Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 339

Corridor Selfies

After last night’s awards banquet (more on that tomorrow), my human picked me up from our room and took me for a walk in the hotel corridors. It’s one of my favorite parts of staying in a hotel!

After I’d trotted along a few floors, we stopped so I could take some selfies. This chair was right by the elevators, and a few times, humans who came out looked at me strangely.

While I was trying to set up the selfie, there was one of those monsoonal thunderstorms that they have in the southwest sometimes during this time of year. It has been pretty humid for much of this trip.

So if I look like a deer in the headlights in this photo, blame it on the thunderstorm. It was kind of annoying, although I really wasn’t that scared. I didn’t try to hide or start shaking or anything. I knew I was safe inside.

See? The storm wasn’t that bad after all!

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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Corridor Selfies appeared first on SparkleCat.

Caturday Cat Show

Here I am at the TICA cat show at the DoubleTree Reid Park in Tucson! It’s three days long, which means I was there yesterday, and I’ll be here both today and Sunday. That’s a long time! This is a big show because there is an awards banquet Saturday night. Yes, I am getting some awards, but I will tell you about those in a later blog post.

All the kitties who entered this cat show got goodie bags! You can see one of the things we got was a litter pan, but there was more!

There were goodies for both me and my human! Plus some cat toys. That was really nice of the cat club putting on the show!

Now I want to introduce you to somebody special! This is my younger half brother, Sizzle. He is not quite five months old and this is only his second cat show. He and his brother Rizer are here to learn how to be show cats. They both have families they will be going home to. Rizer’s home is in Brazil, and he is a very outgoing kitty already. I know that when he makes the trip in October, he will do well. Sizzle is a bit more shy. He is going to a human locally and will be shown in the Alter class (like me) when he gets older. My breeder is having my human work with him to help him adjust to new people, and learn about how to be a show cat.

My human had loads of fun working with Sizzle. He’s got a very loving personality and once he warmed up to my human, he really enjoyed playing with her! She is working on helping him build up his self confidence and he is already doing well in that area just after one day.

I will be honest — even though I’m in the cat show, I’m not really here for the finals this time. I’m mostly here to have a long weekend with my human and to have fun. Although I do like the part where people look at me and take photos.

I’ve pretty much done all I wanted to accomplish in TICA so I can relax!
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Caturday Cat Show appeared first on SparkleCat.

Traveling to Tucson

My human and I had the best kind of travel day yesterday — an uneventful one! When we got to the airport, I had lots of fun people watching at the gate. We were at a different airport from our usual one. We try to fly out of Burbank, but for this trip we were stuck having to use some monstrosity called LAX.

It’s gigantic and full of humans! So I hung out and watched all the goings on and did tricks for treats. Some humans came up to visit with me before their gates got changed and flights cancelled. I was very glad our plane was not one of those.

The flight was quiet, and there wasn’t any turbulence, which was awesome. I just relaxed in my carrier. After we landed, my human let me look out the window before deplaning. Then at the luggage carousels, I got to sit around on my leash until the suitcases started arriving. I got to visit with more humans!

I’ve been to this hotel once before, in December, but you didn’t really get to see the hotel room that trip. This time, I did a video tour on Facebook, and my human also took some photos of me exploring the shower. It’s very cool.

I’ve been making happy paws since I arrived! The show starts this afternoon, and it goes for three days. I am going to try to rest up lots.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Traveling to Tucson appeared first on SparkleCat.

Packing My New Suitcase for Tucson

I’m traveling to Tucson today for a cat show that’s happening this weekend, and check it out! I’ve got a new suitcase. I bet you want to look inside and see what I’m packing.

There’s all sorts of important stuff here! Cat food in both cans and pouches, a bowl, a small first aid kit, and my favorite toy!

Boodie says I’ve forgotten something — and she’s right!

I need to pack some outfits! I picked a pair of nice, breezy dresses. I don’t usually wear dresses at cat shows when I’m competing, but if I decide I’d rather socialize with humans at my benching area, I will sometimes put on a dress.

I should have known I wouldn’t make it through this whole photo shoot without her showing up.

Oh! She wanted to remind me to pack treats! It’s a good thing she did. I need snacks while I’m at the cat show. I suppose she wants a reward now for reminding me.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Packing My New Suitcase for Tucson appeared first on SparkleCat.

Binga the Red-Faced Reindeer

As I promised you yesterday, here is how Binga wound up becoming an unwilling participant in my holiday wardrobe photo test shoot.

It was either time to adjust those reindeer antlers or take them off altogether…

Or just put them on Binga!

Here I am, trying to give her some suggestions about how to carry herself with the antlers on.

I get the feeling these antlers could be dangerous!

Maybe I should thank her for photobombing this shoot.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Binga the Red-Faced Reindeer appeared first on SparkleCat.

Christmas in August

You’ve probably noticed how hard my human and I have been working on putting together photos for my 2017 calendar! Sometimes my human will test out a few different looks on me before putting up a set so we don’t waste our time on outfits that won’t work. That’s why it is Christmas in August around here right now.

Spoiler alert: this hat is not going to be in the real photo shoot. I guess that’s not much of a spoiler.

Next up was this reindeer antlers headgear. If you are a very, very longtime reader of this blog, you may think you have seen this before (and the above Santa hat), and you would be right! My human brought them home way back in December, 2003. Sadly, she still has them, nearly 13 years later.

I mostly did not mind the antlers so they may make an appearance during the for-real photo shoot.

There’s also the option of having me just dress up and look cute. That would be easy for me!

Right in the middle of the photo shoot, some kitty showed up, wanting treats. So my human stuffed her into the dress. She wound up in the antlers too (first time since 2003!), but I’m saving those photos for tomorrow! So Christmas in August continues….
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Christmas in August appeared first on SparkleCat.

Flying Off Into the Wild Blue… Bedsheet

A while back, I featured an old-ish blog post of me and my airplane on Facebook, and my Facebook fans said they wanted more! So here you go… I am ready for takeoff!

As you can see, this isn’t just any old plane. It is a fighter plane! I hope I don’t run into any danger while I’m in the air!

As you can see, I am way up in the sky, flying with the clouds! Oh come on, use your imagination.

Uh-oh, the enemy is on my tail. I’d better bail out!

Wait a minute — where’s my parachute? It’s a good thing we cats land on our feet.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Flying Off Into the Wild Blue… Bedsheet appeared first on SparkleCat.

Wake-Up Selfies

I was really hoping to get in a good, long nap. Do I really have to do selfies?

I guess if I don’t get up, I won’t have a blog post for today. So hold on a minute.

Okay, I’m ready! Now hand me that iPhone.

Hold on while I get it set up.

Okay, looks good. I think I’m ready!

Not bad! I’m going to leave it at that and go back to sleep now.

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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Wake-Up Selfies appeared first on SparkleCat.

Caturday Binga Bomb

Remember how I said yesterday I always get a treat after going out somewhere? There is somebody else in the house that knows that routine too.

Even though she did nothing to earn a treat, she comes around, demanding compensation. Compensation for what? While I’ve been out working, she has been home sitting on her butt or beating up on Boodie.

Then, the moment my human and I go in the kitchen, there she is, begging. The worst part about all of this is it actually works!

My human has to toss treats across the room to get her to go away. Notice how I’m sitting politely and I didn’t go chasing after the treat like Binga did? That is because I’m a good kitty.

Sometimes my human has to toss more than one treat, while I wait for my little reward for a job well done! Well, nobody ever said life was fair.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Caturday Binga Bomb appeared first on SparkleCat.

Therapy Cat Observations

Here I am in my kitchen, just back from my latest therapy cat visit. Whenever I come back from anywhere, it always ends in the kitchen, where my human gives me a treat before taking off my harness, and if I’ve gone on a therapy visit, my therapy vest. This time I went to a new hospital, and it was very different from the other one because for this visit, I mostly saw children! It is quite funny because I am better with children than my human is. She has never been around them and really does not know what to do with them or what to say to them. Which doesn’t matter for therapy cat visits, because I do all the work! And I take all the kudos too, as it should be.

Even though my human didn’t get any photos of the hospital for this particular visit, I wanted to mention a few things that I think you will find interesting.

Although I get nervous when I visit a new place, once I understand why I’m there, something clicks. Because it was a new-to-us hospital, we had a coach, and she noticed it too, that as soon as I realized I was just there get attention and be adored, I stopped being nervous.
I am very patient and very good with children. I kind of feel like they are more on my level than grown-ups are. Plus if they are children in a hospital, I can sense they need me more and really appreciate me. I like that.
Sometimes grown-ups act like kids when they visit with me, and that is fun too.
Therapy pets really do have a positive affect on patients, and especially children. One little girl had some stomach pain, but after I spent some time with her, her pain went away. Neither my human nor I knew about this until after the visit because the child’s mother discussed it with the coach in Spanish. The coach said she has seen this happen over and over again at visits.

I really enjoyed this visit lots! I am looking forward to going back.
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See Summer’s 2016 calendars and other awesome merch at her Zazzle Shop!

The post Therapy Cat Observations appeared first on SparkleCat.