We are 3 weeks old now!

Day 20 - February 10, 2007

Weaning..................a subject I truly hate and one that does often bother me however I learnt something new last night, although it's perhaps something I already knew, I'm not sure. I've been wondering about weaning the Racers because as I mentioned earlier, my concerns are that 6 babies will take their toll on Lucy and she will become thin and out of condition. We are fairly used to our Oriental girls looking thin during kittening, but never our Siamese as they generally retain their condition throughout. Six babies though, can be very demanding on the mother which is why I have been learning towards possible early weaning. The problem though with early weaning is that if the babies aren't ready, it can also upset their digestive systems and cause problems. My theory for the past few years has always been, if the babies are gaining weight and if mum looks good, then hold off weaning until at least 4 weeks of age. On two occasions last night, I discovered the answer to the weaning situation and when to start and it is so very obvious. When babies are ready to start weaning, they will nibble and chew at your fingers as I found out. At around 2030 last night I took another plate of Natures Menu upstairs to Lucy, and being the totally messy person I am, naturally I had some of it on my fingers. While Lucy was eating, I lay down on the floor with the babies and started to chat with them and stroke them as per normal then suddenly, Desert Orchid's little nose started twitching, she shoved her face in my fingers and started chewing them quite frantically, making little "kitten eating" sounds the whole time. It suddenly dawned on me that she was trying to lick and chew the Natures Menu that was on my fingers. I very quickly removed my fingers from her mouth, dipped them into mum's plate and offered them to Desert Orchid again. She went totally wild, first licking, and then actually chewing the very soft kitten food. I think I must have dipped my fingers in there about 7 times to keep her satisfied. She wasn't the only baby though as a few others were also interested in licking and trying to eat. So yes, of course I know when the babies are ready to wean, it's when they eat my fingers. Later on that evening, at around midnight, I took a plate of freshly cooked mince up to Lusso as that was to be her last meal for the day and I thought it was worth another shot, out of interest, to see if anyone would like the smell of the mince. I had to laugh at Shergar as he took one sniff, backed off, hissing at my fingers the whole time, so obviously, he is not interested in eating anything, let alone perfectly good lamb mince. Red Rum on the other hand was more than willing to copy what her sister had done earlier with the Natures Menu. She licked and chewed the mince off my fingers, and yes, at this age the Racers have very tiny little teeth, although they are not particularly sharp and there is not many of them, but they are definitely there as I felt them last night. I am now going to relax about weaning the Racers and what I shall be doing from now onwards is every time I feed Lucy, I shall offer some of what she is eating, to the Racers on my fingers, and if they want to try it, great, if not, then I'm not bothered. They will eat when they are ready :)

On 4 occasions this morning I have had to move furniture in the kitten room (which is slowly starting to look like a bomb has gone through it!) solely because Lusso can not find a good place for the babies to be and she has been moving them around all morning and I am rapidly starting to lose patience with her! I was a bit concerned that due to the Racers being moved out all day long that weight gains may have been minimal, if at all, however during the 1315 weigh in, all babies had gained, including Desert Orchid so all is looking well on that front thank goodness.

Day 19 - February 9, 2007

Thanks to Julie for letting me know that I had yesterday's date wrong in the diary entry. I really should proof read the entries prior to putting them online, or at least check them once they go online, but I rarely do. Our Racers are doing extremely well and I am still happy with little Desert Orchid's weights. She continues to gain steadily on a daily basis and whilst small, she is doing just fine. We have reached another milestone today in the Racers' life, and that is "wee". Our Racers are now starting to do little wees on the bed. Prior to this point in time, like all mummy cats, Tia Lusso would groom the babies' bottoms to stimulate toilet movements and whilst doing so, would drink the wee, however now, the babies have begun to go to the toilet on their own. This does of course mean that the bedding is going to be changed quite a lot more frequently now but that is more than fine. At this stage, the babies are unable to start litter training as their limbs are still learning how to move according to what the brain wants to do, so the Racers are not capable of walking off the bed and climbing into a small litter tray. Today, I had yet another look at colours and have now come up with the following, which I think (?) are definitely right: I actually typed this prior to going upstairs and now I am exhausted. I totally screwed it up in the respect that babies had to be re-marked, re-weighed, some poor Racer now has 2 marks as I marked him wrong first of all, Lusso was going nutty, the Racers had no idea what was going on and it has just taken me 40 bloody minutes to actually re mark babies and look at colours/sexes. Never again! So now, this is what we have ended up with and I am now so thoroughly confused that I don't know if I'm wrong or right..........................

Name	Sex	Colour
Red Rum	Female	Blue Point (but could go Tabby)
Kingston Town	Female	Blue Tabby Point
Shergar	Male	Seal Tabby Point
Sea Biscuit	Female	Blue Point
Desert Orchid	Female	Seal Point
Phar Lap	Male	Blue Point

On that note, I am going to make a very strong coffee and I will not be looking at colours again until next week and when I do look, I shall be putting Lucy out of the room! And is it any wonder I prefer Oriental litters! At least when an Ori is born, you know what they are straight away!

Typing this entry is difficult because Toussaint has chosen this moment to sit on my shoulders, dig her front paws into my head and groom my hair bless her. How other homes survive without at least one or two Torties is beyond my comprehension. I had quite a scare when I first went into the kitten room this morning with Lucy's breakfast and to check on the babies because the first thing I saw was the bedding that lies on top of the thick bed was all folded over and crumpled up and there was not a baby in sight. In instant panic mode I thought they were all dead and she had covered the up. I ran to the bed, started to try and make sense of the bedding and find whatever it was I would find, when I heard some squeaks from behind me. I turned around to find that Lucy had moved her children and had stuffed them all under the radiator, up against the wall unit, indeed some Racers were stuffed between the back of the wall unit and the wall! I then realised that she had probably moved them as she felt the room was too cold. The top window was still open as it has been open ever since the babies were born. I don't normally shut it because I believe when you have central heating, it is imperative that fresh air is also available. I changed the bedding, put everyone back on the bed, closed the top window and turned up the radiator in the room. I went back up 20 minutes later to check it was warm and Lucy had only moved them all yet again back to the same spot. At this point I gave up, I moved the large scratch centre that was sitting in front of the radiator and I put the babies' bed there and sat them all on it. Again I went up 20 minutes later and was relieved to see that they were still in the same place. This tells me that the reason Lucy moved them was definitely because she felt that her Racers were cold. Today, at long last, I remembered to change the "weighing container". For a few days now I have been struggling with weighing the Racers as they keep leaning over the container and unbalancing their weight. The problem is that I was still using the same Chinese food container that I used when they were first born and of course, now that they are bigger, then don't really fit in it any more. I raided the tupperware cupboard and took up a larger container and will just sit back and hope that Graham doesn't start wondering where "his" containers are disappearing to. There are very few photos today as I have been working on images all day long and when it came to doing my own photos for the kitten diary I just couldn't bear to have to deal with one more photo.

Day 17 - February 7, 2007

Our darling Racers are now at the stage where each time I lie on the floor in front of their bed and start talking to them and stroking them, they all come running (well running in their own special way of course as they can't really run yet) straight up to me. Once they reach me, the start sniffing me and sit there looking at me while I talk to them. It's always so incredibly sweet when the babies first start doing this and it's yet another small progression in their growth stage in the fact that they recognise who I am and they respond to me when I chat with them and touch them. Tia Lusso now has a new "addition" to her family in the form of a toy monkey. This monkey is one of the toys that Lucy plays fetch with and I don't even know where she found it but I guess it must have been in the kitten room somewhere. She obviously decided that monkey was part of her family and since last night, the monkey has always been seen on the bed in amongst the pile of Racers. I was wondering today when I would actually start to wean our Racers and I'm still not sure. If you have been followers of all of our other kitten diaries, you will be aware that I no longer early wean when the babies turn 3 weeks of age which is what I started off doing. However, with 6 babies, as they mature, they will be taking their toll of Lucy and weights can then start to slow down a bit which I do not want. I think I will see how they are doing at 3 weeks of age and if weights are okay, I'll wait until 4 weeks and will then make a start on weaning.

Day 16 - February 6, 2007

I thought it was time I shared our Racers' weights with you all again although I have already told Julie of Honeybourne Siamese that it will not be long at all before her Motorers overtake my Racers with regards to weights. Desert Orchid, as you will see by her weight, is our most petite little girl, but oh so very pretty with it. There is quite a difference between her and the next smallest girl however she is gaining on a daily basis and I'm not concerned about her at all. Obviously though all of our Racers are monitored extremely carefully for any changes in weight or any possible problem that may appear.

Name	Sex	Weight
Red Rum	Female	271g
Kingston Town	Female	252g
Shergar	Male	306g
Sea Biscuit	Female	281g
Desert Orchid	Female	226g
Phar Lap	Male	284g

I am happy with their progress at the moment though and as each day passes, the babies are becoming much more active. Some of our Racers are even attempting to stroll off the bed and onto the carpet. Fortunately though, they don't really leave the confines of the bed just yet which I am pleased about as they are still so very young. It's not a long entry today as we still have to go to the tip and we have to make an attempt to lay the flooring in the stud house. At the moment the stud house has wooden flooring and we have to lay the lino down to cover the floor as it is much easier to keep clean.

Day 15 - February 5, 2007

Yes I did manage to take individual photos of our Racers' today although I did have to put Tia Lusso out of the room because she was not happy with her babies having to be away from the bed so long. At the moment, the baby I am watching with interest that may share her home with Ian and Mary, is Red Rum. She is a bit special looking and stands out from the crowd, however, there are one or two other heads that also interest me that I am keeping an eye on. It's such a pity that Shergar is a boy because he is very promising, at this stage, he's the pick of the litter with regards to show quality. Of course, it's more than just the type, things like eye colour, setting, coat colour, tail length, etc. all has to be taken into account. There's no point me homing a baby with big ears to Ian and Mary if the coat colour or eye colour isn't good enough because at the end of the day, any decent judge will judge according to the GCCF SOP (standard of points) and there are far more important aspects of the standard that big ears. I have just remembered actually that we did have quite a saga over the colour of Phoebe when she first went to live with Ian and Mary. It was our first litter, and novice breeders and tortie and tortie tabbies do not make a good combination when it comes to colouring as was soon established when Phoebe was wrong coloured at her first ever cat show. We don't actually home babies as "show quality" kittens, instead, we home babies to loving families and if the families would like to show their new fur child, then they are more than welcome and we will help in any way we can and will try to show at the same show they first do. But to be asked for a show quality baby, when the new family wants to put the baby on the bench, does put me under an awful lot of pressure I must say because even though I know that even if she doesn't do well on the bench, Ian and Mary are going to love her regardless, the same as they do all of their cats, but by the same token, I do want to make sure that I can give them the best girl in the litter with as little show faults as possible, so the heat is definitely on! But show quality, or lack of show quality, I am sure you will all agree with me that each of our Racers are absolutely beautiful babies.

Day 14 - February 4, 2007

I don't know where the past 2 weeks have actually gone but I was amazed to realise that today, our Racers have reached the "2 weeks of age mark". They are developing so wonderfully at the moment and I'm really pleased with their progress at this stage of their lives. Everything is as it should be and there is no cause for concern with any of the Racers. To celebrate their 2 week birthday, they had to separate lots of visitors today. Their first visitors were Diana and Delia. It was really great to meet both ladies and when we next send Drambuie on her honeymoon to Galliano, if all goes well we will breed a lovely Oriental Red boy to share Diana's home. I am 100% sure that any baby will have an amazing home with Diana. Initially I don't think that an Oriental Red would have been Diana's first choice, but upon meeting Tuaca (whom I still call Del Boy by the way!), Diana and Delia were totally hooked. He has a habit of making everyone fall in love with him. Our Racers' second set of visitors were the "Blue Paw Clan", Caryll, Jacqui and Marcelle. It's always such a pleasure to get a visit from the Blue Paws and it was really lovely for Marcelle to see her grand son, Ashanti. (Marcelle's fur child Bailey, is Ashanti's sire). As usual, Tia Lusso was more than happy to have all the visitors stroke and hold her babies. She really is a superb mum. Tomorrow, I am going to invent some new hours in the day and will definitely take individual photos of our Racers.