Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 389

Pet Expo Show Cat

Here I am, back at the La Quinta in Costa Mesa — the very first hotel room I ever stayed in with my human, back in August, 2014! This time, it was for a three-day cat show being held at the Pet Expo in Orange County! It was a Really Big Deal that I got to go because normally, this Pet Expo does not allow people to bring their pets! The only way a kitty can get into the Pet Expo is to either be 1) a rescue cat looking for a home, 2) part of the entertainment, or 3) competing in the cat show! So I am one of an exclusive few.

I also want to say that I managed to make it to the hotel room without needing a tail bath like last time!

The Pet Expo cat shows are very special because they draw so many people. Anyone who comes to the Pet Expo and who loves cats stops by to look at us, so that means a lot of traffic! Many of the judges use this opportunity to talk a lot about each breed, and to promote us! I was lucky in that I got into some finals right from the beginning! At the regular cat shows, the judges usually only bring out the top one or two cats, but because of all the public in attendance, some of them brought out every cat that finaled! So I got handled a lot. The judges always hold us aloft like that when they are done presenting us. It’s kind of like flying through the air.

Did you know the Alter Class — the one I compete in — is a very special class? The intact cats that compete usually only do so for a short period of time because when they fully mature sexually and begin their breeding career, their body focuses on their hormones and not their appearance, so their coat starts to suffer. Some of them also develop bad attitudes because of their hormonal energy. So you only really see young intact cats competing, and many breeds take several years to mature fully. Even Somalis take a couple of years to fully grow up! So in the Alter Class, we are all spayed and neutered, and you get to see what our breeds look like fully developed and mature. So there are some truly impressive specimens in our ranks! Check out this black Chausie — he was huge and sleek and very panther-like. He almost didn’t look real! He was one of the top three Alters of the weekend.

There are also times when a cat finishes his breeding career and returns to the ring as an Alter, like this 10-year-old white Persian. He was very impressive and also one of the top three Alters. (My human and I were falling asleep at the end of the show so we didn’t catch who wound up on top!) This guy was formidable competition — he was the Best Cat internationally in 2007! Of course he got Best Cat in a lot of rings over the weekend — even at 10 years, he is still incredibly handsome and well-groomed.

Even though I knew I was not going to come close to the wins these two cats were earning, I still worked very hard! I also made sure to get enough to eat to keep up my energy.

I also did my best to get enough sleep, although sometimes my human did not cooperate! She was always on the computer back at the hotel room. Can you tell I was getting impatient with her?

People are always amazed at how we show cats allow ourselves to be handled when we are in the ring, but we are trained to accept it from a very young age! I was four months old when I began entering cat shows, and I enjoy all the attention. I’ve been known to head butt judges and give them slow blinks. Sometimes it helps me get in a final… and sometimes it doesn’t!

In addition to the competition, there were also breed seminars so people could learn more about some of the breeds. This was a Toyger breed seminar. As you might guess, the Toyger’s outstanding traits are the tiger like stripes and colors, which have taken a lot of work to get! Don’t worry, they don’t have any actual tiger blood.

In the front of the big building where the cat show was being held, there was an area for reptiles and amphibians… and of course my human found a lizard to pet. She is crazy about those things! I’m surprised she did not bring one home with us.

Anyhow, you are probably wondering how I did overall. There were 18 rings altogether, and I finaled in a good number of them.

In fact, this judge had two rings over the weekend and finaled me twice!

In the end, over the three days, I finaled in 10 rings out of 18! Usually I was in the bottom part of the Top Ten, but once I even got a second best, and as you can see, the competition was really tough!

As you can imagine, I was exhausted by the end of the show! Three days is really long for both kitties and humans!

That night, I didn’t even wait for my human to come to bed before crashing out. I have two more shows to do this month, but fortunately they are only the regular two day shows. Then I only have one scheduled for May so I can take a small break.

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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!

Sunday Catinee: Kitty Tips for Modern Living

You know those “Life Hacks” for humans (some of which I hear are pretty useless)? Well, Shorty and Kodi have some really awesome life hacks for kitties in this video… not so sure about that narrator, though!

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!

Caturday Report: Awesome Edition

I picked this week’s news items because they all, in their own way, show how awesome kitties are!

And I’ve also featured a couple of my awesome blogging pals’ posts!

Awesome is right in the title of this one — it’s about a recent poll that shows the stigmas about kitties and the humans who love them are dying!
Cats are doing awesome work at the Pendleton Correctional Facility in Indiana by helping rehabilitate inmates… and vice versa!
This story is so awesome, it may make your heart explode! It’s the miraculous tale of a tortoiseshell kitty who was rescued a week after that New York City apartment was destroyed.
Children form some amazingly close bonds with us kitties, but what happens when we leave them? The Pawesome Cats blog has 16 ways to help kids grieve the loss of a pet.
And here are five ways to bond with your kitty, from Romeo the Cat

It was a crazy week around here, and honestly, one I hope is not repeated anytime soon.

On the good side, I shared some of the awesome photos the professional show cat photographer took of me a few weeks ago!
My human’s father died on Monday, and now we are looking for a special home for his cat Smokey. She will be here as long as she needs to be, but my human wants to do better by her.
I did take some time to mess around and look cute!
Binga’s treat-thieving ways got her in big trouble… as in big vet trouble!
Finally, I review some cat litter… and there are photos of me and Binga in action!

If you see a good cat-oriented news item around the internet, send me a link and I may include it next 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!

Out of Sight, Out of Scent

At one of the cat shows I was in, my human saw this guy who was selling a kind of litter he swore was amazing! It was made of specially formulated silica gel granules that absorb odor and last for a really long time. He offered to give my human a bag of it for me to review. Because Binga and Boodie have used silica gel litter in the past, she agreed. She figured if I didn’t use it, maybe at least they would.

The first thing we all (my human, Binga and I) noticed about Almost Invisible Cat Litter is that it has virtually no scent. That is a huge relief because the only thing more disgusting than a smelly, dirty litter box is a fresh litter box containing some kind of disgusting faux floral scent. The texture is very sand-like — the granules are very small and they make a really satisfying crunch when you dig around in them. I will be honest — both Binga and I were anxious to give it a try right away!

Practically the moment my human took a step back from the box, Binga was in there!

I was thoroughly disgusted that she got in there before me. But the thing about Almost Invisible Cat Litter is that it absorbs cat urine in virtually seconds and there is no odor! At least no odor that humans can smell. Anyhow, I was determined — I had to outdo Binga.

And I did. Yes, it is what you think it is.

Actually, the scent to that got absorbed pretty quickly too! And the silica gel sucks the moisture right out of it, so it is easy to scoop. In fact, all you have to do is scoop the solid waste and stir around the litter daily and it lasts for up to a month for one cat, or up to 15 days for two! Since my human left two litter boxes in the bathroom — one with our usual litter, and one with the Almost Invisible Cat Litter, it lasted for a good, long while.

You know it is time to change the litter when most of the granules have turned yellow, which will probably be before you actually start smelling it. When my human could smell a litter box in this bathroom, it was always the other litter box and not this one!

So what was our consensus about Almost Invisible Cat Litter? Binga and I used it regularly, but my human never saw Boodie use it (which does not necessarily mean she didn’t — she tends to do her business when no one is around). We used the other litter box a bit more, but we pretty much traded off between the two. It’s not a total miracle litter — while it is almost totally dust-free, it is not scatter free as you can see in the photo above, especially if you have a litter flinger like Binga… and are like my human and have a bad habit of overfilling the litter pan. Hey, you only need an inch! Even though we used the Almost Invisible Cat Litter box regularly, the big bag we were given lasted months.

We give Almost Invisible Cat Litter a paws up here!

This is the new 9-lb. bag with a handle to make the litter easy to pour.

Disclosure: we were given a bag of this litter to try out, but all opinions are our own.
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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!

Binga’s Bad Adventure

Everybody knows that Binga is not a perfect little angel (that would be me!). She is not even an imperfect angel. Or little, for that matter. But she really outdid herself with her misbehavior last weekend!

The dog that lives here is very old, so she needs a lot of meds. For example, she needs a half tab of these. They are flavored and chewable so she will eat them. Well, guess who thought they were treats?

Yep, you guessed it! What happened was, my human’s boyfriend left a half tab of one of those, plus an opiate in a pill pocket on top of some drawers in his office, then went upstairs to deal with with dog and her dinner. My human didn’t know he had left the pills there, and locked up Binga in the office with her dinner so me and Boodie wouldn’t steal any of it. Well, Binga decided she’d rather have treats than dinner so she ate the chewable pill. She only ate the pill pocket around the opiate pill inside and not that pill, though — she has had a lot of practice doing that, which is why she gets her Pepcid crushed into her dinner now (don’t tell her it’s there!).

It even says on the label these meds are for dogs! Sheesh. Anyhow, my human’s boyfriend came back downstairs and discovered right away what she had done, so my human called the emergency vet clinic (there is one just minutes from our house), told them what Binga had eaten and they said to bring her on down! My human tossed her in the carrier and took off so quickly that she didn’t even have time to bring me along! The clinic humans made her (Binga, not my human) throw up her dinner, and hopefully the pill, then gave her fluids and a dose of charcoal… then charged my human $225. Apparently what Binga ate wasn’t super dangerous, but it could have hurt her kidneys — and you don’t want to compromise the kidneys of a 14-1/2 year old cat, even if she is relatively healthy.

Being a treat thief does not pay! Unless you are an emergency vet clinic.
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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!

Peeking Around

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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 Find Smokey a Home Project

Smokey is a beautiful longhaired black kitty who belonged to my human’s father. She is probably about 11 years old, but still playful. And she’s very lonely and scared right now because my human’s father died yesterday.

My human loves Smokey a lot (although I will say I hear the feeling’s not completely mutual), so she immediately went over to the assisted living facility where her father was living and fetched Smokey, the cat tree she bought her, and her leftover food (except for the dry stuff — “You’re only getting wet food from now on,” she said), and brought her home. Right now, Smokey is in a part of the house that can be shut off from the rest of us kitties, and she’s hiding under a bed. My human checked on her, and she did eat some of her dinner.

She will calm down in time, I’m sure, but this is the third time in less than three years that her life has been disrupted. First when my human’s father moved back to Los Angeles from the Central Coast, and again a year later, when he moved into assisted living. Now, Smokey has lost her human altogether.

Like I said, my human loves Smokey and wishes she would be happy here… but she has to be honest and admit that this isn’t the ideal living situation for her. Smokey really needs her own human and she won’t have that here. Binga and I own the humans here, and Boodie does not mind being the extra cat. My human feels bad that Smokey would just be another cat in the crowd, since she thrives on human attention. She’s not a mean cat — she is really quite sweet — but she is not all that fond of other cats. Smokey was originally adopted with another cat, and they just sort of tolerated each other. The other cat got cancer died a couple of years ago.

So as you can see, while Smokey will always be welcome in our house, ideally my human would like to see her in a home where she has her own human and lives with just one other cat at the most. She would be perfect for an older, stable human, maybe retired or maybe not. Smokey just wants a human to call her own, pure and simple. She’s healthy and active and has many more years to spend with someone. Plus she’s beautiful.

If you know anyone in southern to central California who might be suitable for Smokey, please let us know! Although I will warn you — my human will be very careful about whoever Smokey goes home to, and will probably want to visit your home and stuff. Maybe she will bring me along when she does that, so it’s not such a bad thing after all!

By the way, my human was trying to figure out Smokey’s age, when she came across this photo of her from 2005, when she was a young adult kitty at my human’s parents’ old house in Los Osos.

That was from Christmas, and it was the same year my human gave my parents a clock with Sparkle’s face on it. She has the clock now.

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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 Pro Photos!

Remember a few weeks ago, at one cat show I had some real, professional photos taken? I got the proofs a while back but have been too busy to share the best ones with you! So finally I get to have pictures without a busy, messy background with sneaky photobombers hiding behind me.

True, sometimes my human has tried to create a plain setup with some lights, but she doesn’t have the fancy lighting equipment (or camera) to make the kind of photos I need. Plus, once again, the photobomber problem.

So here are my favorite photos from the shoot I did. I’ll show you the outtakes I liked the best first and explain why they didn’t get picked.

Can you see that the grooming on my chest isn’t very good? I blame the stylist (i.e., my human). Besides I was not standing very tall — I wasn’t used to the flash going off, and it made me flinch a little bit.

My human actually loves my face in this photo but it doesn’t show my tail off to full advantage — and with a Somali cat, you’ve got to have that tail well represented!

This is much better! There’s my tail in all its glory, and I sitting tall and regal.

This is the other one my human likes, because it is more horizontally oriented. She wanted the option of a more vertical and more horizontal pose. I think they are both really nice pictures!

If you are wondering why I had these done… I can’t tell you right now! Because it may not happen. But if it does, I will let you know right away!
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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!

Sunday Catinee: Cat Bros and Bro Bros

This video is just bursting with guy energy! And, um, considering that we are all females here, including the dog, except for my human’s boyfriend, who’s a musician (and they aren’t exactly guy guys), I can’t say we know a whole lot about that around here! So everything I know about bros and bro cats, I got from this video.

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

Since I can do a High Five, do you think that makes me an honorary bro?
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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 Caturday Report: April Fools Edition

I was getting ready to put together my usual serious (or at least semi-serious) collection of cat news… but there were so many good April Fools posts involving cats that I decided to share my favorites instead! Sadly, they are all false.

If you want something with a little more meat (although there’s no chicken), I’ve also included a couple of cool posts from my fellow cat bloggers.

This one was a real attention getter — it’s a mashup of Groupon, Uber and cats: ta-da, it’s Grøüber, cats who drive you to your Groupon deals.
The city of Colorado Springs is planning the world’s first cat park… or maybe not.
Cat cafes? That is so last year! Japan is already on the next trend: cat nightclubs! Sadly, that wasn’t true either.
My friends over at Pawesome Cats write about cats doing agility drills. Yes, that’s very real, and no, it’s not going to be part of my repertoire of skills. (My human claims I’m too lazy.)
And finally, Ashton over at the Cats Herd You blog explains the importance of making sure your cat has ID.

This has been quite a busy (and fun!) week for me.

I started off by having a giveaway for a copy of the hilarious new book Texts From Mittens! And texted with Binga too! There is still time to enter.
I spent last weekend at a cat show in Palm Springs. I really enjoyed myself, and I even got a few ribbons!
For a while there, I thought my human was going to trade me in for a bunny!
Here is a fun Throwback Thursday post — it shows me competing in cat shows as a kitten. Big difference from now!
I ended the week by supervising my human while she put together packages from the Rescued Pubslush campaign (in fact, we are still working on them). And I have to admit, I’m still learning this supervising thing.

If you see a good cat-oriented news item around the internet, send me a link and I may include it next 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!