucer just like the big kids. I was beginning to despair of him ever having any interest in weaning but he really surprised me last night and got stuck into the kitten mixture. I was overjoyed as this is such amazing progress for our little guy. We've now through to this point in today and I haven't used an entire syringe since last night which is great. Our kitchen was looking like a maternity water with sterilising, syringes, etc. Even the rest of our Planets are starting to show a much bigger interest in weaning, particularly Neptune who is really starting to love his food now. Saturn still isn't 100% sure about this whole feeding lark but he will have some licks of the mixture from my finger so that's not too bad. Weaning the babies at each meal takes half an hour and at the moment I'm feeding them approximately every 3 hours with their last meal being around 11pm and their first meal being at about 7:30am. Their weight gains are all still quite good and by tomorrow, little Mars will have made it to the 200gram mark which I'm thrilled to bits about.