Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 358

How to Stretch

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My 2016 calendars are here!

Big Fun in Portland

This was quite the adventure! A week and a half ago, I was at the largest CFA cat show on the West Coast, and here I was this past weekend, at the largest TICA cat show on the West Coast! In case you don’t know, CFA and TICA are the largest cat registry organizations in the U.S. and I am registered in both. The TICA International Cat Show in Portland is huge — it was three days long and there were something like 250 cats entered. Besides me, my half-brother Chilly was also there. Thousands upon thousands of humans attended. It was insane. And fun!

My human and I flew up to Portland. We left from the Burbank Airport again, but it was a different terminal than before. I wanted to explore everything! There wasn’t room in my human’s suitcase for my usual show enclosure, so my pal BJ’s human lent us some curtains for the standard cage the show supplied for us.

Portland was rainy most of the time we were there, but I did manage to catch a few sun beams a couple of mornings before heading to the hotel conference center for the cat show.

Just because there were a bunch of pedigreed cats at the show, don’t think the humans involved with it don’t care about rescue cats. They do — very much! They support TNR, and there were rescue cats for adoption. They were also accepting donations for FIP research (“Purr for the Cure”), a terrible disease that can affect any cat.

In fact, there was also a food drive for the Oregon Food Bank. People who brought cans of food (human food, that is) to the show got a discount on their admission. By the show’s end, they had filled 20 huge barrels with canned goods!

Sometimes there was such a big crowd of people, humans had a hard time getting their cats to the judging rings!

Because there were so many people expected, my human decided to have my blog sponsor a ring. That got us some extra publicity, plus she and my breeder got a free lunch.

Each sponsor was supposed to get their own cake, but I never saw mine. There was cake for the humans all weekend! So much cake, in fact, that my human stopped going over to the serving table every time another one was announced. Can you believe it?

There were 18 rings in all, and the competition was possibly the hardest I have ever faced! I may be a Supreme Grand Alter and Regional Winner in TICA… but so were most of the other cats there! In fact, my title was no big deal — there were lots of cats that were International Winners. I recognized some of them from previous shows. There were also lots of people taking photos. I liked that. I probably gained about 40 new Instagram followers over the course of the weekend.

Chilly was his usual silly self. We had visitors come by — Angel and Isabella’s human and the Colehaus Cats human came by. So did a cat author friend of my human’s — they went out to dinner on Saturday. A Twitter follower, @ClaxtonOkajima, came down from Seattle to see me! In fact, he came to the show on two days. Lots of other people who know me from my blog or social media also stopped by to say hello, and so did a human who has one of my siblings! It was fun, being such a social butterfly.

It was also exhausting! I napped a lot when I wasn’t in the ring or hanging out with pals.

I also cut loose at night with my Neko Flies Kattipede, and I took some walks around the hotel on my leash.

I would have had fun even if I hadn’t made any finals at all, but I did get finaled in five rings. In one, I was even second best! Against some International Winning cats!

Chilly did even better — he got seven finals, and he had twice the competition I did! He is an up and coming show cat and he is impressing a lot of people with his great looks and great personality. This trip to Portland was his first flight, and he handled it like a pro.

Plus my human got this harness for me as a gift. I’m not a therapy cat yet, but she says it is a promise to me that I will be! I think this was the best part of the whole show.
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My 2016 calendars are here!

Valentine Giftaway!

Look what my human brought home… yet another kitty cottage and scratcher! This one has a Valentine’s Day theme.

My human has successfully put these cottage scratchers together before, but I wanted to make sure she didn’t forget anything.

As you can see, I was very thorough.

The windows in these things are my favorite part!

I love my new scratcher cottage — isn’t it just me? And guess what? My human got an extra one to give away to one of my lucky readers! And she added a couple of extra Valentine themed items too.

This vintage “Hot Stuff” cat tag from Kitty Planet isn’t even available anymore. My human has had it for over a decade, still in its gift box, and she decided to add it to the giveaway.

More recently (way more recently!), my human bought these scrumptious Harry & David Truffles… and then realized they were milk chocolate, and she only eats dark and white chocolate! Her mistake is your human’s gain, because she is also adding it to the giveaway.

Isn’t this a cool selection of gifts? Which is why I’m calling it a giftaway, and it’s just in time for Valentine’s Day. Since there are edibles included, I’m limiting the giveaway to the U.S., and you have until midnight Pacific Time on Monday, February 8 to enter. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

Taking Care of Business Selfie

As you know, I spend a lot of time in the office with my human. The last time I did selfies here, I was kind of lazy about it, so I thought I would try something a little more official looking… or at least, official looking for a selfie!

Forget you just saw this one — I was trying to adjust the angle and exposure and it went off accidentally.

It’s hard to get the exposure right in here — the light coming in from the window is bright, but the rest of the office is dark. Plus the salmon colored walls don’t help.

If the color wasn’t off and background wasn’t so busy (my human needs to find a place for all my rosettes!), this would be a halfway decent office portrait! Not bad for a selfie.

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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

Saturday Catinee Featuring My Half-Brother Chilly

You all got to see my half-brother Chilly in my blog post about the San Diego Cat Show.

Well, somebody got some videos of him in the judging ring, and you can see just how silly he is! Here he stealing his number card and messing around with the judge.

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!

And after he was done being judged, he wasn’t finished causing trouble — here he is, playing with one of the ribbons like it’s a cat toy.

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!

Here is a video of Chilly actually being judged. For those of you who don’t know how judges evaluate cats, every move this judge makes helps him know more about Chilly. He is very efficient. Notice that Chilly just lies on the table while the judge writes down notes — for all his fooling around, he is really very well behaved. Judges don’t often take their hands completely off a cat like that unless they know the cat won’t wander off.

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!
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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

Outtakes and Tabby James Catnip Winner

I have a winner for my Tabby James catnip giveaway! But first, I thought you might like to see some outtakes, since I had a few leftover from the past month. Like this one above, when my human caught me saying… I forget what!

And then… she did it again! My human really needs to work on her timing as a photographer.

I had a slight wardrobe malfunction here.

And… that’s it for the outtakes! But before I get out of here, I’d better make the winner announcement!

Congratulations to Chrissy D! I believe your prize is already on its way to you! And if you didn’t win, you can find the very same Organic Catnip and Valerian Root Gift Set on Amazon!

And guess what? I am already working on another giveaway! You will find out all about it on Monday.
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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

Preparing for Portland

It seems like I just got home from San Diego, but I’m off once again today, this time to Portland where I’ll be competing in a very big cat show! My half-brother Chilly will be there too, and it’ll be his first flight, just the same way my plane trip to Portland last year was my first! The airline my human and I are taking requires me to have a health certificate so I had to go to the veterinary clinic to get it. Since there was no one in the lobby when we got there, my human put the leash on me and let me explore the small shopping area they have there.

They have some pretty cool looking cat toys!

There are treats too! But my human never buys me anything fun while we’re here.

Things took a big turn downwards when my name was called and I went to the exam room. They stuck me with that awful thermometer! I hate that. But the vet said I was totally healthy and I got my certificate and my human paid way more than she wished she had to spend.

To make up for having my temperature taken, my human took me to my favorite local pet store! I got to wander around and sniff the catnip toys while she bought food for the other cats to eat while I’m gone. This time, my human’s boyfriend is home, so they probably won’t even miss us!

I have posts scheduled while I’m gone already, so I don’t know if I’ll be giving you any show updates here while I’m away. I may post on my Instagram account and Facebook page, though, so you can always look there!
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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

When I Don’t Want to Be Photographed

Remember that nice photo of me sitting in front of my breed booth at the San Diego Cat Show? It took my human a whole bunch of shots to get that one! I didn’t feel like looking at the camera… so I didn’t! Sparkle used to pull that all the time — she’d sit there and pose, but she would refuse to look at the camera. Check out this series of outtakes and tell me if I’ve gotten that trick down!

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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

The Wall Saga Finally Ends

Do you remember a really, really long time ago, there was retaining wall construction going on here? It began when Sparkle was still here. It was going on when I came to live here. Finally the wall itself got done, but my human ran out of money to get the rest of the job done. Well, she finally got the money together to finish it, nearly a year and a half later. I checked it all out.

First the workers cut the concrete near the wall so there was a straight line. That was pretty noisy.

Then they took a long weekend off! They left all their equipment so I knew they were coming back. That was when I was out of town in Roseville for my cat show.

They came back finally and poured the concrete, leaving a dirt area where my human wants to plant some climbing vines so the wall doesn’t look so generic.

Here are the new steps!

Sadly, by the time I got to try them out, they were mostly dry and I couldn’t leave my paw prints. I bet it would have raised the home value if I had!
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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!

My Pet Me Debut and a Grand Deja Vu

This was my second year at the San Diego Cat Show. Last year, I attained Grand Premier status there. This year, instead of running back and forth to judging rings, I was a Pet Me Cat. Since the cats who are competing can’t be handled by the public, and their humans are too busy to answer a lot of questions about their breeds, the Pet Me Cats and their humans are there to do all that.

It’s not required that a Pet Me cat have a breed booth but my human set one up anyway, and used some photos from my breeder, and the breeder who has BJ, the blue Somali that I sometimes compete against at shows.

My human brought the sign she made for me for BlogPaws and my breeder brought a table for me to greet my public.

There was also an official “Pet Me Cat” sign I got to have for the weekend.

Although I had lots of fun meeting people at the cat show, it took a lot of energy! Plus I didn’t have much privacy. Whenever I wanted to redo my groom, it seemed like someone was pointing a camera at me!

If I was too hyper (like I was on Sunday morning after a good night’s sleep), my human put a dress on me. Wearing a dress calms me down and I actually enjoy it. I also got to go on a brief walk on my leash and that was lots of fun! After that, I was really excited to meet more people! My human says next time we do this, I’m going for a walk again because it made me so cheerful.

The only downside about the weekend was the area I was benched faced a big bunch of cat trees — and I wasn’t allowed to climb any of them! My human said there wasn’t room in her Mini Cooper to take one home.

Lots of people took photos, but so far I haven’t been able to find any on Instagram or Facebook. When I do, I’ll repost them!

While I was meeting and greeting, my half-brother Chilly was competing. It was a huge show, with a bunch of cats in his class. Our breeder didn’t think he would do much, as far as finals, and he needed a bunch of points to get his Grand Champion status. Intact cats like him are Champions and they need 200 points to Grand, while neutered and spayed cats like me are Premiers, and we only need 75. But he started charming the judges.

He actually put his head in this judge’s hand, just like that, when got a final in his ring!

And this wasn’t the only judge who liked Chilly — three others did too… and he got enough points to Grand and then some! Isn’t that exciting? Here he is posing with the ribbons that earned him the final points he needed. So he Granded at the very same show I did last year. We both had a great weekend!

Although by the end, I was ready to go home to my own bed!
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My 2016 calendars are here! Find my regular calendar on Lulu.com — OR get my calendar of outtakes from Zazzle!