Due to the devestating loss of Iced T in the early hours of the morning, I have made the decision to not continue with this diary.

My baby girl is coming back home today as Graham is going to the vets shortly to pick up her ashes and to bring her home to me.

Again both entries are the same because the last 24 hours have been a nightmare and I am at my wits end. Since yesterday lunchtime, Amaretto will not have anything to do with the babies at all. She wouldn't go in the box, she refuses to feed them. She sat up on the fish tank watching them run around the room, screaming their heads off while she ignored them. I removed her totally from the kittens today because she has now injured 2 of them and drawn blood so she's not allowed in the room now. I have had Sambuca and Cacao in the room this morning in the hopes that one of them will take to the babies and prepare to be a surrogate mum, even though they wouldn't have any milk, they can still do the other "mummy" things such as grooming, washing, teach them how to be little cats etc. (all the things that a human can not ever be a substitute for). So far however, neither of them are prepared to get to know the babies. All the babies are now on a mixture of evap milk and the mashed up JW kitten biscuits which they eat out of my hand. Feeding is taking 10 times longer because as well as using a syringe, I am also hand feeding with a more solid mixture. Each meal lasts around 40 minutes and when you take into account the washing of all the feeding utensils, sterilizing syringes, the time required for preparing the food etc. to say nothing of having the washing machine going non stop because weaning is such a mess, I now have very little time to get anything done. My one saving grace is that as the babies are that little bit older now, they sleep longer between feeds, i.e. 3 - 4 hours. I now need to get the babies eating from a saucer as quickly as possible because at the rate it's going, Retto won't be feeding them at all again so I really need to get them as independent from her for meals as quickly as I can. The stage we are now up to is that all 7 babies will eat the mixture straight from my fingers. Twix will eat straight from the saucer (at times), Iced T will also lap the mixture from the saucer, and everyone else is up to the finger stage. I've also now gone back to giving the babies Nutri Drops because they are getting nothing at all from Retto which is really worrying. When they see Retto walking about the room, they all go running after her and she hisses at them and climbs up high where they can't reach. I feel so sorry for the babies because they do not understand why their mum has rejected them, but it's not Amaretto's fault, her nipples are sore, and when the babies try and feed, it hurts her. So it is not her fault at all. Already now, they are looking at me as being their "human mum" because when they are awake and walking around they come straight over to me, follow me around the room as they do Amaretto and they all now climb my legs and chew on my fingers. Right now I need about 10 pairs of hands and 6 pairs of eyes just to try and keep up with the feeding. At the moment, I'm not enjoying the babies anywhere near as much as I should be because I'm just so desperate to get them all eating so that they don't lose any weight and by the time I've finished feeding each baby, what is normally an enjoyable experience is now fraught with worry.

Mr T and Cute T are now larger than all of the Chocolate Bars. They are going to be rather big babies I think and they have enormous appetites. Mr T also bit my finger last night on more than one occasion when I was feeding all the babies. I also think it's now time to put the small kitten litter tray downstairs here as little wees and little nuggets are appearing in the bed <sigh> and as the babies now scoot about across the room, I think they will be more than capable of climbing into a litter box. It was funny last night to watch the other cats' reactions when the babies were all out of the box and screaming like banshees. Amarula, Sheridans and Tia Lusso had heard nothing like it in their lives and to be fair, they were never this loud when they were tiny kids. They came into the room, stood there absolutely horrified at the sight of these wee creatures zooming past them and all 3 younger kittens hightailed it back over the barrier and back upstairs as fast as they could go. The photos are all a bit of a nightmare today as I do not know who is who at all. Graham took them during one of the feeding sessions and I am at a loss as to trying to tell the Chocolate Bars from The T's.

Probably the shortest entry in history today and exactly the same as The T's entry. Also no photos sorry but I am planning on catching up with pics tomorrow (I hope). Right now I am shattered, I am so tired that I could lie down and not ever wake up. The hand feeding is beginning to take it's toll on me but I do have some good news. Between 1305 and 1550 this afternoon, Drambuie gave birth to 6 beautiful babies. I can say that the Chocolate Bars and The T's no longer stay in the box at all. Whenever they are awake, they get out of the box and zoom all across the floor in the back room. Then as I sit on the floor and feed them one by one, those who aren't feeding, climb up onto my lap which is really lovely. Although in a few weeks' time when all 7 are zooming about scaling my legs, I may not be so happy about it :)

Tiny T is still with us although I do not know for how much longer. It is days like this where I really hate these kitten diaries and wish that I had never started them because it's so very difficult to even know what to write or to try and write a positive entry about the babies when I am losing my little girl. The thing is that the other 3 T's are all thriving and doing so brilliantly yet any news I could write about them is overshadowed by Tiny T. You may notice by the photos below that both litters are now exploring out of the box. I think I had written in the Chocolate Bars entry yesterday that by Sunday they would be all climbing out and moving around but it would appear as I was being rather optimistic in thinking the babies would wait that long. Once they have made their first foray out of the box, there is no stopping them at all.

How on earth is it humanly possible for permanent marker pen to wear off in the space of 24 hours? The trouble I had separating and re-marking the babies today was something I could have done without. When I re-marked them today I made the marks much thicker and heavier and will just hope that it stays on this time. We really did have a very confusing feeding/weighing session at lunch time. Mr T is now larger than Twix which really does surprise me because not only is Twix a day older, Mr T had a much more difficult start in life but he's certainly made up for it all. Sadly, Tiny T has not gained any weight at all. The other 3 are all doing fine and appear to be thriving for which I am really grateful. How, at 2 weeks of age, I even still have them, I really do not know. Some days are much worse than others and today is not going to be a good day.