Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 338
August 17, 2016
August 16, 2016
Esme’s Story, and How You Can Help
You haven’t lived until you’ve felt the exquisitely silky, marcelled coat of a Cornish Rex — and fortunately they love to be touched. These playful, affectionate cats are highly social and people-oriented. The two worst places a Cornish Rex can find herself is either at a hoarder’s house or in a steel cage at an animal control facility. True, these are awful places for any cats, but they are somehow worse these free-spirited, almost magical creatures. Sadly, Esme wound up in both situations.
There were over 150 cats and dogs crammed into the tiny house where Esme was living. When they were discovered and confiscated, many of the animals were in such bad shape that they had to be put down. Esme was one of the survivors, but just barely. Although she was sick and too depressed to fight her calcivirus, stomatitis, and shattered bones in one paw, her sweet personality shone through, and the shelter employees spared her to see if someone would step up and rescue her. That’s when my human saw her photo on Facebook. But she was unable to help, even though we live just about an hour away, and she was frantic over what might happen to this kitty.
And wouldn’t you know it, but a friend of ours actually stepped up and saved her!
June 1st top photo. Esme this am in her little flannelette. She getting better everyday.
A photo posted by Stacy Hurt (@stacyhurt13) on Jun 9, 2016 at 5:34pm PDT
You may know Stacy from her cats’ blog, her beautiful art and quilts, or possibly the cool cat dresses she makes. (I wore one on the BlogPaws red carpet!) With the help of MeoowzResQ, Stacy was able to pull Esme from the shelter and get her on the road to recovery. That was the beginning of June — Esme’s healing is longterm and complicated. She had an upper respiratory illness to get over. Her badly damaged paw isn’t responding to treatment. Her immune system is compromised by her mouth issues. But in spite of all the pain these conditions are causing her, Esme’s sweet, affectionate nature rises above it all. Her face positively glows.
Photo by Stacy Hurt
The next step in Esme’s healing is her dental work, and Stacy is currently raising funds for that. There is a donation badge on her cat blog, and also a GoFundMe page. It will cost anywhere from $763 to $911, depending on extractions, and they are already over halfway there. Any amount to help Esme reach her goal will be appreciated!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Esme’s Story, and How You Can Help appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 15, 2016
Scaredy Humans and Therapy Cats
I made a couple of therapy cat visits this past week, one at the hospital where I see lots of children, and the one where I go see mostly bedridden humans. Every visit, there are always one or two people who are scared of cats. It’s always an adult. (Children are usually happy to see me and never scared.) I find this rather amusing because, well, look at my face! I’m about the least scary animal you can possibly imagine. Plus, I am pretty calm. Usually I just sit wherever I’m supposed to sit. Sometimes I do a High Five or Shake Hands. People can pet me or even pick me up and I’m cool with it.
I think humans who are scared of me (and other therapy cats like me, or cats in general):
had a bad experience with a kitty when they were young — maybe they pulled a cat’s tail and got soundly thwacked in return, or something like that. Then, they didn’t have an adult human teaching them how to be gentle with cats and befriend them.
or met a cat like Binga, who is friendly but gets easily “overstimulated” and then turns around and bites or scratches unexpectedly. This is actually why Binga can’t be a therapy cat even though she is very outgoing! She’s unpredictable. Some humans think all cats are like that.
or are worried about being scratched, which can’t happen with me because my claws are clipped so short. Well, first off, I don’t scratch people anyhow. I don’t take swipes at people. But even if I jumped off of someone suddenly, my claws are blunted so as not to harm them. There was one human who was only a little scared, and my human encouraged her to feel my paw, and she was amazed that she could barely even see or feel my claws.
Can you see a running thread here? The humans who are scared of me just never learned much about cats. They didn’t learn at an early age how to behave around kitties, they never learned about overstimulation and the signs of a cat about to turn, and they don’t realize that it’s possible to clip a cat’s claws so that they are not dangerous.
I can’t help every human overcome their fear of cats, but I can be a good ambassador with my manners and by being nice. I know I have raised the curiosity of humans who don’t like cats or are scared of them. Maybe some of them will have second thoughts about their feelings about cats someday.
Funny enough, I don’t have to teach the kids anything. Occasionally they need to be a little gentler with me, but that’s about it.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Scaredy Humans and Therapy Cats appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 14, 2016
Rosette Selfie
I thought it would be cool to do a rosette selfie today and pose with the ribbon I got for being Fifth Best Somali in Premiership last season!
I’m going to have to do a horizontal shot instead of vertical this time. Hold on while I try to get the set up right.
Hmmm… I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fit both my head and the rosette in the shot!
I wonder if I can fit in more of the rosette without pushing myself out of the camera angle.
This is pretty nice, if a little poseur-y.
In case you are wondering what happened to Binga… she never left! And although Boodie is not in the shot, you can see evidence that she was here because one of her favorite toys is on the rug between us.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Rosette Selfie appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 13, 2016
My Somali Breed Award
Just when you guys thought I got all the ribbons I was going to get for last season… here’s another one! It came in the mail the other day.
This is my CFA Somali Breed Award! The secretary of the Somali Breed Council, Tammy Roark, puts together the program and ribbons for the Somali cats worldwide and sends them out every year. It’s pretty impressive looking, isn’t it?
My half-brother Chilly got a package too — he was fifth best Somali kitten for last season. If you are wondering about the congratulations, other Somali breeders and servants can sponsor awards. The human who congratulated Chilly has some nice kitties!
Here is how I rated: I was fifth best Somali cat in Premiership! Isn’t it nice that the Gunsmoke cattery humans sponsored my award?
My title is also printed on the ribbon.
Oh, and look who showed up! And not to congratulate me either. I bet she is jealous of my awards. It’s her fault she doesn’t do cat shows — she would probably bite the judges!
In case you are wondering, there are no “tortoiseshell cat awards.” Don’t look at me, I don’t make the rules.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post My Somali Breed Award appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 12, 2016
Not-Quite Fashion FAIL Friday
I thought after showing you yesterday’s outtake from this session that I would show you some of the rest of the photo shoot. These photos were done after my airplane photos. My human hates wasting a backdrop, so she took off the clouds and put a couple of dresses on me. While I can’t say it was a fashion FAIL (I like the dresses and they are pretty), the photo shoot was only mediocre. The shots are okay, but they don’t really pop. Maybe I was popped out after the airplane pictures!
This actually would have been a cool shot had parts of me not been out of focus.
This came closest to a good pose from me, but it doesn’t really show off the details of the dress.
This is a lovely portrait of me… the only problem is the dress is distracting! It would have been much better if my human had taken off my dress before going in close.
But the dresses part of the photo shoot wasn’t a total loss — I got a fun play session out of it!
And here is an outtake that didn’t make yesterday’s outtake post! Would you call that a double outtake?
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Not-Quite Fashion FAIL Friday appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 11, 2016
August Outtakes
It has been a couple of weeks since you’ve seen any outtakes from me, so here you go!
You haven’t even seen this photo shoot and it actually went better than this picture might indicate! In spite of my Grumpy Cat imitation, I really do like this dress. And no, my tail was not Photoshopped out — it does look like it, though, doesn’t it? I was just hiding it.
Here’s an action shot from the same photo session.
You might say this is another action shot… I was trying to remove the reindeer antlers!
I think I may have been looking for a treat here!
Binga definitely was looking for treats here!
As you can see, Binga had her whappin’ paw out for this photo session!
This was from the first night my human and I arrived in Tucson for last weekend’s cat show. I think I was a little overexcited!
I hope you liked my outtakes today!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post August Outtakes appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 10, 2016
My Goofy Half-Brothers
During last weekend’s cat show, my half-brothers Sizzle and Rizer were judged together, so they were often in cages next to each other in the judging ring. On day two, the boys started getting silly in the ring! My human took this series of photos of them while they were waiting to be judged. The photo quality isn’t the best, but I think you can still see just how goofy they are. Believe it or not, the crazy kitten on the left (number 21) is Sizzle!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post My Goofy Half-Brothers appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 9, 2016
Kitten Show Training, Starring Sizzle
My breeder prepares her kittens for cat shows from an early age. Some adapt immediately, but others need more encouragement and support. (Some kittens are just not suited for cat shows at all, whether it’s because of their temperament or they don’t fit the breed standard — those babies get placed in good homes.) Sizzle is a great example of a Somali kitten (check out how rich his fur color is!), but he was a little bit shy. In fact, the very first time he saw my human, he was in his enclosure and he went over to the end furtherest away from her! His brother, Rizer, didn’t care and was much happier to meet my human. My breeder had asked my human to help Sizzle with kitten show training, so no matter what he thought of my human, he was stuck working with her for all three days of the show.
Most judges expect Somali kittens to be active and playful, like Rizer (Sizzle’s brother) is here. I always tended to pose, but I still had an air of self-confidence even as a kitten. Sizzle was unsure of himself out on the judging table.
Judges also examine cats and kittens from every angle and position. Here is our Abyssinian kitten pal Armani being scrutinized by a judge. Sizzle didn’t realize he was supposed to stand on his hind legs, and they would buckle whenever a judge lifted his front legs. Clearly there was work to be done!
Here are some of the things my human did with Sizzle to help him build up his self confidence and get him used to cat show life.
She played with him lots in the grooming area that he, Rizer and I shared. At first she played more with him facing the back partition, but as he grew used to being out there, she had him facing the front more often, so that he could see open space. The large open spaces of the show hall intimidated him at first, so it was important to get him used to that.
She spent a lot of time making Sizzle stand proudly on all four legs. When she first started brining him out into the groom area, Sizzle would lie down like you see in the first photo, and he’d do that in the judging ring too. My human wouldn’t let him lie down — he could do that all he wanted when he was back in his enclosure! In the grooming area, he had to stand. Every time he would lie down, my human would pick him up with both hands, one behind his front legs and one in front of his back legs, and have him stand. Then he would get lots of pets and praise, especially little butt pats and skritches, since those helped him keep his back end elevated.
When she took him to the show rings, at first my human hid Sizzle’s face so he wouldn’t be bothered by other cats and all the commotion going on around him. Around the end of the second day, when she felt he was ready, she stopped doing that, and just kept him distracted with a small wand toy. She knew he was doing well when he showed a lot of curiosity and interest about everything that was happening.
Sizzle kept letting his back legs buckle when the judges were picking up his front legs, so she practiced with him on the groom table, picking up his front legs and making him stand firmly on his back legs. She even started making him dance! Ugh, what kitty likes that? But he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, by the end of the final day, he was beginning to stand nicely on his back legs in the judging ring.
The few of you who have seen me at cat shows know that my human grooms me by misting me from behind to fluff out my tail and britches. Sizzle needed to learn to do that, and he did! It took some work, though, because he kept wanting to sit down. She also got him to let her stretch out his back legs so she could give his britches a good comb through.
Once Sizzle was allowing my human to stretch out his back legs, she started putting him in the full cat show stretch! In fact, he was doing it better than the cat in the photo I’ve linked to.
Sizzle did really well with his lessons! He started off the first day crouched near the back of the cage whenever my human took him to a judging ring. By the end of the day, he was climbing the front of the cage! He accidentally knocked off the cardboard of the back of this particular cage while he was in it. That would scare some cats, but he was just curious after it happened. That was a good sign.
After the first day, he was always in the front of the cages in the judging ring, looking around and being active. His brother Rizer (number 22) is next to him, chilling out. When a kitty sits up front of a cage with his front paws in a tuck, like Rizer here, that is another position that indicates the cat is comfortable.
He even began soliciting attention from the judges. You saw a photo of me with this judge yesterday. You can see that Sizzle liked her too!
I think you can see the difference here, how much more self-confident Sizzle looks!
He’s even starting to get that all-important head tilt down! He’ll be a master of kitten magic soon. Oh, and he decided he liked my human after all. At the end of the third show day, my human even started teaching him tricks! He is very food motivated, but can you believe she was able to make him stay for a treat? He did! And he started to learn how to sit up for treats too.
So how did Sizzle and Rizer do? In each ring, they were judged against each other for Best Somali Kitten, and it was pretty even. Rizer may have gotten one more Best than Sizzle. And here is Sizzle in an All Breed kitten ring — he got fifth place out of all the kittens being judged. On the left, you can see our friend Armani ‐ he got sixth in that ring. He got a number of finals, since he’s a very nice Aby kitten.
And here is Rizer in a Long Haired Kitten final — as you can see, he got Best! Yes, that is a kitten next to him. He’s a Maine Coon. Can you believe he’s only a month older than Rizer? Rizer also got fifth place in a different Long Haired Kitten ring. So both my half-brothers did well!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Kitten Show Training, Starring Sizzle appeared first on SparkleCat.
August 8, 2016
Tucson Cat Show Tales
Here I am, back at the airport, waiting to go home after the three-day Tucson cat show! As you can see, I’m a little tired. My human was too — she needed an energy drink to keep going!
Can you believe that Pokemon Go has even infiltrated cat shows? If you had the app, you got a dollar off the entrance fee.
I was in rings all three days.
A vendor there was selling the biggest sparkle balls ever, so my human got one for me.
The important thing for me, though, wasn’t really the show. It was the TICA Southwest Regional awards banquet my human attended Saturday night! I bet you want to know how I and my half brother Chilly did!
I had a lot of pals who won awards too, like my Savannah Instagram friend, Zombie. He was Ninth Best Alter in the region.
The picture’s really small, but that’s my half brother Chilly! He was Seventeenth Best Kitten and Best Somali Kitten in the region, and Eighth Best Cat, Fourth Best Longhaired Cat, and Best Somali in the region!
And then there was me!
I got Fifth Best Alter in TICA’s Southwest region, and I got Best Regional Somali Alter too! Isn’t that cool? I am also Second Best Somali Alter Internationally. I got beat out by a European cat for Best International Somali Alter in TICA for last season.
While I was hanging out at the airport, a lot of humans came by to take a look at me and ask my humans questions about me! One human had a camera (a real one, not a cheap one or a phone) and she took a bunch of photos of me… and they are amazing! I will have to share them with you sometime this week.
I bet you are wondering what went on with my young half brothers. I am devoting a whole blog post to them tomorrow!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!
The post Tucson Cat Show Tales appeared first on SparkleCat.
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