It's not very good news today about my tiny baby. At about 10pm last night I finally managed to get tiny baby (who I now think is a definite he) latched on. I had taken up his mixture but rather than feed it to him, I put a few drops on Tia's nipple and then opened his mouth and held his head and placed it on the nipple. He finally caught on and suckled away, for about 10 minutes which was the most amazing thing in the world. I was over the moon and just watching him drink from mum brought tears to my ears. I continued to do this every 2 hours and also gave him some more Nutri Drops as well. When I first went in this morning, as usual I weighed my baby only to find that he was dropped yet even more weight which is not a good sign considering the amounts I had been feeding him. Straight away I tried to latch him on again but this time, baby was just too tired to open his mouth and suckle. After sitting on the floor for ages just trying to get him to drink, he just flopped onto the bed and was obviously exhausted. I have put him with Tia who was lying there purring away, she started grooming him and then put her head beside him where they both slept. At the time I am writing this entry, he is still with us and I will continue with what I'm doing for him but it's not looking good which is breaking my heart. If I do have any more news of him today, I will be putting an extra entry in for today. Our other 3 bundles of joy are all doing very well. They are noisy babies and even at this young age are adamant about not sharing their favourite nipple with their littermates. It does sound awful when I re-read this diary and see that I keep saying "baby" as opposed to calling them something. To be honest with you though, we had thought about names and did choose some but I really don't want to name them yet until I know my tiny baby will pull through because I couldn't bear it if I'd named him and then he left me. Obviously I can't keep them unnamed for too much longer so possibly in the next day or two, they will have a name all of their own.

This last week has been one that we will not ever want to repeat in a hurry. Neither Graham, nor myself have had a night's sleep since Tuesday (22nd) which was one of Tia's due dates. I say "one of" because due to Tia's problem with Pyometra, we allowed her to mate with Ice over a 6 day period which normally we would not ever do and this then meant that our date could really have been anywhere from the 22nd until the 28th. Since Tuesday, Tia Maria had been living in our bedroom, pacing the floor all night, chewing up the bedding in her kittening box, and keeping us all awake. Then during the day, I'd be spending my time alternating between our bedroom with Tia and the rest of the house where our current litter are. We were constantly checking her for any impending signs and were waking at the slightest sound. By the time the 27th came around, it's fair to say that we were both shattered and had even given up saying to each other that "she might go tonight". I'd actually gotten to the stage where I was starting to believe that we'd have a disaster litter. Throughout all of this time though, the babies were kicking her inside constantly so were obviously still alive and while ever they were doing that, we knew there was hope. Well last night Tia Maria went into her box and Graham and I had just put in a DVD that we'd hired that we both had wanted to watch and we figured that yet again, Tia would do nothing so we were all prepared to get into the movie. Sure enough, after the first 20 minutes of what was turning into a great film, Tia started purring and moaning and we knew it was time. So the film was switched off and our attention was refocused on our girl. Within a couple of minutes of the first moans, baby number one was born and Tia, for the first time, did sacs and cords straight away, by herself with no assistance from me at all. I truly can not tell you how relieved I was to see that first little baby, alive and kicking and squeaking like a seagull. Once Tia had finished cleaning her baby, I left her to deal with the afterbirth while I dried the baby off and weighed him/her. We then put that baby on the heat pad on our bed and waited for number 2 to arrive. Number 2 came very quickly after the first baby, and number 3 wasn't too far behind. After the third was born, I gave Tia a plate of Sheba which she ate and she then started to look for her babies so even though we knew she had at least one more to deliver, we put her little ones back in the box with her where she promptly started to bond with them by grooming them and sniffing them which was really lovely. When the 4th baby started, we removed the other 3 and put them back on the heat pad so that they wouldn't get in the way as Tia gets irritated with the babies in the box while she is giving birth. After the 4th one had been weighed and dried off, we settled Tia in the box with her little ones and wondered if that was to be the last. A couple of hours later though, she started up again, this time, sadly, the little one was still born so once Tia had dealt with the cord, I removed the baby and we gave her others back to her. It did take her quite a while to settle down again after this and to be honest, we still weren't sure if that was all there was, even though I couldn't feel any others. At 4:40am, it did appear that it was over and Tia got out of the box to eat some dry food. While she did that, I quickly removed the bedding and put the heated pad in the box with new bedding and Tia and the babies then settled on that. She was restless though for the next few hours and twice, she was out of the box and carrying a baby around in her mouth. We obviously had very little sleep. I've only taken a few photos because right now, what I don't want to do is disturb or stress Tia Maria or her babies at all. The curtains are drawn in the bedroom, the lights are off and every now and then I pop into the room to make sure all is as it should be. Each time I go in, the babies are either suckling or sleeping and Tia is very content. She does look big still to me though so when she is next out of the box, I'll be able to have a good feel and check her over. At this stage, we think we have 2 girls and 2 boys but no doubt, this will change as the weeks go by :) Graham and I spoke about it this morning and we both agree, that this is actually the liveliest litter we have ever actually had as they are real little wrigglers. I'm so grateful to Graham for his help last night and for putting up with lack of sleep during the past week. When our queens go into labour, Graham has the job of minding the babies whilst I attend to the birth and this method works really well for both of us and our cats. And thank you to the Lord for blessing us with 4 beautiful babies from Tia Maria when we didn't think it was possible.

Baby	Birth Time	Weight
Number 1	10:36pm	96 grams
Number 2	10:56pm	104 grams
Number 3	11:15pm	106 grams
Number4	12:08am	96grams
Number 5	2:19am	Stillborn