Tia Lusso 's 2nd Pregnancy Diary - november 2006 to January 2007

Well Cranky Bum is no longer as cranky as she has been for the past month.................thank goodness! She is however, starting to look for somewhere to nest and as a result, she has accidentally been locked in my cupboard on 2 occasions during the past 3 days. The problem is that our current babies have all been in the throes of leaving us so I've had my cupboard door open on and off for days now as I do paperwork for the babies who are leaving. She keeps sneaking into the cupboard, although how she fits with the junk I have in there, I do not know, and then I am not aware for a few minutes until I hear scratching from inside the cupboard. If she thinks for one moment she is giving birth in my cupboard she is sorely mistaken :) Well, just over 1 week to go now and I've not really done a thing but suppose that I should. I am sounding more casual about this than I am feeling to be honest, but this is only because it's been so manic here lately that I've not had a spare second to think. With this in mind, after tomorrow, we will only have 3 babies remaining in the home (they will have left by Friday), in which case after Rodders leaves tomorrow, everyone will be evicted from the kitten room and Tia Lusso will be moving in there. She will still spend her days downstairs with me, but her nights, up until the 20th, will be spent in the kitten room where she can be on her own, have some peace and quiet, and make a decision on where she wants to have the babies. Having said that, she doesn't even have a cardboard box at the moment, although if the babies are born in our wardrobe, then there won't be a box, just loads of bedding in the wardrobe where it's nice and dark. Graham thinks she looks massive, she has become larger since last week, but when I look at her, I am not seeing a massive cat. I've not compared her pregnancy photos with her last pregnancy diary, but I have been comparing them with photos of Jule's queen, Narnia, who is due approximately 1 week after Tia Lusso. Lucy is going through loads and loads of James Wellbeloved kitten biscuits, but is not eating as much wet food at the moment. I'm not bothered about this at all because the JW is a complete food, and so long as she eats some of the wet/cooked meals I give her each day then I am happy. So far, she is not giving me anything to worry about at all, I have seen movement in there, all seems to be going well, but we still have another week to go. Now her due date is 21st, however, she was mated over the period of 3 days, and I don't think she will do anything until at least the 22nd or 23rd............................famous last words! So depending on what day it all starts, will depend on whether or not we get one last diary entry in. Either way, check back on the 22nd for another update.

Yet another week has gone by and everything is still going very smoothly with regards to Tia Lusso's pregnancy. She has expanded just that bit more now and is definitely quite a bit bigger than she was this time last week. But with the amount of kitten biscuits she is eating, it's no surprise at all that she is starting to pile on the weight. Being this large though is not stopping her from chasing Drambuie whenever she is in the mood and for a girl that size, she sure can run when she wants to. As you can gather by what I've just said, she is still feeling hormonal, although the "arguments" are definitely not happening as much as they were last week so hopefully things will settle down between the girls soon. Lucy is looking incredibly pleased with herself in that way that all queens do when they are pregnant. In about a week's time, I shall clean out the kitten room, "evict" any remaining babies that may still be left in the home, and it shall be prepared for Lucy and she will then spend her days in there, and will spend her nights in the bedroom with us. She's not showing any signs of nesting yet but then she does still have a couple of weeks to go so this is not unusual. Overall though, things are going quite well and we are very pleased with how her pregnancy is progressing.

Well here we are, 6 weeks into the pregnancy and everything is going as it should at the moment. Hormones are still causing problems though in the respect that at least once a day we have WW3 between Tia Lusso and Drambuie. It never gets to the point where blood is drawn, just lots of chasing, howling and spitting from both girls. Lucy is expanding rapidly now and her food intake has increased quite dramatically during the past few days, not her wet/cooked meals as she still is eating the same amount of those, but her kitten biscuit intake is much larger now. Despite her size however, she is not at that "waddle" process yet and is still moving about in that very graceful fashion that only a Tabby Point can. You may, or may not, be able to tell from the photos below that Lucy's coat is looking slightly "shaggy". Now this can be down to 2 things in my opinion. It is either due to stress from her arguments with Drambuie, or she may have a small infection, although at the moment apart from the separated coat, she's not showing any signs of anything else underlying. I will be keeping a close eye on her though and if I feel that there may be anything underlying, she will be put on Synulox which is a very safe antibiotic to use during pregnancy. But as it stands at the moment, I do think this is stress related. She's still very clingy and loving with the adults in our home and she continues to get very jealous if we are paying more attention to someone else than we are to her.

If Lucy keeps her current attitude up for much longer, I can see the rest of our adults and babies all leaving home! She is being extremely hormonal and grumpy at the moment, fair enough, she is piling on the weight and is entitled to, but honestly, she is just smacking babies in the head, left, right, and centre, just for the sake of it. And example of this is one of the photos below where poor Trigger was unfortunate enough to want to climb the scratching post while Lucy was sitting at the top. As you can imagine, everyone is giving her a rather wide berth at the moment, and wisely so. Attitude aside though, she is doing extremely well, thriving in fact. You may (?) be able to tell from the photos that she is starting to look an awful lot bigger now, perhaps just a touch bigger than I would expect at only 5 weeks, but then again, Sheridans is the dad, and he is renowned for siring very large babies. I'm not sure which is preferable actually..........2 or 3 massive babies, or 4 or 5 average sized babies. I guess we'll know soon enough. She's still quite active and spends a lot of time running up and down the stairs but I do not know how much longer she will be able to keep that up for because how she manages to stuff her body through the little kitten door to get up the stairs is beyond all of our comprehension. But hey........if Sage can stuff himself through there, I guess Lucy certainly can. Her appetite has now increased with regards to the dry kitten biscuits and she is eating loads of those as well as having her wet/cooked meals during the day.

Well four weeks into the pregnancy and Tia Lusso is still doing incredibly well. Her meals have increased during the past week in the respect that whenever the babies are fed, Tia Lusso also eats alongside the babies. This means that she is getting between 4-5 wet/cooked meals per day, on top of the kitten biscuits that she is eating. Having been monitoring her though, I can say that she has not increased her dry biscuit meals at all during the day (she may be eating more of an evening while I am in bed). She has just started to get a slightly rounded abdomen, but chances are this is probably not really apparent to anyone other than me at the moment. Being pregnant has not stopped her playing fetch with her beanie toy and she continues to run after it and bring it back to me to be thrown again which is good because I do like to see our girls very active throughout their pregnancies. She has also reached that "hormonal" stage now where she has spells here and there where she will not tolerate our other cats or even our other babies near her. Fortunately though, these spells do not last very long which is a relief for the babies because they can't understand why Lusso suddenly turns on them, when previously she had been grooming them. Our other female cats are all fully aware of why she is the way she is and they are also all smart enough to know to stay out of her way.

Tia Lusso was not due to pink up until December 9/10, however, I noticed on the 6 that her nipples were already bright pink so I think it's fairly safe to say that Sheridans has done it yet again. That boy never misses and he is, without a doubt, the best stud cat we have had to date. I am excited about this litter, although the thought of it does make me tired. Mainly because we have so many issues with our previous litters after we moved house however things will be different this time around in the respect that we will not have any staggered litters at all this year as I can not go through that again. Lusso is doing incredibly well, blossoming in fact, and we have not had any morning sickness which is just marvellous. Of course now that I've said that, you just know it's bound to happen! She is so calm and content, just like her own mother used to be when she was pregnant. Graham and I have already chosen a "theme" for Lusso's litter although it wasn't my original choice which was going to be naming the babies after chewing gum. Odd I know, but back home, a popular brand of chewing gum is Juicy Fruit made by Wrigley's and my pet name for Lusso is actually "Lucy Juicy Fruit". I don't know why, I called her that one day and it seems to have stuck ever since. I've not increased her meals just yet as it is still too early, although having said that, I will admit to sneaking her one extra wet meal per day :) In case you're wondering why I make such a big thing of not suddenly increasing the food this early, the reason for this is that it is a mistake some novice breeders make, thinking the queen should be fed loads extra right from the start, but this actually can then cause the girl to become overweight which can cause problems with the delivery. Now that we can confirm our baby is definitely expecting beautiful little fur children, our kitten pregnancy diary will be updated on a weekly basis so please check back around the 18th for the next installment.