Just 13 days old and already Tia's babies are climbing out of the box <sigh>. I'm sure this is encouraged by their mum who at least once or twice a day, takes the babies out and put them on the floor. This morning, when I went in for the 2nd feed of the tinies, I found Sami's black baby that Tia adopted right under the sofa, near the ottoman, the Siamese of Sami's was still in Tia's box, along with D'Artagnan whereas Athos and Aramis were at the other end of the sofa, underneath it but more towards the front. I have no idea what is going on in Tia's mind when she does this, however, as soon as Athos and Aramis saw me enter the room, they started crawling straight over to me which I am taking as an indication that they wanted to be rescued and put back in their box. As soon as I had replaced the babies in the box, Tia jumped straight in there and started to feed them. Possibly, I need to put the box back on the floor (it currently lives on top of the sofa) because if Tia's babies are starting to climb out of the box now, then they may be in danger of falling off the sofa which could be why Tia keeps putting them on the floor.

There's been a couple of changes since the time I wrote this and yesterday's entries. I am trying to be careful here that Tia's and Sami's entries don't contain the same things which would bore you all but that isn't easy as they are both sharing the room and what one mum does, generally affects the other so don't be surprised if you read both diaries and see a lot of similarities at the moment. I can say that our 3 Musketeers are absolute little darlings and doing incredibly well. They now crawl about all over the place but fortunately don't quite have the strength yet to make it out of the door in the cardboard box. They are now back in a box on their own with their mum and that box is on top of the sofa. Due to an incident with Sambuca yesterday afternoon which was entirely Sambuca's fault, Tia Maria decided it was time to move her babies again and took them out of Sami's massive box and put them in the smaller box. This actually works out extremely well and as soon as she moved her 3 in there, I quickly grabbed 2 of Sambuca's biggest babies and put them in with Tia as well. So now Tia Maria has 2 adopted babies that as far as she is concerned are hers because if her human mummy gave them to her then that means that she will look after them. It's so funny because Tia Maria really does not like most of our cats, nor a lot of humans as she really is a mummy's girl and is very dependant on me, however the minute she sees a tiny baby, if she thinks that baby is distressed or hungry, she goes straight to that baby to do what she can. Within 1 minute of me putting the 2 babies in with hers, Tia started cleaning their little bottoms and moving over to make more room for them. The reason I gave her the larges 2 of Sami's babies is because Tia's babies are massive fat babies. Definitely the largest babies I've seen for this age and I couldn't risk having one of the Musketeers, sitting on one of Sami's small babies and squashing him/her. Our Three Musketeers don't seem to mind their new litter mates at all as it gives them other warm bodies to curl up with and to play with. Before I forget, I simply must tell you that all three of Tia's babies have now started to groom themselves which is so beautiful to see. They lie on the backs, bring their paws up to the mouths and start grooming with their little tongues. It really is such a delightful sight and watching the little ones start to develop and mimic their mum is such an exciting time for me. When I went in for the 3rd feed of the day for the tinies, I could hear some little squeals, looked in Tia's box and discovered 3 babies were missing! Tia Maria had moved 3 of the babies, 1 of her own and 2 of Sami's to underneath the sofa (again) on the floor. I picked everyone up and put them back in the box again and am hoping she will decide to keep them in there.

This entry is actually not very long and not unlike the entry in Sambuca's kitten diary because yesterday Sami and her 7 babies were moved into the Kitten room with Tia and her Musketeers. As usual, during the move, Tia Maria was absolutely outstanding and we are so incredibly proud of her because she was happy to share her new box (she took over the large box originally intended for Sami's litter!) with the new house mates and wasn't phased at all. She even has been happy to allow some of Sami's babies to feed from her which is a relief. The only one in the room who was unhappy at first about the new arrangement was dear little Athos. He was most unwelcoming to the newcomers and showed his disapproval by hissing and spitting at them as soon as they were in the same box as him. Fortunately, D'Artagnan and Aramis were must more social, or perhaps it could be that they were too busy stuffing their faces to even care or notice that they had new tenants. It is funny to see the 2 litters together because even though there is only 7 days difference between them, the 3 Musketeers are massive in comparison to Sami's babies. When I went into the kitten room last night I noticed one of the fat heads was missing, in other words, one of the Musketeers had vanished completely. After a thorough search of the sofa, sofa covers, both boxes, and the arm chair (yes there is no room in there to move!), I finally found Athos, on the floor under the sofa! No he did not crawl there on his own, his mother had obviously decided to move him however under the sofa on a cold floor is not the ideal place. I'm just thankful that when I'm not in there feeding babies, I am popping upstairs every half hour to check on them all or the poor little guy would have been very lonely indeed.

I can now safely say that at least I won't have to worry about making the choice as to which baby girl I will keep. Having had a very good look last night, it appears that we have remaining 2 boys and 1 girl. I can't quite decide if not having a choice is a good thing :) This now means that D'Artagnan and Athos are both our males, with D'Artagnan being the largest of the 2, and Aramis is our female. Regardless of what colour our girl turns out to be, I'm just grateful that the 3 of them are doing so incredibly well. Tia Maria is truly enamoured of her little ones and they are her pride and joy. As she's nursing them, she has a look of such love and pride that it's wonderful to see. I will be upsetting Tia's little world today though as her housemates i.e. Sambuca and her babies, will be moving into the kitten room so most of my time will be spent up there once the move takes place.

Well Tia still hasn't moved her babies off the lounge, so she obviously was only doing this yesterday because she didn't want me disturbing them by taking their photos. Not one of them cries or wriggles on the scales, they are as good as gold and this does make a nice change as there is normally one in every litter who refuses to sit still on the scales. D'Artagnan and Aramis are now able to crawl right along the lounge which is a bit disconcerting so I have been tucking the cover in at the "open" side just so that neither of them crawl a bit too far..............like right over the edge! I was supposed to be moving Sambuca and her babies into the kitten room today to join Tia and the Musketeers but have had a change of plan for the time being.

Our Three Musketeers are now one week old and I'm delighted that all three are doing so well. This is a good thing because on Tuesday I will be moving Sambuca and her babies in the kitten room with Tia in the hope that Tia will take some of the burden off Sami and they will share their babies. It may be difficult though as after Tia Maria was sick last year with Pyo, she then would have nothing to do with either Sambuca or Drambuie. Hopefully the fact that Sami is now also a mum will make a difference. When I tried to take photos of the babies today, Tia Maria had other ideas and was trying to cart the babies off somewhere (I have no idea where!) and she would not leave them alone while I was trying to take photos. Entries over the next few days will be much later than normal, and quite possibly shorter because I need to spend a lot of time with Sambuca and her babies, hand feeding them and trying to get them to latch on so I do hope you will bear with me. The little ones now respond to the sound of my voice and to being stroked which is really lovely. When I stroke them, they look around and try and sit up and do the same thing when I speak with them. I don't know where this last week has gone at all but it seems like only yesterday that they were born. D'Artagnan has now doubled his birth weight and Athos and Aramis are only a few grams off doubling theirs as well which is great news. It's such a relief that all three are feeding so well from mum and she obviously has plenty of milk.

Our Three Musketeers made good weight gains again last night (20 grams each!) and already are progressing into proper little babies. I was delighted to see yesterday afternoon that D'Artagnan's eyes are now open and Athos' cord has fallen off. Also this morning I noticed that both Athos and Aramis had their eyes partially open now too. The babies are also trying to sit up which is wonderful, even though they aren't particularly successful at this age but it's so funny to watch them because they do try really hard. I think these 3 will have their mother's determination! I love it when the first of the changes start to happen in our babies as it's always so very exciting. Of course this is where diary entries tend to get a bit shorter because at this stage of the babies lives, all the do is eat, sleep, wriggle about and sometimes squeal which leaves me very little to tell you about in the diary. I can tell you that they are absolutely beautiful and I am so very much in love with them. We're still certain we have 2 girls and 1 boy (D'Artagnan is our boy) and I do hope we're right. Tia Maria is being a fantastic mum is usual but I do think she is already sick of being cooped up so I've got into the habit of leaving the kitten room door open when I visit the babies and Tia Maria can go for a wander around the upstairs part of the house.