Attention stealing mousies!

Friends, I hate that stupid little man in a box that my human calls Computer. He's so moody! He got the huff last night cuz I called him names cuz he'd had my human's attention all day long, and you know what he did? He stopped talking! But it's even worse than that. he waited till my human had tippy-tapped everything I wanted to tell you into his box, and then he wouldn't read it back to her, and he wouldn't keep it in his memory either! The human said a lot of words that she usually only says when she's angry. She said she felt like kicking Computer. I told her she should. I don't like the man in the box, and it would have served him right cuz that was a mean trick he played, waiting until he could spite me by getting rid of my mewsings! It was late when he did this. The human had stayed up specially so that I could talk to you all, so when he got in a mood and wouldn't let her see what I'd said so that she could post it, she got in one and told me she had to sleep on accounta it was stupidly late and she was tired.






My mousies were three weeks old yesterday, and I didn't even get to share it with you! I think they will turn into kittens soon. In fact, I think they already are, cuz they're starting to talk to me now, and it isn't in mousie language. My girl mousie will miaow at me and she even answers me when I brrrp miaow back at her, well, she does sometimes anyway. So does my big boy, the one the human calls Porker, although he usually just screams when I come into the box, whereas the Baby will actually have a conversation with me. I like them more now that they've stopped drinking absolutely all the time, and have started moving around and actually getting interesting. Cuz they are moving now. Porker is walking pretty good, and the Baby is too. Hamster tries, but he's still very wobbly. The Baby fell out of the bed the other night which she wasn't happy about, but she was Ok once the human rescued her and put her back in.





They're also starting to play more too, although Porker is a bit rough. He has no manners yet. He doesn't realise that he has to be gentle with the human. She will let him play with her fingers, but I know he shouldn't be doing it, cuz she has taught me that that's a bad idea. She says it's Ok while they're still learning that she is a nice bean and not a big scary monster, and when they have, then she'll start to teach them right from wrong, but I don't like to see it. he's grabbing her with his claws, then biting her. Sure, he doesn't have any real teeth yet, just tiny little points, so it doesn't hurt, but soon he will and soon it will!





Today I was cuddling him when he saw the human's hand and started to attack it. Now, he was right up by my face at the time, and his claws kept thwapping me in the nose and eyes. I didn't like that one little bit. I told him off with a loud chirrup, and when he didn't listen, I took him round the middle in my two front paws, then hugged him in really close to me and squeezed him tight. I didn't hurt him, but he got the message real quick and stopped his bad manners. The next time the human played with him, he held onto her, but he didn't bite her as hard.





She's just had a good play session with the Baby too, although she prefers to lie on her back and bat at my human's fingers rather than holding on and biting. Her teeth are really through now though! I'm not enjoying feeding them as it is, but when they come all the way through, well, I can tell you, those kids better start eating solids mighty quick, cuz I'm not going through that!





Hmmmm, what else to tell you. There isn't much other than that. They do what they've always done. Sleep, eat, and now play. The Baby purred twice when the human was stroking her, but after only a few seconds, she opened her eyes and realised it was my human and then boy did she scream! I had to reassure her that the human wasn't gonna do what the Catnip mom Trish people does and put her in the stew pot. I wonder if one of the boys who's been kitten sitting has been telling stories to frighten them? Fess up, boys!





As they play more, the human is giving the mousies more and more attention. I tell you something, I don't like that one little bit. It's not cuz she's touching my mousies. That's fine. I know she won't hurt them. I trust her totally. In fact, even when they scream when she's weighing them, I do no more than brrp at them to tell them it'll be Ok. But when she's giving them attention, she isn't giving it to me. I've gotten used to being the only cat in the house and having her undivided attention, but that isn't the case any more. If she plays too long with my mousies, I get in the box and brrp at her, and if she still ignores me or thinks I'm talking to them instead of her, I lie down on that mousie, or put my head on them so that they can't play any more and the human will have to cuddle me instead. She tells me that it's rude, and that it's important for the mousies to learn that she's not big and scary. I do agree it's important, but her attention should be all mine, not divided between them! I've even been letting her pick me up more since I realised what was going on, and I've sat with her each time for about two minutes instead of a second. It's not cuz I feel sorry for her. I'll never admit that! No, it's cuz when I'm sitting on her, her attention is all mine and not the mousies'. That's the way it should be, right? When I demand attention, I should get it!





When I climbed in the box just now when she was playing with the Baby, she actually put her hand under me and refused to let me lie down on her. She told me sternly that I was being rude, and reminded me that I'd just ran away from her when she offered to cuddle me. I'm sneaky though. I worked out real quick that I wasn't gonna win, so I started to do the Baby's bum instead. I know that she'll never get in the way when I'm cleaning my mousies, but this time, she just kept on playing, and cuz the Baby was playing too, it was real hard for me to clean her! The human did hold her still while I did the messy bit which I appreciated, but when I started again as soon as she started to play, the human did a dirty trick. The boys were at the other end of the box, and that human put one of her big hands under a kitten and rolled him over. He was awake, so it didn't startle him, but they will squeak when she first touches him, and as soon as he did, I had to go investigate and see if he was all right. I thought I'd wash them both while I was up there, and while I was, that sneaky human carried on playing with my Baby! She says that she'll give me attention whenever I want it, and that she'll even cuddle me if I'm in the box, but she says that just as the mousies have to learn manners, I too have to learn not to be so jealous, as it may hamper their development. She took me out of the box when she was done playing though, cuddled me on her knee, gave me loads of yummy treats and told me I was and always would be the bestest cat ever. I flounced away in a huff though... After I'd gotten all the treats. My human should know that I'm the only one who deserves all that attention!





We did have some photos taken today, but the computer thing that Dogman's friend uses to transfer them from his flashy box is broken, so we'll have to wait a little. the human says she'll ask Dogman to take pictures tonight though, so you should have them tomorrow. Oh, to finish off, I'll give you the mousies' weights just so that you can see how much they've grown. They're getting big, and fast! And there's a surprise in the weight gains. Look closely at Hamster in relation to everyone else...





The Baby: 316 grams
Hamster: 325 grams.
Porker: 384 grams
Isn't it super!

Babies and Boredom

Friends, I'm not gonna write much today, cuz I'm tired and out of sorts and the human is exhausted. We just wanted to let you know that little boy is doing well. The human has been helping him latch onto me instead of syringing him. He was struggling so much against the syringe that he was using all the milk for the energy it took to fight her, so he wasn't gaining at all. She tried and tried, but that just wasn't working. He's stupid. He sucks wherever his mouth lands, whether that's my stitches, my skin, my fur, the human's finger or, just occasionally, a nipple. So for ages, well, ever since I last posted, actually, the human kept sitting with us every time my other little mousies were having a drink. She would find a nipple (I quickly got over my embarrassment at her touching them), then put his mouth against it and just held him there. He struggled, he fought, he screamed until I was convinced she was killing him and I tried to lie on him to protect him. That made the human even more frustrated, so she had to hold my head away with one hand, and plug him in with the other. After about half a day, I realized what she was trying to do, and although I wasn't happy with it, I did just let her get on with it. Well, it's not that I wasn't happy with her. It's just that I don't like to hear any of my mousies cry!


That first day, it took him about 20 minutes each time just to latch onto the right place. Then the human would have to hold him there till he was done and stop the others fighting him off. She was up on average about every two hours she says, but really it was more, cuz I feed my babies more often than that, and she was awake every time she heard him crying cuz he wasn't getting any.


Gradually, he's gotten stronger and stronger, and now he doesn't fight as much when she plugs him into a nipple. She had planned to stay up and feed him last night, but he had a massive weight gain during the day and seemed quite strong, so she thought it was time to leave him to it and see if he gained anything. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, she says, and she lay in bed with very leaky eyes, making the strangest kinda gasping, hitching noises every time she heard him cry, but she knows that he needs to learn to fight for himself, cuz she can't be there holding his head to me every minute till he's nine weeks old. She couldn't resist helping him before she slept just once though, and again when she got up this morning, but guess what? All on his own, he gained a whole 7 grams! That made her feel less like a cruel, evil witch, but she still says she can't help helping him in the day.


My little girl lost a gram last night and didn't gain a thing. The human is so on edge that she went into a total panic thinking she would go the same way as the little boy, but then she looked back at the weight chart and reminded herself that little girl had gained a massive 25 grams the previous day, which is 2.5 times the recommended daily weight gain. She's almost the same size as her little brother now, but the big one is 31 grams ahead of her! He's massive, and such a bully! When the others fight to keep their nipple, they just push gently with their paws to maintain a distance between them and anyone else coming too close, but the big boy will hook them with his claws and physically drag them off their nipple, even if they aren't even trying to get hold of his! I told him off, but it didn't work. The human says that's cuz he's deaf and blind at the moment, so he won't hear or see me. He must be, cuz he makes an awful lot of noise that I'm sure would bother his ears as much as mine if he could hear it!


I noticed their eyes starting to open on Friday afternoon, and they're much more open today. The human says that's pretty quick for Persians, cuz they're usually the slowest to do anything. We might be lazy, but we ain't stupid!


She's been helping the little girl all day today so that she'll hopefully gain some more weight, and the little boy, but not as much as she was yesterday. I'm bored though. Every chance I get, I'm leaving the nest for a walk around. My stitches are sore from them sucking on them, and my nipples are for the same reason. They've scratched my yummy tummy which hurts too, and you know what? I just need a break. The human keeps putting me back in all the time, saying that they will get cold and hungry without me in there, but honestly, I can't bring myself to care some of the time. I love them, but they are an awful tie. My human tried to put a heat pad in which helped the little boy get warm enough to gain weight initially, but it made me too hot and I was even more insistent about getting out, so that had to go too. She took it out yesterday. I also decided that the lovely tray that Mom Trish sent just simply isn't suitable for nursing. I can't stretch out enough, so I made the human take it away. sorry Mom Trish. I know you posted it for us, but I just don't think it's right at the moment. I think I'll use it when they are a bit bigger, and I do still use it at night, but not in the day time.


I finish my antibiotics today too. I'll be kinda sad about that, believe it or not, cuz the human always feeds me them with treats, and I've worked out that if I eat the treat but spit out the pill, she'll give me even more treats until I swallow it all down. Oh yes, I know how to milk a situation! So do those blasted mousies. They're calling me again, so I'd better go. Smoochies to you all, and thank you so, so much for purring. You don't know how supportive it has been to me, and to a very, very worried and upset human. We really thought we were going to lose the little boy, but the power of the purr came through yet again! Oh, by the way, we have informally given names to the kittens which we are sure will change. The biggest is Porker for obvious reasons, the middle one is Hamster, cuz when the human picks him up, he curls into her hand and reminds her so much of a hamster, and the little one is the Baby, again, for obvious reasons. She is the cutest though. Today, she's started rolling over with all four feet in the air whenever my human tickles her chest. She doesn't scream so much now when she's picked up. In fact, she had the loudest scream when she was born, but Porker does now. he screams like a little girl! The human thinks that the boys are pushing the Baby away when she goes for a drink at the milk bar, so that's why she'll need the help. No way is my only girl gonna become the runt, not after doing so fantastically well after she was born so small! I hope you enjoyed the pictures from yesterday. Thank you again, Mom Trish!

Are they really mine?

Friends, it's me back again, and boy am I tired. These babies really do take it out of you.






I can't tell you much about how they were born. I know, I know, I promised I'd remember and tell you, but the strange thing is, I can't. one minute the human was sitting talking to me on the floor. I wouldn't let her move a muscle. Every time she got up to try and organise things, I cried and cried for her till she had to sit back down with me again. Labour is scary. I knew I should be pushing, but I couldn't do it. I knew that something was wrong, but I couldn't tell anyone. I was terrified.





The human called the nice vet lady people who I don't like so much any more. She came to see me, and she had to check that I was dilating. Friends, do you know how they do that? They have to feel around inside your looloo! That's the polite term for it. The human tells me that's the word her family uses (they're weird) so that little kids won't come right out and talk about rude things in public.





Anyway, when the vet did this, I screamed my head off cuz I wasn't dilated and I can tell you something, it hurt. If it hadn't been the human's gentle, reassuring hands on my face, I'd have bit, but it's a mark of how far I've come that I only opened my mouth and screamed. When the human first got me, I'd have pulled no punches. Well, I wasn't dilated, and I was leaking out of my looloo too, and so they thought it best that I had something called a C Section. I don't know what this is, but when the vet lady people put me in a PTU and took me away, I was terrified! I was going with her, and my human wasn't coming! I can't tell you how scared that made me, but the vet lady people kept telling me it would be over quick and I'd be first on the list and wouldn't have to wait. First on what list?





When we got to the vet place, she took me into a room, out of the PTU and then... Well, then nothing. Blank. No memory. I came to a little later in a cage, and there were these three tiny little squeaking things beside me. I sniffed them. Smelled strange so I ignored them. I hurt. My yummy tummy was all sore, and even worse than that, they shaved all of my floof off! I was bald!





To cover the shame of that, I sat up so that only my floofy bits were on show. I started to clean the vet smell off of me, and then I felt something very, very strange. A small tugging was going on in my lower belly region, and you know, it felt uncomfortable and right all at the same time. I felt like I should lie down, so I did, but I don't know why. The tugging increased, and so did the squeaking from the moving things. Then a second gentle pulling started. In spite of myself, I felt my body relaxing. I looked down, and there were two of the little wrigglers, and they had their mouths around my nimples! That was what the tugging sensation was. I was too groggy to complain, so I just let them get on with it and wished that my human would come back and get me. I missed her so, so much.





She did eventually come back, and she took me home with her, but the white wrigglers came too. I wasn't too sure about this. They were kinda like mousies, and I know how upset my human was the last time there was a mousie in the house and I wouldn't kill it. I didn't want to kill these. I sorta liked them in a vague kind of way.





I was very gently placed in a soft bed when I got home. I was too tired to give thanks propperly, but I can do it now. Mom Trish sent the big, deep trays that my huan had lined with vetbed for me. Thank you, mom Trish! I watched in some fascination as the human very gently placed the wrigglers in with me, and made sure they were up against my yummy tummy. Strange. If they were mousies, she'd not have allowed them to get loose. But there seemed little danger of them running away. They didn't seem to be able to move propperly, and they all scrabbled at my yummy tummy as though searching for something.





"Those are your babies ,Tia," the human said some while later as she climbed into the pen with me where my bed was. She spent a lot of time cuddling my head, then fiddling around by my tummy. When she did, the tugging started again, and the squeaking stopped. She gave me a little mouse to cuddle under my chin, but I didn't know what to do with it, and anyway, it went wriggling back towards my tummy. I was just content to be home with the human.





Every time the little mousies squeaked, I felt an overwhelming urge to protect them. The only way I could think of to hide them was to lie on them, but this upset the human for some reason. She spent a lot of time soothing me, reassuring me that nobody wanted to take the little mousies away, and that I could keep them all to myself. Lots of times that day she reassured me, talked to me, cuddled me and told me that the tugging was ok and I needed to accept it. Eventually I felt calm enough to go to sleep with my head in the human's hand.





The human took us all to bed with her last night. She has another littler pen in there that she put us all into. I wasn't too bothered. I just wanted to sleep, but something about the mousies bothered me. I nudged one of them away from my yummy tummy and sniffed. It smelled like me now, and I didn't mind it as much . I gave it a friendly lick and it shrieked. I almost did too . I hadn't meant to hurt it! I stopped straight away, but when it stopped too, I decided to try again. The same thing happened, but now I knew I had to lick it all over. Maybe if I got rid of the last of the vet smell, the human would forget that the mousies came from the vets and I could keep them.





I washed all of my mousies all over from head to toe, but I didn't like it when yucky stuff came out of their back ends. I had to lick that all up cuz although it didn't smell like the vet, it didn't smell like me neither. I only washed them once, cuz I didn't want to have to do the cleaning chore again.





When the human looked in the pen this morning, she found me and three clean mousies. As she helped the biggest one to find a nimple to suck on, she told me again, "These are your babies, Tia". But I knew they weren't. My babies were stil inside me. I hadn't pushed them out. Still, if she was Ok with me adopting the mousies, then I was willing to give it a go.





For the next few hours, I pondered this strange phenomenon, but the more I looked at the mousies, the more I listened to them squeak, the more I wasn't sure. They sounded like kittens. now that they were clean, they even smelled like kittens. And there was the other fact that I couldn't feel my own kicking me any more. Could it be?





Friends, I'm still very confused about this all, but the human keeps telling me that yes, it could be, and in fact it is. She never lies to me, so I guess I'll have to believe her. She says the vet lady people cut a hole in my yummy tummy and took the babies out that way cuz I couldn't do it myself. Seems a bit weird to me though. I mean, they come out the same way they go in, or that's what my mummycat told me. But again I say that my human doesn't lie to me.





I have decided that they must be my babies, and I will adopt them and feed them. I have oodles of milk, but despite the fact that I have eight nimples, they all fight. If one is having a drink, the other two come and muscle in on them cuz they want some too. It's stupid cuz I have more than enough for three of them to have more than two each! But they all want the same one! The human says that she told you through Mom Trish that the girl mousie, ah, excuse me, kitten, was in a sack with pus in. Well, she's surviving superbly well and is gaining lotsa weight. She gained one and a half times normal daily weight yesterday, and is still vigorous today! The middle boy has gained loads too, but now your prayers are needed for the fattest mousie. he isn't gaining weight cuz he lets the others push him off the nimple too easily. He's a gentle little thing who seems to like snuggling and loving more than fighting, but he will need to fight if he's to survive. The human's friend expressed some of my milk for him yesterday so that he would get all my immunity, and she tube fed him this morning. The human will syringe him tonight with some extra milk if she feels that he hasn't gained again, but all day she's been fighting his battles, attaching him to a nimple and then keeping the others away for ten or fifteen minutes at a time so that he has a chance to get some mummy's milk instead of powdered stuff. We'll have to wait and see if it's enough though.





He got very cold today as well, so had to become what Mom Trish calls a booby baby. He got to cuddle down the human's top so that he could steal her heat and get warm enough to feed again. She says that they won't feed when they're cold, so it's really important. However, she's worried that all the handling is reducing my already fragile bond with the babies. I've been out of the nest three times today. Perhaps she's paranoid, cuz I usually go a few minutes after the babies start crying, but she says I'm either very relaxed and trusting, or not attached enough, as that is not normal behaviour. I do have a lot of cleaning to do though. I'm leaking icky stuff out my back end, and whenever I try to clean it in the pen, the babies scream at me cuz the milk bar has moved. I can't be dealing with it all the time. I have to have me time as well as baby time.





So, are there any of you that wouldn't mind babysitting for a bit? I could really do with the rest!





Now, I really must go off to the litter tray while these squealers are all asleep. Excuse me...