We are 4 weeks old now!

Day 27 - September 27, 2007

Entries today are incredibly short due to lack of time.

Our Chefs energy levels have been higher today than the have been so far and each time I have gone into the kitten room to feed the mum's, Heston, and try and wean the babies, the Chefs have woken up and started tearing around the room. They are very funny because they still don't have the best of co-ordination and they can't really run very fast at all. I still can't get any of the Chefs interested in food, apart from Heston. They all prefer mum's milk at the moment but so long as they continue to gain daily, I'm not really that concerned. A couple of them do show an interest in sniffing at the plate, and the smell of the food does actually get their senses going but when I put it on my finger and offer it to them, they still react as if I'm trying to poison them.

Day 26 - September 26, 2007

Our babies' bed is now on the other side of the room next to the radiator because when I went into their room this morning, all the Chefs were sleeping on the floor in front of the radiator so I moved their bed over to where they were, closed the big window in the kitten room and they all seemed quite content then. Apart from Heston, none of our babies are interested at all in trying any of the baby rice mixture or kitten foods, not that I've really been pushing the issue. I'm still pleased with their weights and have listed them below to give you an indication of how our Chefs are doing:

Baby	Colour	Current Weight
Heston Blumenthal	Oriental Black female	234g
Gordon Ramsay	Oriental Black male	446g
Jamie Oliver	Cinnamon Oriental Classic Tabby female	323g
James Martin	Seal Tabby Point Siamese male	407g
Antony Worrall Thompson	Oriental Black male	334g
Gary Rhodes	Seal Point Siamese male	368g

Day 25 - September 25, 2007

Sorry, they are just "photo" entries today :)

Day 24 - September 24, 2007

The Ray J's and the Chefs kitten diaries are both exactly the same today but, as you can see below, there are individual photos of each baby which should make up for it :) I actually am beginning to hate the individual photo sessions :( This morning, I went up to the kitten room, camera in hand, positioned baby number 1 on the small scratch post, took 4 photos and the camera batteries died. I removed baby number 1, took batteries downstairs to put on charge, fine the power lead, take it up to the kitten room, open the door, and all the babies start running out. Five minutes later and a few choice words, I managed to stuff all the babies back into the room. Set up the small scratch post again, plug in the camera, realise that the power socket is on the other side of the wall, but yes, the lead stretched that far. I then picked up the camera, only to find it is much heavier than normal, look down and see Barry swinging off the darn lead <sigh>. It took me close on an hour just to take the photos for these 2 kitten diaries because the whole time I was taking them, the babies were climbing all over me, they were chewing on the camera lead, and trying to swing from power lead. This isn't taking into account the babies who were trying to climb down from the scratch post while I was trying to take their photos. So I do hope our new families and our diary readers can appreciate the effort that went into the photos below :)

Day 23 - September 23, 2007

There are no photos in today's entry, solely because I'm having a day off :) I probably could have found the time to take a few photos but sometimes it's just nice not to feel pressured into getting the diaries online because the photos are the most time consuming aspects of each kitten diary.

Heston continues to eat from the plate, not at every meal, but certainly most of them and her preference at the moment is for the evaporated milk/baby rice mixture which he really seems to love. Her weight progress is still okay as she is gaining each day, some days are small gains, others are much bigger gains, but she is certainly holding her own. I'm finding it extremely difficult to refer to her as a girl because even now, i still think of her as being a boy. James and Gordon are definitely the porkers in the litter and there is such a difference in looks and weight between those 2 and the other 4 babies. Antony, Gary and Jamie are not carrying the same "bulk" that the 2 big boys are and they are much more slender looking. Despite only being 23 days old, all 6 babies will tear around the room now, not that they run particularly fast, but they do try their hardest and their co-ordination is actually very good considering their age. If only they didn't tend to run towards the door and attempt to escape when I am leaving the room <sigh>. Tomorrow I am hoping to take some individual photos of our children because I haven't done this for a while and they are all changing in looks quite dramatically now.

Day 22 - September 22, 2007

The diary entries for the Chefs and the Ray J's are both exactly the same today. You may have noticed from today's kitten diary photos that the "posh box" is gone. The reason for this is that for the past 48 hours, the babies have been going underneath the posh box and sleeping under it, along with both mum's. No matter how many times I picked them up and put them back in the box, they climbed straight back out and went underneath. I figured I was fighting a losing battle so I removed the box altogether and put some bedding on the floor where the babies were sleeping. They all seem much happier now so the posh box has been relegated to the garage which I'm actually rather sad about. Last night, at around 10pm, I was due to feed Heston again and I chose that particular time to decide to try and wean the babies. What on earth possessed me I do not know but I spent 20 minutes in the kitchen preparing some baby rice, some food for the mum's and a mixture for Heston. I trundled back upstairs with my hands totally full, I gave Sami and Retto their food, I fed Heston, and I then put the plate with the baby rice/evaporated milk mixture onto the floor. I introduced Ray to it first, and she started eating straight away with no encouragement at all. Barry felt I was trying to poison her and she flat out refused to lick the mixture from my finger. This then left Jonesy and it should come as no surprise to anyone that before I even had a chance to dip my finger in the mixture and wave it under his nose, he had walked through the entire plate <sigh>. Once I cleaned him up, I then put a bit of the mixture on his mouth and nose. He realised that this was actually food and I encouraged his head towards the plate where, like Ray, he started to eat. As I was already covered in the stuff, I figured I would wave it under the noses of our Chefs as well. Gordon seemed to be the most interested, although Heston was quite keen as well to try and lick it off my finger. This morning, the process was repeated all over again only this time with more success. All 3 of our Chef's ate from the plate, (for this meal I had also mixed in a Natures Menu kitten pouch), but more importantly, Heston ate from the plate. I was over the moon. She is such a tiny little thing but here she was happily eating and I didn't even have to syringe feed her at all for that meal as she ate quite a lot of the mixture. Whether or not I can get her to do the same during the next few days may be a different story though :) Again today though, the rest of the Chefs were not particularly keen on what I was offering to them and thanks to the Chefs we ended up with food throughout the entire bedding. They are still very young however and we will get there in the end.

Day 21 - September 21, 2007

There are no photos today sorry due to lack of time.

Our Chefs are now 3 weeks old today and I am so delighted that our darling little Heston is not only still with us, but he has also now just passed the 200 gram mark. For a little person who struggled so much for the first week of her life, and one who had to fight really hard just to survive, she is proving herself to be a very strong minded and courageous little girl. At 3 weeks however, we do still have such a long way to go with her but the one bonus is that she now feeds from both the mum's and she has been doing this for about 6 days now. For the first 2 weeks of her life, she would not feed at all from the mum's and it's so lovely to see her latching on and suckling away just like everybody else. Unfortunately, all of our Chefs feel that at 3 weeks of age, they should be out of the box and running around the room. When I tried to leave the kitten room earlier today, I had the Ray J's, and the Chefs, right on my heels, running as fast as their little legs would take them, following me towards the door. I was trying to get out the door without letting them out, and without letting Thames in and it was not easy, let me assure you. They are all such precious little children. Out of these 6 babies, the clumsiest, and the most vocal, is Gordon Ramsey, he really is quite a bruiser, and he doesn't hesitate to scream at me when he wants something. James decided that there was something about Sarah that he really loved and it was actually quite funny because she and I were sitting in front of the "posh box", and James was in the box, he looked at Sarah, and I really do not know what he was thinking, but he then started heading straight down the ramp towards Sarah. A definite case of love at first sight I think, so much so, that when it was time to leave the room, Sarah was unable to put him back in the box because he was was not letting go of her at all. It took both of us to actually extricate him from Sarah and get him back in the box.