You wouldn't think Tia's due date was tomorrow as she is being so very blase about it all. It's been an interesting few days here. Tia's impending labour was totally forgotten for a day or two as we had a bit of shock when a new addition (in the form of a baby Chinchilla) to the family arrived very unexpectedly. Tia proved to me yesterday that she prefers food to me. She walked out to the back room, looked at me, looked at the food bowl, started walking over to me, looked back at the food bowl, changed direction in mid stride and went straight up to the food. I've been rejected for a bowl of James Wellbeloved. It's not such a bad thing though as she weighs a ton at the moment. She's incredibly purry and the little ones are kicking like soccer players. They don't ever seem to stop and every now and then when she's on my lap and they are kicking, she looks up at me and just sighs. I'm still amazed at how calm she is about it all this time around. Last time, she had a permanent worried look on her face and now she just looks serene. I did tell her to make the most of it as she will be having no more babies now until next year!!! I had a rather sleepless night last night due to Tia who decided at 1.30am she would go into her kitten box, purr like mad and moan at the odd twinge which meant going downstairs to bring up the birth equipment on the very off chance. She was up and down all night, pacing the floor, getting into the box and just as I started to doze off at 4am for some much need sleep I was awakened to find her standing on my face!! I'm hope that she'll be giving birth within the next 24 hours as she's certainly showing some very good signs. This will no doubt be the last entry in Tia's Pregnancy Diary and hopefully when you next log on, it will be to read our exciting news about her babies arrival.

Poor Tia is really uncomfortable now and has been for the last week and it's no surprise as her babies have been kicking non stop. Every time she sits on my lap all I can feel is the babies moving. She's still purring non stop and is still eating for England. For the last week now we have been putting her in the Kitten Room of an evening just to get her used to what will be happening and also to give her peace and quiet from the rest of the house hold. Her kittening box is now set up in the room with all the bedding in there, however on May 6th we will move the box and Tia into our bedroom as we want her to have the babies with us as it will be much easier, especially if she decides to have them at 3am!! Tia's been incredibly clingy for a week now. During the day she will not leave my side and has to be sitting on my lap constantly. I'm still amazed at how large she is this time around and am going to be very interested to see how many she is and the size of them. Despite her size, she is still active in the respect that she still tries to jump up on everything and will still run after Ice if she feels like it to give him a whack on the head. Chances are she is blaming her for getting her in "this state".

Pregnancy Photos

Time is definitely drawing nearer. I've been feeling the babies move now for the last week or so which really pleases me. I feel a bit sorry for her as she's finding the extra weight a bit much. She does appear to be carrying more weight this time around than last time. I noticed recently that Tia has been on the prowl looking for somewhere to have her babies. She's in for a very rude shock if she thinks I'm going to let her give birth in some of the places she deems appropriate. Her temperament still isn't great and whenever she walks around the house, our other cats and 2 babies give her a very wide berth. In fact the whole household is petrified of her which is so amusing because out of all our cats, Tia is the most laid back, and the most placid. There was one particularly "off" day on 22nd where she was so vile to the others that I had to actually put her on her own in the Kitten Room just to have some peace and quiet in the household. I'll be really glad when she's had these babies and I can have my darling Tia back instead of this moody cow! She's still eating enormous quantities of food and is starting to become a bit clingy now. During the day, off and on, she is still coming over to me and sitting on my lap and just purrs away like crazy. When she sleeps now she is often sprawled out along the back of the sofa as she's too big to curl up any more like she used to.

This girl truly is eating for England at the moment. If I remember rightly, she had quite an increased appetite during her last pregnancy but this time around she is almost permanently stuck in one of the food bowls. She's still also incredibly active and will continue to run around the house like a lunatic! Apart from her rather large tummy, Tia is looking incredibly fantastic at the moment. Her coat is remarkable and she truly is blooming. When I look back now and remember all those problems we had trying to get her pregnant, as well as her very poor "calling" record, I wonder what on earth I was ever worried about. I still haven't done anything about a birthing box so I guess I really should look at organising one in the next couple of weeks or so. This entry isn't particularly big but let's face it, what can you say about a girl who does nothing but eat constantly, short on telling you what she is eating and how often, you would be bored to tears........as would I. It has occurred to me that I will really need to make the most of the first 3 weeks of these babies lives because once they are approximately 3 weeks of age, Amaretto's babies will be born, followed shortly by Cacao's (hopefully). At the moment I'm wondering, what colours, how many, what sexes. As the last litter were all girls, I am hoping for at least one boy. Not for any other reason other than the fact that my girls have yet to produce a boy for me! One thing I realised last night which I still am not 100% sure about is that I've been blaming our Ori babies for something that it appears Tia has been doing. For a few weeks now, we've been waking up to find that one of our terrors has been weeing in the bath tub. Which means that every morning, the first person in the bathroom has to disinfect the entire bath and I'd been blaming Drambuie for it as she has the worst litter habits of all our cats. However, I got up to go to the bathroom last night to find Tia squatting in the bath tub!!!! Looks like I owe Drambuie an apology, although I don't think I'll bother as I still haven't quite forgiven her for being the cause of my fractured foot!!

Tia is doing much better than I am at the moment. On April 6th I had a slight accident with Drambuie, my little Ori baby and it resulted in a fractured foot so I am currently in a cast from my toes to my knee and I'm not a happy bunny!! All I can say is thank goodness Tia isn't due for another month because it would be difficult managing with labour when I am on crutches I think. As I was expecting, Tia has already started with the morning sickness. It began on April 1. Fortunately it only lasted about 5 days so I'm really pleased about that. As you can imagine, it's most unpleasant that the first thing I would see upon waking up was a little pile of cat sick! I can't believe how energetic Tia has been. She still plays chase the other cats and still insists on playing Fetch with her beanie toys. She doesn't like being picked up at the moment, not even by me however she will pop into the bedroom of an evening to sit with us but I think that's only because she knows if she does that we will feed her crisps! She is eating for England at the moment and I am positive that she has put on more weight earlier on than she did last time. Even though I'm quite relaxed about it all, I can't help but think that it went so easy last time, is something going to go wrong this time. I can't help but wonder if she is "different" this time around because she didn't have to leave the house at all for her honeymoon, whereas last time she was away from me for approximately 6 weeks which is quite a long time. She finally stopped being horrid to the Oriental babies. At the time of writing this, our previous litters have now gone to new homes and the only babies left in the house are the 2 Oriental babies that we are keeping here ourselves. As usual, Tia is eating kitten food, not adult food, but that's perfectly normal for a pregnant queen. At this early stage, I'm not feeding her any extra tinned/pouch food and she is not receiving any supplements. Some breeders will supplement queens the whole way through the pregnancy, others will give extra calcium supplements during the last few weeks however I always figure that if it ain't broke then don't fix it. Whilst writing this I looked back through Tia's previous diary and I'm amazed at how "over cautious" and prepared I was. I have a funny feeling it won't be the case this time round. Fortunately I have everything on hand and stuff that I don't even need. The only thing missing at this stage is a birthing box, but there's plenty of time yet. We have decided that this time around, now that we have a "Kittening Room", Tia can have her babies in our room and provided all is going well, they will be moved straight into the kittening room. It will be better for her in the respect that last time she wanted to move them about all over the place and some of the places she chose were quite unsatisfactory whereas in the Kitten Room, there's very little places to move them to. Also, this time when the babies reach 3 weeks of age and are starting to try and climb out of the box, there will be no worries about where they can go as the Room is perfectly safe for babies to go wherever they like. I can't say the same for our bedroom!!

As most of you are aware, Tia Maria only had her last litter in December so you are probably wanting to know why she is pregnant again so soon. Let me assure you that under "normal circumstances" I would never condone mating a girl so soon after having a litter. For those of you that I speak with on a regular basis, you will be aware of the problems we had with her calling during her first pregnancy. When her babies were just one week old, Tia started calling, she stopped for a few days and then started in again. This went on until she was approximately week 4 and from then on in, she was in full call, non stop for a month and a half! It finally got to the stage where we had to make a decision so I telephoned the GCCF for advice on what to do with her. Obviously, our main concern is always our cat's health and after speaking with the GCCF, I was advised to go by my vet's recommendation. I had already booked an appointment with my vet and took Tia along for a thorough check up and to discuss the situation with him. Our 2 options were to either put her on Ovarid or to mate her. I personally don't believe in using Ovarid on my girls and fortunately, my vet isn't keen on it either. He pronounced Tia to be in excellent health and condition and after discussing the calling problem with me, his advice was to mate her. At this stage, Ice, our stud boy was still only a teenager himself as he was approximately 8 months old. So chances were, he wasn't actually up to "performing" however, both he and Tia had a lot of fun trying, under close supervision by myself. I'll be honest and say that I didn't think Ice actually got the hang of it, however, his efforts obviously did the trick because after approximately 4 days of possible matings, Tia was again separated from Ice and went off call and never came back into call after that. Had she not actually been sitting on my lap today (which she hasn't done in ages), chances are I wouldn't have noticed so quickly. It came at a time where we had quite a lot going on in the respect that Cacao came into a full call for the first time since having the babies so naturally it was a case of keeping her and Ice well and truly separated and at the same time, Amaretto was in full call, for the first time in 2 months I might add and as we were hoping to mate Amaretto (her first mating), it meant that we had to have her and Ice together. As well as that, we still have 4 of the Oriental babies as they are only 12 weeks old so naturally we had our hands full. When Tia was pregnant the first time around, all she did after returning to stud was sleep and sit on my lap. She didn't play, she wasn't Active, she was a total sloth and very, very placid. She's normally such a laid back cat but she was even more so during her first pregnancy. I'm amazed at how different she is this time around. She hasn't been sleeping a great deal at all. She has been playing "chase" with the other cats, but her temperament has altered quite a bit. Instead of having a laid back girl, I've got a rather nasty girl. Tia spent the last 3 days hissing and growling at not only the Ori babies, but also the other cats occasionally. I truly can't believe just how horrid Tia is being, especially to the Oriental babies whom she helped to raise. It's so unlike my Tia because she has the most perfect temperament of any cat I've ever seen. It will be interesting to see how she gets on over the next few weeks but I do hope she goes back to her "normal self". She's been extremely restless and has started to become clingy and sitting on my lap and wanting to be near me during the day. Those who read her last pregnancy diary will be aware that in my opinion, half the problem was that Tia relied on me far more than she should have because I "mothered her" way too much as it was both her and my first litter, so I will have to be careful this time around to just treat her like a normal cat and let her get on with it. Fortunately, I keep a record of everything, including when our girls call, when they stop calling etc. so Tia was mated between approximately March 3rd - March 8th which puts our due date at approximately May 7th.