This is a really quick entry with no photos as today, Kingston Town's new mummy met her for the first time. It was lovely to meet Zoe, and her mum, Sian and I have a very good feeling that our darling Kingston Town will have a wonderful home with her new human mummy. Our Racers were all sound asleep when their visitors arrived and I was delighted to see that KT was more than happy to have little cuddles with her new mum. It wasn't actually until towards the end of the visit that KT started to wake up and she thoroughly enjoyed tummy tickles from Sian and Zoe. Tia Lusso was in fine form, showing our visitors just how clever a girl she is, by constantly playing fetch with "Monkey". This is a skill that Lucy is extremely proud of and will show off to anyone. Her mother was exactly the same and just as agile when it came to playing fetch so I am sure if our new families encourage this game with their babies, then it's entirely possible their new family members will also follow suit and enjoy hours of fun playing fetch. The rest of our feline family were particularly enamoured with our guests and they all clamoured around for attention, cuddles and strokes. All was going extremely well until our visitors were about to leave when Toussaint decided that yes, it would be a good idea to give Sian a new hairdo before leaving and next thing we knew, Toussaint was up on Sian's shoulders, both front paws on her head, and was grooming her hair. I have now given up apologising for Toussaint doing this to strangers. I no longer see the point as I find this an extremely endearing trait and if one of our visitors were to ever take offence at being "groomed" by Toussaint, then obviously, a Schimmel kitten would not be the right baby for their household. Sian was more than fine about having her hair ruined and both were impressed by Toussaint's trick of leaping straight off the ground into my arms. I must admit that I do get such pleasure out of showing off our feline family to visitors as I think each of our cats has their own special little personality trait than makes them so incredibly endearing.

Prior to beginning today's entry, we would like to congratulate Julie of Lorimnailie Siamese on the birth of her beautiful new babies. May they all thrive and grow up to be beautiful Lorimnailie kittens. Julie also runs kitten diaries on her own web site and they are well worth reading :)

During the past few days, it appears we have had a visit from the Colour Change Fairy! She has turned Phar Lap into a Seal Point when he was originally a Blue Point. This is typical really, particularly as I know how much Pauline had her heart set on a Blue. I let Pauline know via email yesterday and I can honestly say I am thrilled that despite the colour change, Phar Lap will still be sharing her home. Today we are getting back to normal again with the babies being back downstairs where they belong. But yesterday...................I was coming out of the kitchen and was just in time to see a white blur go tearing from the bottom step, all the way back to the top. I honestly do not know which baby it was and he/she moved so quickly but it's really nice to see at least one of them making use of the stairs. I actually have the motivation of a slug today and are really lacking enthusiasm to get any sort of entry online at all! I did manage to take a few pics first thing this morning before bringing the babies downstairs but that was where all enthusiasm ended. The Racers are making much more use of the steps now which thrills me, it's wonderful to see them running up and down the stairs, although I'm sure I won't think so in a week or two's time when they start tripping me up!

There's not many photos in today's entry as I have a pile of paperwork to sort through that has been building up for the past 2 months and it can't go on any longer. The Racers were not able to come downstairs today due to the fact that we had a heating engineer here for hours to sort out the gas fire in Graham's room. I always feel it is too risky to have babies downstairs when workmen are going in and out because not only is there the risk of one of the children accidentally being trodden on, there is also the issue with the door being left open and the babies getting out! The guy was here for an eternity but to his credit, he was very friendly, he fixed the problem, and he closed the door behind him every time he went in and out. It dawned on me this morning that in 3 days' time our Racers will be 9 weeks old and I haven't booked them in for their first vaccinations yet! I really must get around to phoning our wonderful vets and arrange this for one day next week. I updated my computer records for all of our Racers daily weight chart (this is the chart that is included in the new families' paperwork when they collect their baby) and I must admit that some of the weights have surprised me. I have constantly been thinking that Desert Orchid and KT are not gaining anywhere near enough, however, their weekly weight gains confirm they are doing just fine :)

The look on Tuaca's face was priceless and I wish the camera batteries hadn't been recharging because it would have been a classic shot. All our adults were sound asleep when the babies came downstairs, but within minutes of them exploring, Tuaca woke up, put his ears down extremely low, sat up as tall as he could (he was in the top bed of the triple bunk), and was horrified at the sight of 6 miniature babies running around like lunatics and getting into everything. I forgot that some of our younger cats haven't seen babies yet and Tuaca is one of them. Like Tuaca, Nocello was also fascinated with the kittens, although she had no intention of getting out of the middle bunk bed to play with them and this was probably a smart move because they were running around all over the place. Shergar, who is an extremely large boy, is a great big scaredy cat :) He was the only one of the Racers who did a Basil Brush tail if any of our adult cats went to go near him. He would arch his back, make his tail as fluffy as possible, and make his hair stand on end in at attempt to make himself look bigger than he actually is in order to scare off his "enemies". On the whole though, the Racers have coped extremely well with being downstairs. Some of them are a little tentative when exploring but this is to be expected because in their eyes, they are in a whole new world with lots of strange cats. I do not think it will be long before they are part of the family. I am disappointed though with the fact that I've not been able to open the window to the cat run. Even though the sun is shining, I feel it is way to chilly for the window to be open. One thing I am greatly concerned about is Tia Lusso. She has called now for approximately 2 weeks and the calling is taking it's toll on her condition, and the babies will start going downhill if this continues much longer. I really am at my wits end and don't know what to do with Lucy but this calling has got to stop. She looks so darn thin at the moment, although her coat is still sleek and soft, but she really does need building up. When queen's call, they do tend to lose weight and it's really starting to show on Lucy as you can see by the 2 photos of her below.

I tried really hard to get "action" shots of the Racers as they were tearing around upstairs playing chase, pounce, and wrestle but they move so darn fast. It's really difficult to get photos of them in play because as soon as I press the shutter button, the have moved out of the frame. So what you have below is the best of a bad bunch really :) You will be able to tell though by the amount of photos that I did go overboard with the camera yet again but I swear I was only there for about 10 minutes taking the photos. Kingston Town got in trouble off her mum today because she made the mistake of pouncing on her mum's "monkey" and then proceeded to try and kill her prey. Tia Lusso hear the noise of monkey being played with and ran straight over to KT, gave her an evil look, picked monkey up and carted it away. Poor KT has no idea that monkey is her mum's sacred possession and no one plays with monkey. Our Racers did come downstairs today, however, it wasn't until later in the afternoon. I had quite a few things to get through this morning and wanted to wait until I knew I would be sitting at the desk where I could keep an eye on them. I waited until the Racers were asleep in one of their bunk beds before bringing them down because I knew that all I had to do was pick up the entire bed, with the babies in there, bring it downstairs and put it under my desk. Clever or what? :) Now as to how it went and what the babies thought of suddenly meeting their extended family, well for that you will have to wait until tomorrow's diary..........................................

Today hasn't gone quite as planned. The Racers were supposed to be coming back downstairs to G's room today but by the time I had finished all of the floors and done the litter trays, Graham was rearranging things in his room which is not a good time for the babies to be in there! I have now decided that starting tomorrow, it is time for "Sink or Swim". In other words, they'll be coming downstairs to my part of the house where the rest of the feline family spend a lot of their time. I have put some photos in today's entry, but there are not many of them as the babies spent all morning, up until lunchtime tearing around like absolute lunatics, thundering through the upstairs part of the home, so when I went up there with one of their meals, they were all sound asleep and had to be woken up to have their lunch. All of our Racers have now taken to sleeping in the bunk beds in the upstairs hallway, rather than sleeping in their own kitten room. They seem perfectly happy there so that is fine :)

Today we are so tired after yesterday's show, so we are taking it very easy and doing as little as possible. So there are no photos today but tomorrow, we'll be back to normal and the Racers will be back downstairs. As per usual I weighed the babies at lunch time today and I find it fascinating that we have such a huge variety of weights, and such a large span between our smallest baby and our largest baby so I thought I would share their weights with you so you can see for yourselves what I mean:

Name	Sex	Weight
Red Rum	Female	861g
Kingston Town	Female	619g
Shergar	Male	940g
Sea Biscuit	Female	726g
Desert Orchid	Female	621g
Phar Lap	Male	780g

Going off these weights above, Shergar is going to be a pretty big boy when he grows up I think. Although Kingston Town and Desert Orchid are at the lower end of our scale, I'm not overly concerned about them at the moment. I would like to get a bit more weight on them, but they are happy, active, bright babies and it is entirely possible they will end up being fine boned and petite girls. It will be interesting to see as they mature.