We are 2 weeks old now!

Day 13 - February 3, 2007

As I type, Tuaca is sitting on my lap, purring away and perfectly content just to be with me. So many times in these past few days he has been such a comfort to me. There's not many photos today as it's been a rather long day and I am feeling a bit tired. The Racers had their first "official" visitors today, in the form of Bev, and her friend Tina. It was really lovely to meet both ladies and I am sure that either Shergar or Phar Lap will have a great home with Bev and her husband Duncan. I collected Bev and Tina from the station in Oxford and I have to say that is always quite scary because you know full well that in the time you leave and come back home that someone is bound to have either stunk out a litter tray or left a pile of vomit in your absence. It was quite a relief to walk back in the home to find very little mess. Our feline family didn't hesitate to show themselves off to our visitors, stick their heads in Bev's bag and for one awful moment I thought Toussaint was about to do her "hair grooming special" but fortunately she changed her mind. I believe it is fairly safe to say that Bev and Tina fell in love with our Racers and Tia Lusso was a fantastic mum who did not mind her babies being stroked, handled, and was happy for them to have their photo taken. The only problem with Lucy is that she believes anyone who enters the kitten room is there solely to see her. We're not yet sure which boy will be sharing his home with Bev as everything totally depends on colours at the moment.

Day 12 - February 2, 2007

I had another look at the colours today and so far I am going to stick with what I said previously. Phar Lap is the only baby who I am still unsure of and it's possible he may be a Seal Tabby Point but time will tell. The Racers are starting to crawl all over the bed now, coming very close to crawling straight off the bed and onto the carpet but Tia Lusso keeps a very watchful eye on her children to make sure they don't wander too far. All of the Racers are used to me handling them and weighing them now and none of them protest very much at all. This makes a nice change from some of our more vocal, Oriental babies.

Day 11 - February 1, 2007

All 6 of our Racers have already started to groom themselves. This is one of the most marvellous things to watch because these tiny children can't even walk properly or crawl very far, yet they can groom themselves and each other. Provided that our 2 boys, are indeed boys, then I can safely say that they both have homes waiting for them. Our Blue Point boy will be going to share his home with Pauline and he will have wonderful play mates, not only with Pauline's older cats, but also with Rodney who was our Red Point Siamese baby from Toussaint's litter. Our other boy will be sharing his home with Bev who we will have the pleasure of meeting on Saturday. This then brings me to the girls. One of the Tabby Point girls were be going to Barry who currently shares his home with Pepsi. The "typiest" girl will be going to Ian and Mary who have Phoebe from our first ever litter and coincidentally, Phoebe and Tia Lusso are half sisters as their mother was our beloved Tia Maria. This leaves us with 2 girls, one of whom may share her home with a lady named Sarah and the rest of her fur children, which leaves just one baby. I spotted another Tabby tail today which will make 3 Tabbies in the litter. So now that is sorted out as much as it can be, I shall return to yet more cat chores.

Day 10 - January 31, 2007

There is no entry for today.

Day 9 - January 30, 2007

I'm relieved to say that for the past 24 hours, Lucy has left her Racers in the same spot and I imagine they are also very relieved :) If you look very closely at a couple of the photos in today's entry, you should also notice some Tabby tails appearing which I think is really sweet. On the whole, our Racers are fairly happy little children in the respect that they do not object to being weighed, being picked up or being stroked which is wonderful. If they have a combination of both their parents' temperaments, they are going to be very special little babies. On Thursday, I'm going to try and take individual photos of the Racers so that you all know who is who. I will have to put Lucy out of the room though because while she is happy for me to pick them up and weigh them and examine them, she starts to fret if I have them away from her for too long and once she figures I've held a baby for long enough, she jumps up and tries to take the baby out of my hands. I thought I'd also share the Racer's current weights with you, I think, mainly because this will be of interest to Julie as we can compare kitten weights.

Name	Sex	Weight
Red Rum	Female	189g
Kingston Town	Female	181g
Shergar	Male	219g
Sea Biscuit	Female	181g
Desert Orchid	Female	176g
Phar Lap	Male	199g

As you can see by the weights, Shergar is a rather greedy, and pushy baby and is starting to get well ahead of the rest of the pack.

Day 8 - January 29, 2007

Well yet again, Tia Lusso has decided that the Racers should no longer be in the box and they are back in the corner of the room under the work surface. How on earth all these moves aren't affecting their weights is beyond my comprehension, however, they are doing just fine. Today I had a quick look at colours, but it was a relatively quick look and what I am hazarding a guess at for the time being is................

Name	Colour	Sex
Red Rum	Blue Point	Female
Kingston Town	Blue Point	Female
Shergar	Blue Point	Male
Sea Biscuit	Blue Tabby Point	Female
Desert Orchid	Seal Tabby Point	Female
Phar Lap	Still not sure	Male

Now these are only guesses at this stage as the Racers are still developing their colours and these may well change throughout the next week. The problem with Blues/Seals is that sometimes the Blues can look like Seals very early on, so it will be interesting to see how they all pan out but we should know with 100% certainty by the time the children have reached the 3 weeks of age mark.

Day 7 - January 28, 2007

I didn't get a chance to put the diary entry online yesterday as I wasn't here for a good part of the day so as a result, there are no photos either. Our Racers are now 1 week old and are doing extremely well. Everyone's eyes are fully open and they are so much more alert than they were a few days ago. Fortunately, they have all moved back into their original "stables" as Tia Lusso decided that perhaps she should never have moved them out of the box in the first place. I think it's better that they are back in the box because all 6 of the babies crawl around so much now and at least they are unable to crawl out of the box, whereas when they were all the bedding on the floor, they could have crawled anywhere at all. No one doubled their birth weight for the first week but considering how many babies there are, I am not surprised at all. I am happy with the gains they have made during the first week of their lives though and so far, they are all heading in the right direction.