This morning I am writing this diary in relative peace. All the kittens are downstairs in the lounge. When I returned from the school run, they were all having a jolly good wrestling match on the sofa. I managed to take a few pictures of them, which I will include in today’s photographs. I have also managed to get a nice couple of Smeagle. He is the Lilac point boy that is lying on his back, and also, the little boy lying on his own on the settee.

I had a friend around last night to visit. And there is no doubt they like a good pair of jeans to climb up!! There is something about denim that seems to attract them. Maybe it is because they can get a better grip with their, now very, sharp claws! Or maybe it is because they can climb up them and the person wearing them does not squeal like I do when they climb up my unprotected legs!!!!!!

They are all developing their own unique little characters, and at last, it is easy for me to tell them apart. Fili and Kili are still so similar, they could almost be ‘twins’. If they are running around it is difficult to distinguish between them. But once they are still and I can pick them up, it is a lot easier. Arwen, Goldberry and Smeagle have very definite facial features, that stand them apart. Galadriel is just a smaller, female version of Kili and Fili !

The kittens have just discovered that I am up here, so I have been invaded! I think that my 5 minutes peace is at an end!!!!

We are well into the eighth week now. The time seems to have passed by so quickly. This weekend it will be time for their first set of vaccinations. I will probably get that done next Monday. Something for them to look forward to !!

Last night I took lots of photographs of the kittens. I will explain what a couple of them are. The Stick Insect tank is no longer safe on the bottom shelf. I took a photograph of Fili, giving it a very close inspection. That was the point that I decided to remove the tank and put it on the highest shelf. A couple of the kittens are now eyeing up the second shelf! I am running out of places to move things!

I was also watching the Chelsea v Barcelona football match, and as you can see, a couple of them decided to join me. When the television is not on, some of them will sit on the stool and look at me, I am sure they are asking me to make the moving pictures come back.

One of the others shows Kili, examining the contents of the shopping bag from Pets at Home! It was full of a variety of kitten biscuits.

They are currently all on my bed. They have taken quite a strong liking to this room, ESPECIALLY my bed!!! So in the evening I shut them out of here, otherwise I would find ME sleeping on the sofa instead of them. The only problem is, having moved all the plants in here, I am soon going to have to move them somewhere else. This house is not big enough and I am not sure where I will move them to next!! I think I need someone to adopt my plants, ornaments, Stick Insects………..At least when we move out of this rented house to our own, I will have more space, I am so looking forward to that. But that wont happen until these babies have gone to their new homes. My darling Smeagle is still looking for a loving new home to go to. He has the most beautiful blue eyes and lovely temperament, my children love him to bits.

Life is becoming very painful around here at the moment, and I worry if my poor legs will ever recover! The kittens like the woolly tights that I wear! They like to leap at them, bite my toes, climb up my legs…….use them as a scratching post…..I can feel my legs throbbing from all the little puncture wounds that I have!!!

 I now let them have the run of my bedroom as well. This is nice because when I am working at the pc, they are always in the room with me. It is also saving my poor sofa from being wrecked. They like to use the clothes horse, and all the washing hanging on it, as a climbing frame. I also have some fleeces han444444444444 (guess who just jumped on the keyboard!!!!) hanging from the wardrobe handles. They are brilliant to leap at and hang from. How I envy the energy that they have, and the ability to just fall asleep after using it all up.

 Now that they are used to using this room, I woke up this morning, to find all of them waiting outside the door, only to dash in when it was opened.( Cv xsz) I just left the room to clean out the litter tray, and found that some little horror had again jumped on the keyboard!!! They are now attacking the litter tray cleaning equipment, and taking flying leaps at me from the bed!! I think maybe that sets the scene for now, and time for me to save this before anymore little paw messages get added!

It has been a busy weekend, with children and cats. While I was out on Saturday afternoon, apparently the kittens, and Lily were all going crazy. Unfortunately, during this crazy session, my poor stick insects took some casualties. I had a small jar with their eggs in. Apparently they sent this flying from the shelf, and the eggs became lost in the litter tray…………..I have included a photo of them jumping off the shelf, shortly after the incident.

As I type this today, Arwen and Kili are happily destroying the contents underneath my bed, and the other 4 are all sleeping. They are getting to the size now, that when all 6 of them are chasing up and down the stairs, it really does make a lot of noise!!

On Saturday afternoon, I decided to go to the gym. I was asked by one of the ladies there, why my legs were covered in tiny red scratches. I explained that it was because I am being used as a scratching post from time to time!! We have just been joined up here by Goldberry, I am sure it wont be long before all 6 of them are getting into mischief up here!! My newly ironed clothes seem to be the current target of destruction.

Most of the kittens are eating well now. Some have bigger appetites than others. Arwen and Fili ( Fili will soon be given a new name, by request of his new mum to be) like to eat the most! Goldberry is very fussy!!! At the moment she tends to only like to nibble on the biscuits. But I am mainly feeding them on a diet of finely chopped chicken ( everybodies favourite, except Goldberry), finely chopped cod, mixed with some Hi Life 70% tuna, Some Royal Canin for sensitive tummies, mixed with some Whiskers kitten food, and a few other treats from time to time. They always have a selection of kitten biscuits out for them. I think though, if they had the choice, it would be chicken, chicken and more chicken!!!

I am noticing, as each day goes by, and the kittens get older, that their sleep times seem to be decreasing. And their awake and very boisterous times seem to be on the increase!! Their favourite place is on the back of the settee, and windowsill. This is the place that gets most of the sunshine (in between snow showers!). when I drive up to the house, I invariably see lots of little white terrors, battling it out, in full view of the whole neighbourhood!! My babies are not shy! And so far they have proved themselves to be very friendly to anyone who comes to the house.

 I have also been engaging in a bit of ‘hoover training’. By this I mean, every other day, I get out my little Dyson, and run it around the lounge area. The minute Lily sees it come out of the cupboard, she runs for cover. The little ones, usually follow her, but today I noticed that curiosity was getting the better of one or two of them.

 The photos today, show the terrors in full combat on the back of the sofa, and I thought that I would also include one of those rare moments, when they are all asleep!!

Last night, I left Richard in the lounge eating his tea, it was a quick tea of toast, baked beans and scrambled egg. When I re entered the room I saw a vision of him being swamped by a swarm of 5 eager kittens, all trying desperately to get onto his plate and sample the tastes!! They reminded me of an army of ants I had once watched on a beach in Greece, swarming over biscuit crumbs. Poor Richard had no chance to fend of these five kittens, so it was a case of, ‘mum to the rescue’!!! After I had taken the photo of course!!

 They are becoming so much more aware of their surroundings. Certain doors remain shut, for their safety. For example, all the plants they had been trying to climb are in my bedroom, and the children’s room is such a disaster area, I feel it safer to keep them out of it. But the problem is, the kittens WANT to explore these rooms, and they are WAITING for you when you come out. Their little noses are pressed against the door, waiting to make that mad dash into the room, just as soon as there is a crack small enough for them to squeeze past, and they move FAST once they have achieved their goal!! The amount of times I have had to retrieve a kitten that has dived under the beds!! The problem then being, that as you go to put that one out of the room, another one fly's in!!! And so it goes on.

 They are leaping over my settee like a monkey leaps through the trees, from branch to branch. They launch themselves from the settee, onto the coffee table. Now I have put a table cloth on the table, to protect it from little claws. So the fun now seems to be, ‘let’s leap onto the table, and see how far we can slide on the table with the table cloth’…….great game!!! That is until they slide right off the other side.

 The photos today, will show you the little terrors trying to eat Rich’s tea, 4 of them sunbathing in one of those rare moments of quiet and even MORE of them becoming addicted to the television!

Things today are very much the same. The kittens are very quiet at night time. I leave them the lounge, stairway, landing and spare bedroom. I don’t really hear any sound from them during the night. But as soon as I wake up, they stir from behind the settee, where they are snuggled up by the radiator, and come bounding up the stairs to greet me. At least now, they do not leap up my legs!!!

 There voices are becoming much more defined. They no longer squeak, and they are sounding more like Siamese, especially Goldberry. She has a very distinctive voice, and we can always tell if it is her yelling! At the moment, she is probably the most demanding for attention. She will run up to me, and yell, and persistently until I pick her up, at which point she will purr. It is lovely now that they purr.

 I sat watching the football last night, and little Kili came and snuggled up on my lap. They are just so incredibly cute at this age. The others were snuggled up with mum in the cat bed.

 Well, it has taken me a good hour, to deal with litter tray cleaning, feeding, rabbit tending etc and now that they are all asleep, it is time for me to have a break. I think I got through 6 nappy sacks this morning……why can’t they all use the tray at about the same time??!! The lure of a nice clean litter tray is always such a temptation!

Yesterday, I mentioned that the kittens had taken over the lounge. Well, this is only a small house that we are renting temporarily, and the stairs lead out of it onto the landing, so it is impossible to keep them out. Today, I think that it is fair to say that they have pretty much wrecked the place!! They are bigger, they can jump higher, they can get into more places! I have had to move all things breakable or edible ( i.e. plants|) up onto the highest shelf! The room looks barren apart from 6 furry hooligans bouncing around the place. For anyone who is a fan of Red Dwarf, I have images of The Cat going around saying, ‘that’s mine, that’s mine and that’s mine, and tomorrow I am going to make a lot more things mine!’ It seems that my babies are doing just that!

 When they wake up, I know that I am going to be busy for the next hour, as they all seem to want to use the litter tray, not all at once, but one after the other, and each one waits until I have cleaned out the previous occupants products. They then think, ‘oh good it’s clean, my turn now!’

 Merlyn has firmly decided that kittens are scary and much too lively and tucks himself away in the dining room. When Lily has had enough of them, she goes and curls up with them. Currently, the babies are all curled up, between the radiator and the settee, on a fleecy throw. Lily and Merlyn are curled up on a chair together in a separate room. Sometimes us adults just need peace and quiet from our children!!

I remember a song that was in the charts when I was at college, ‘The lunatics have taken over the Asylum’………it makes me think of here, only maybe change the words, ‘The Hooligans have taken over the Household’ !!!!! It feels like a plaque of locusts rampaging through the crops when the 6 of them are all awake and systematically destroying my lounge, stairs, bathroom, spare bedroom…….me!!!!

I tried to sit down for half an hour this morning, unfortunately that was their cue to wake up…..I had ones trying to wrestle with my hair, others eating my toes ( that hurt!), ones chewing my fingers…..leaping at me from the coffee table….I think that may set the scene. So I gave up the idea of sitting down, and came up here to write this. And guess what….they have all just curled up in the bed down there and gone to sleep. I am sure that if I was to return to the settee, they would all think that it is playtime again!!!

They are 7 weeks now, and really growing in confidence and mischief. It is nice now, because they have become part of the household, they run around us trying to trip us up, while we go about our daily chores.

I was so busy yesterday that I did not find the time to write a diary entry.

You will see from today’s photos that the little girl who is staying with us, is developing bad habits. She had made her way onto the table while Richard and I were eating, and tried to steal Richard’s chicken!! As the camera was to hand I thought that I would photograph her in the act. Little Goldberry was showing interest in my food too. The other 4 were too busy racing round the room and up and down the stairs! It is funny to watch, because they will go completely crazy, and then, all of a sudden, just stop and almost fall asleep on the spot!

Since allowing them the run of the lounge as well, they have discovered another wonderful sleeping place. Behind the settee, there is a radiator. There is also room to put the long play tunnel that they have. So they cuddle up in the tunnel, and bask in the heat from the radiator!!

They seem to have two main times of day when they are completely crazy, first thing in the morning, when they come bursting out of their room, and later on in the evening, when I am wanting to go to bed!!!!