Our Charmed Ones will be 3 weeks old tomorrow and I was thinking about what we had originally planned for their lives before they were born. For example, they were going to spend 3 weeks in our bedroom, and then live downstairs in the large kittening pen etc. As it happens, they were out of their box and in their own room by 2 1/2 weeks of age and as for the kittening pen.........well! We've since decided that we will now set the pen up downstairs and the kittens can go in the pen during the day where they can be in the same room as us all day but not wander too far and get hurt. This way, Tia can come and go in and out of the pen as she pleases which will give her a lot more freedom as well which is what she is missing at the moment. We will then put the kittens in their own room upstairs of an evening, but not in the pen as we don't want to have our kittens penned any longer than necessary. They are already making much use of their new room in the respect that they now take little strolls around the room, instead of just staying on their little sofa. So their freedom is not curtailed in any way at all whilst they are up there. I will be giving it another day or 2 before bringing them downstairs but from about Wednesday onwards we will all be starting the socialising process which will continue then until they are 13 weeks of age. The girls are doing really, really well and their eyes have improved tremendously. They are very active little girls and are happy to explore their room at their own pace and it is wonderful to watch them move around, play with each other and day by day, see them grow into little kittens with their own personalities. This is definitely the best time of all because the changes in them as they develop are truly wonderful to watch.

The move to the spare bedroom has been a really huge success. I went in there this morning to find one of our girls halfway across the bedroom floor going for a walk! All girls are making the most of the space they have and they are walking about all over the place. Even Tia seems to be enjoying having a whole room to herself. The sweetest moment today was when Piper was awake and grooming herself for the first time. She looked so cute as she groomed her feet and her body. Her sister however, wasn't as impressed when her ear was suddenly bitten by Piper although I am sure that Piper really was trying to groom the ear, not actually bite it. There haven't been any significant weight gains in the last 24 hours but I'm putting that down to the stress of moving house and the kittens suddenly finding their freedom. Happily, they have been feeding on Tia on and off all day so we will be keeping an eye on their weight to make sure they do continue to gain. There was a major improvement with the eyes again today so we're really happy.

Well rightly or wrongly, Tia spent the night moving her babies into Cacao's box. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem but as there is a 2 week age difference we need to ensure that Cacao's babies are feeding properly and as Tia's are so much bigger, there was a chance that they would get the "best nipples" so we made the decision to move Tia into the spare room. Naturally before we could do this, the spare room had to be cleaned out and furniture had to be moved. We spent the majority of the day sorting this out and the babies didn't get much attention at all today. Our vet appointment for the eyes was today and I am really pleased to say that our vet said their eyes are all fine, there is no damage at all there, no signs of any illness and it's simply a case of the eyes not opening up fully at the start, and as a result they now have a bacterial infection. He did say that for the age they are incredibly big, healthy, good size babies and said there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. We now have antibiotic drops for their eyes which must be given twice daily and we started them on that last night. Hopefully now, things will clear up swiftly but already I can see a slight improvement so I'm really pleased about that. Most of the afternoon was spent settling Tia into the spare room and fortunately, once she was in there, she seemed to forget about Cacao and her babies and she settled in there really well. It will also now make it much easier for us when it comes to bathing eyes as we won't be upsetting Cacao every time we handle Tia's babies. The downside is that we do miss not having them in the room with us of an evening and we also have to carrying the scales back and forth now from one room to the next. When you look at how little room there was in Cacao's box once Tia moved in, you'll see why we felt it necessary to move Tia and her girls out.

Unfortunately we couldn't get our vet appointment today however we are booked in for tomorrow morning. I am happy to say though, that the more we bathe the eyes, the better they are looking. If our girls end up with their mother's temperament, I hope that our new owners will be prepared for active cats. Now that Tia is back to her normal size she has been leaping around the room and the house like a mad cat. She's been jumping on all the furniture and is getting back to her active self. The way our girls are moving about in the box it appears that they do indeed take after their mother. One of our girls almost ended up with Cacao's babies again last night as Cacao stuck her head in Tia's box and tried to kidnap one of the girls. I must say that the baby was most unimpressed by this however it didn't deter Cacao and she only let her go when I opened her mouth and made her put her down.

Our babies are now starting to play and they are so funny to watch. They roll on their backs and wave their legs in the air, they are starting to have little play fights with each other and they are all getting quite large now. If they keep moving at the rate they are, then in another few days they will be trying to climb out of the box. Their eyes are improving daily and I'm really pleased about that. We will still be taking them to the vets tomorrow if we can get an appointment. We're so pleased with the way they are coming along and with their weight gains. Tia still has no problems at all with us handling her girls and she is still being an absolutely wonderful mum.

We had to put both mums out of the room today in order to bathe the eyes and weigh the Charmed Ones. As they are putting on weight every day (usually between 10 and 20 grams) there is really very little for us to do now. The fun and games will now doubt start in about a week's time. We both managed to get approximately 7 hours sleep last night for the first time in ages and it was wonderful. Tia no longer has an interest in moving her girls although she does keep sticking her head in Cacao's box to look at her kittens. We managed to get individual photos of our girls today, still not great pics but it will give you an idea on how large they are getting.

An extremely hectic day as Cacao's babies were born this morning. We now have 2 litters in our bedroom and as you can imagine we are very tired. This is also the reason that the diary has been running a day or 2 behind. Unfortunately, there are no photos for the diary today as the whole day was spent up in the bedroom making sure Cacao and her babies were all fine, as well as bathing the Charmed ones eyes. We did learn one valuable lesson and that is whenever we want to bathe eyes from now on we will have to move the Charmed ones into another room. We were bathing eyes yesterday afternoon and weighing the Charmed ones and it upset Cacao immensely. I think she thought, like all new mums do, that we were hurting Tia's kittens and as soon as they were out of the box and in our hands, she was all over us trying to get them off us. Tia, on the other hand, is used to us handling them and she didn't care at all. In the end I had to take the girls out of the room and bathe/weigh them somewhere else. When I was bringing the 3rd girl back and put her back in with Tia and the others I realised that there was a kitten missing!! I figured there was only one place she could be so I opened up Cacao's box and sure enough, in the middle of 3 little Orientals was one of Tia's babies! Cacao had gone into Tia's box, taken one of her kittens out and then took it back to her own box to put with her babies. Tia was not phased at all about lending one of her girls to Cacao. I then had to removed Tia's kitten from Cacao's box, and explain to Cacao that her babies are the Oriental ones and Tia's are the Siamese. I have a feeling she wasn't taking in a word I said though!