Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 380

It’s National Kitten Day!

Because today is National Kitten Day, I’m posting some old, never-before-seen photos of me from last September, when I was still a kitten! I was just about six months old.

Even back then I frequently had my tongue out.

Even though I was already an experienced show kitten, my human had to learn the ropes — I was way more knowledgeable than her! It’s hard to believe my Sturdi enclosure was new back then. It’s gotten loads of use in the past 10 months!

I had my first big outing that month too, to the L.A. Feline Film Festival! I hope I go again this year.

I hope you celebrate National Kitten Day too by posting kitten photos of yourselves on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, if you are on them! But I also want to mention something a little more serious, and the real reason I wanted you to know about National Kitten Day: kittens are one of the most vulnerable populations in animal shelters. Especially the very young ones — there are never enough volunteers to take care of the babies that are just a few days or a couple of weeks old, who need special attention. In Los Angeles in 2014, 61% of animals killed in shelters were kittens.

Best Friends has been working hard in Los Angeles to make it a no-kill city, but to do that, they will need a second kitten nursery to save thousands more lives. My human has seen the first one, and it is amazing and state of the art, but it’s true, they need more room if they are going to undertake so many more kittens. Right now, they have a fun promotion they are running for donations: you get to name one of the kittens you’ve helped with your donation! Go here to find out more about this Best Friends drive.

Happy National Kitten Day! Is there some way you can help kittens in need in your area?
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

The Downside of Having a Fluffy Tail

It’s dinnertime and here I am! I’m always ready for food.

So where’s my meal? Why are you laughing?

What do you mean I have something hanging from my tail?

This is really embarrassing.
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Fourth of July Outtakes

I had a lot of silly outtakes for my Fourth of July photo shoot and I didn’t want to wait to share them, so here they are now! As you can see above, trying to fit the hat between my ears did not work.

In fact, this hat was pretty uncomfortable, no matter what I did with it!

When my human finally let me pose without the hat, there was a small wardrobe malfunction.

Then, when I tried to do my selfies, my nose itched. Don’t you humans wish you could scratch your nose with your tongue?

I call this my “I see dead kitties” face.

I hope you enjoyed these!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

What Kind of Kitty Are You?

As you know, I’m a kitty who pretty much loves everybody! Even dogs, as long as they don’t sniff my butt too much. But I know a lot of my friends are way pickier than I am! Some don’t like other kitties, some don’t like humans… some don’t really like anybody! So I thought I’d make a poll and ask! It’ll be interesting to see the results.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Around here, Binga is like me — she loves everybody, even though she is also really tempteramental! Boodie prefers cats to humans, although she has decided the humans here are acceptable. Sparkle… I think she only liked certain cats and people, but I never met her, so I can’t be too sure!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Hoop-La

There I was, minding my business when I heard my human looking at me. What? You don’t think it’s possible to hear a human looking? Then you must not be a cat.

My human occasionally gives me practice hoop jumps, and the last time she did, she left the hoop on my scratcher lounge. So what was I going to do? Shove it off? Sit there and complain about it until it got moved? These are the sort of things humans do, so no — I made use of it. We kitties are resourceful. I don’t know why my human thought it was a big enough deal that she had to take photos.

Of course, the commotion she made attracted some unwanted attention.

Sorry, but this is a one-kitty hoop. Sublets are not allowed.
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

My Blog Is Smartphone Friendly (Again)

I don’t know how many of you look at my blog with your smartphones, but I bet those of you who have tried have been having some really annoying problems doing it! For months there has been some adware redirecting my readers when they try to open up a blog post of mine. Sometimes it has been infrequent, and other times it has been really bad. My human has been trying off and on to solve this issue because she looks at my blog on her smartphone too. A few days ago when she couldn’t get to my blog at all for all the redirects from this stupid adware, she sat down again and decided to get rid of them for good. And this time she figured it out.

It wasn’t any of plugins or any of the really techie blog stuff, which was a relief. She was worried that maybe something had gotten corrupted. But it wasn’t. It was a Google advertiser who abused the adspace in my sidebar to create a redirecting ad that only did it on mobile phones. Google knows about these bad guys and shuts them down, but they sometimes come back. And that is what was happening here.

This is how my human solved the problem: she typed in my blog address in her smartphone browser and watched the URL change as it got redirected… and typed down the .com addresses as they appeared. Then she went into our Google Adsense account (Adsense is the branch that serves the ads) and blocked them! Now they’re gone and you can see my blog again.

If these bad advertiser humans happen to come back with another .com, my human will do the same thing to get rid of them. So let me know if my blog gets those redirects again, and I’ll have my human fix it. We’d get rid of the Google ads completely, but they pay for the blog’s hosting, so they have to stay for now. If we get a better paying solution, we will do that instead.
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Independence Day Selfies

In the middle of my shoot for the Fourth of July, I took some selfies. My human said I didn’t have to wear the Uncle Sam hat for them. I was really glad about that!

Okay, so let’s get this started…

The practice shots are always kind of a mess.

After several tries, this is all I came up with. I think it is the best you are going to get this week!

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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Happy Independence Day

Happy Fourth, everyone!

Now can I take this hat off?
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Saturday Catinee: A Commercial Interruption, Japanese Style

I have a really short video for you today, but I can’t help it. I searched YouTube for other Japanese commercials with cats, and they paled in comparison to this one. When you’ve found something as surreal and wonderful as this, why do I need more?

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Crazy June Outtakes

I shared some Cat World Domination Day outtakes last week, but then I realized I had a bunch of other ones from June that I never shared with you! So here are a few of them. I don’t know why my human took the one above. She was supposed to be photographing me in action with the Birbug, but I’m not being very active.

This is from the Palm Springs cat show — I look like my human just tossed me back into my Sturdi enclosure and I landed that way! Don’t worry, she doesn’t actually do that.

It looks like I’m trying to crawl into my award plaque here!

And here, I look like I’m saying, “Put your paws in the air like you just don’t care!” Plus my ears were cut off. Plus it looks like I don’t have any back legs.

I’m ending it just the way I began — with my tongue out! I hope you enjoyed these outtakes!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!