Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 407

My Friend Coco Is a Celebrity!

You are probably wondering why I am wearing this dress! Well, my human thought I should be fashionable for my latest book review!

It’s The Adventures of Coco Le Chat: The World’s Most Fashionable Feline. And it stars my blogging pal Coco the Couture Cat! I have to be honest, though, I am kind of embarrassed about reviewing this cute, stylish book while wearing an off-the-rack dress! Not only that, it is a hand-me-down from several seasons ago that Sparkle never wore. Coco wouldn’t be caught dead in this!

According to the book, Coco is a jet-setting French kitty who comes to New York City to visit some of its famous landmarks, and to lunch with fashion editors. It is actually just a role — in real life, Coco is an American kitty, but she still has a very unique fashion sense! That is how she got the role for the book.

Coco has a different outfit for every New York adventure — and she has lots of fun! This 32-page book is part illustration, part photograph, but every picture of Coco is a real photo with a real outfit! It’s supposedly a children’s (and kitten’s) book, but with its hard cover and elaborate design, any cat (and fashion) lover will adore it.

It even has these pretty ribbon bookmarks. I thought they made really fun cat toys, but my human said I was not allowed to play with them.

As you may have gathered, I do not mind wearing clothes, but if I must, I really hope this book inspires my human to dress me up in something a little more haute couture and a little less pet store discount bin.

The official release date for The Adventures of Coco Le Chat is October 25 — that’s tomorrow! But you can order it from Amazon now. And I recommend you do — this is a beautiful, charming book and it would make a wonderful gift… maybe even for yourself!

Disclosure: I received a free copy of Coco’s book for review. Link to Amazon is an affiliate link, so I can make enough money for a decent wardrobe!
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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!

We Are ALL Therapy Cats

As you know, I am training to be a therapy cat. A lot of humans seem to think this is a big deal, as if it is a very hard thing to do. But I want you to know they are wrong. It is true that going into strange buildings and befriending people you don’t know is something not all cats can do. But the therapy part — that’s easy. All cats are therapy cats. Yes, even feral cats. Let me tell you why.

We cats make humans feel better by our very presence. Scientific studies have proven the human health benefits of living with a cat, but you don’t need research if you live with us kitties. You already know how much better you feel after burying your nose in our fur, or petting us, or just seeing us after a hard day at work. If you live with one or more cats, you already know that we can lift your spirits, ease your depression, or purr you into a better mood when another human has let you down. Many of us kitties will stay close when you are sick, and that is healing in itself.

What makes this type of feline therapy so effective is that humans instinctively know we are a gift to them. A cat does not give her love easily or promiscuously. As animals that are both predator and prey, we are careful about who we trust, and our instincts are rarely wrong. If we choose to offer our affection to you, you know that either you have earned it, or we sense that you need it.

And as I mentioned earlier, even feral cats have the ability to be therapy for humans. People who have undertaken the task of caring for community cats know what I’m talking about, because there is no better feeling than when a formerly frightened cat learns to trust you — and then begins to look forward to your arrival. Even though many feral cats can’t be touched physically, they can touch your heart.

So please do not think I am special because I want to be a therapy cat and go visit people. If you are feline, you are also a therapy cat right there in your own home, and your work is more valuable than you may know.
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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!

This Ess Is Mine

I gather this Ess has been here for years, and no kitty wanted it. Well, guess what? I decided it belongs to me! Maybe it was just waiting for my arrival.

I think I look really dramatic on it!

Plus it’s really fun to play on!

Of course, now that I’ve claimed it, everybody wants a piece of it.
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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!

Tunnel Tale

I confess — I was a little scared of the Twinkle Chute tunnel at first. I know Sparkle liked it, but I had my doubts.

I wondered if there was something dangerous hiding inside it.

I had to examine it thoroughly to make sure it was safe!

Finally, I took a chance and dove right in!

It turned out to be a really fun toy.

There was nothing to be afraid of after all!
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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 Busy Weekend

I had a very busy weekend! I competed in a cat show again… except this time my human just dropped me off there! She had some sort of digital publishing conference to attend, so my breeder (who was also showing her Aby kitten, CG) prepped me and took me to the rings.

Actually I did not mind — in fact, I thought it was fun! My breeder tried a few different things with me for fun, playing and stuff, and it made my behavior for the judges fresher and more energetic! Do not tell my human, but I didn’t really miss her. My breeder is a pro at showing cats and, to be honest, my human is pretty much a greenhorn.

At the end of the day Saturday, my human picked me up and took me home, but she was only around for about an hour. Then she went off to the Stray Cat Club, a party to benefit Stray Cat Alliance.

Stray Cat Alliance helps community cats in southern California, and communities in general, especially low-income ones, with TNR, low-cost spay and neutering, education about stray and feral cats, and advocacy. It is one of the local groups that my human regularly donates to. Stray Cat Alliance helps kitties in need, like the pair you see here, who had mange and would have died if not for SCA’s help. The pair healed, learned to trust humans and were eventually adopted… together!

Part of the evening involved a silent auction, and my human donated a small wrapped canvas featuring Sparkle’s paw and candy hearts. Here it is on the table. It was a last minute entry — she didn’t get it to the Stray Cat Alliance volunteers until a couple of days before the event so there was little chance for anyone to bid early on it.

Bidding on it started at $15 and my human was really excited when a couple of people started bidding against each other.

It finally sold for $60, which is less than its listed price on Zazzle, but still more than my human paid for it (she got it during one of Zazzle’s sales).

Even though my human was dead tired by the time she got home, she still managed to get up early enough to bring me back to the cat show the next day and head back to the digital publishing conference. It was a productive weekend — out of 10 rings, I had three finals. In one ring, I was Second Best Allbreed kitten! My next show won’t be until November… and it will be my last one as a kitten. After that, I’ll be entering in the Alter class in TICA and CFA’s Premier class (that’s what they call Alters there). That means I’ll be competing as an adult! Honestly, I don’t feel very grown up.
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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: Ping-Pong, Kitty Style

In ping pong, there are human rules and — as this stripey orange guy shows here — there are kitty rules. If you want to play kitty ping pong, here is what you need to know:

Kitties may play both sides of the court.
As long as you can whap it, it’s a score!
Bunny kicking of the net is not only allowed, it is welcomed.
In a match between cats and humans, the cat automatically gets the win.

Now watch the video!

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!

The Caturday Report: More Silly Than Serious

After my last couple of serious posts regarding feral cats in Los Angeles, let’s kick back and check out some more lighthearted news stories this week!

Once again, the bloggers have the meat and the other websites have the fluff:

This video of Taylor Swift and John Cleese discussing their cats on a talk show has been making the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it yet, check it out! These two are both pretty funny.
When this Japanese man retired, he decided to spend his time carting his nine cats around Tokyo in a stroller. There are definitely worse ways to spend your golden years!
Talk about being faithless! This Australian family was selling their house, and when the buyers offered extra money to include their cat in the bargain, they agreed! I hope the new owners are more loyal to this kitty.
The Pawsome Cats blog discusses the dangers of smoking around cats. Don’t do it!
The Playful Kitty blog nearly always has a newsworthy post every week, and this one has some tips about taking in a stray cat.

As many of you know, I had both silly and serious posts this week!

Sparkle’s Best Cat Blog award from the Petties arrived, and I was honored to accept it in her absence.
I got something debatably devilishly good from the Martha Stewart Fall and Halloween collection!
I reviewed the latest book from Grumpy Cat, and tried to turn my smile upside down!
On National Feral Cat Day, I spread the word about the raw deal feral cats get in the city of Los Angeles. I hope this does not happen in your city!
The next day, I offered some ways that people can speak out and help change things in Los Angeles for ferals.

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!

Let’s Talk… About Feral Cats

My human dropped in at the Kitty Bungalow National Feral Cat Day art reception last night at Angel City Brewery in downtown L.A. She gathered some important information for me to share with you, in addition to what I said in Thursday’s post. First, though, let me show you a couple of the fun parts of last night. Then I have an action I hope you will take at the very end of my post.

There were lots of gorgeous photographs of feral and formerly feral cats, all donated by the photographers.

There was also an enclosure with kittens! They were all born to feral moms, and socialized and ready for adoption. In fact, while she was there, my human saw one little guy get adopted. The event also had food and fun games (like tossing cat plushies into cat traps to win a prize). But the most important part was the posters on display with facts. I’ve left them really large so you can read them yourself.

Note the fact at the bottom: “TNR costs roughly $50 per cat while it costs approximately $100 to euthanize a cat.” The city of L.A. is practicing stupid math right now, and the taxpayers are the ones getting the hit.

Below are some suggested Tweets. If you live in L.A. and have a Twitter account, make your voice heard! Make sure that government officials know how unhappy you are about the city turning its back on TNR.

And here is something more you can do: Kitty Bungalow is campaigning, online and off, to get the city of L.A. moving on a plan to bring back TNR support to animal services. The city has actually had a plan for a while now but has been letting it sit while cats die. The online campaign is here — please sign it and spread the word! This is a new campaign — let’s see how quickly we can reach the 10,000 goal!

With your help, a difference can be made for feral cats. Without your help… well, let’s not even go there.
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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!

I Will NOT Stay Silent on National Feral Cat Day!

Today is National Feral Cat Day and I want to bring up something that the city of Los Angeles does not want to talk about. I am telling you this as a cautionary story, so that you will keep your eyes and ears open in case it ever happens where you live.

For a couple of decades, the city of Los Angeles worked with nonprofit cat rescues that did T-N-R (Trap, Neuter, Return) to help the large population of feral cats in the city. Then in 2009, some ill-informed but very outspoken members of bird groups decided this had to stop. They sneakily came up with a technicality, using the California Environmental Quality Act. These groups claimed that the city of L.A. did not follow the CEQA’s procedure before supporting TNR and that it needed to perform an environmental review to continue doing it. Unfortunately, these people managed to get a court ruling in their favor.

This did not make TNR illegal — in fact it is done every day here in the city of Los Angeles — but it did a lot to hamper TNR efforts. Groups like Fixnation, Stray Cat Alliance and Kitty Bungalow used to be able to get vouchers to help offset the costs of spaying and neutering ferals. This was no longer allowed. Cat rescue groups, big and small, had to scramble to get private funding for their TNR efforts. Los Angeles City animal control was not even allowed to discuss TNR with citizens. Residents of Los Angeles who go to the city with a feral cat problem are told basically that their only recourse is to have them killed, because that is exactly what happens to any feral that is brought into L.A.’s animal control facilities. Even if the city employees know about the groups that do TNR, they are not allowed to mention them as an alternative. Fortunately word does get around about the TNR groups, but a lot of people still don’t know they exist.

In a lot of ways, this ruling makes the feral cat problem worse because many compassionate humans don’t want to have feral cats in their neighborhood killed this way, and if these people don’t know about TNR, the cats will only multiply. And people who don’t care and just have them removed soon find that more cats take their place (the vacuum effect Alley Cat Allies speaks about). Ironically, you can cross the street from the city of Los Angeles to the city of Burbank (which is surrounded by L.A. city) and find animal control services that are much friendlier to feral cats.

This terrible problem has been going on here for nearly five years (in fact you can read Sparkle’s 2010 story about it here). There is a movement right now to make Los Angeles a no-kill city, but it won’t be complete until the issue about Los Angeles’ feral cats is solved.

Take some time today to find out what is happening with feral cats in your city, and make sure it does not happen in your own backyard!

Note: if you are a southern California resident, stop by the Angel City Brewery tonight — 216 S. Alameda, Los Angeles, 90012 — where Kitty Bungalow is having an art show and a walk-in cattery, where you can pet and play with some reformed feral kitties. It’s from 6:30 to 10:30 — you can find out more details here.
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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!

Learning to Grump

I was lucky enough to win the new Grumpy Cat book, The Grumpy Guide to Life, from my pals at Cat Wisdom 101. And I am very glad I did because I have a big problem: I am not grumpy! In fact, I have no idea how to be grumpy at all. I’m a happy kitten who likes to make humans and other kitties happy! Clearly, I am sorely lacking in this area.

Although this book is available on Kindle, I really recommend getting it in hardcover because it makes such a nice little gift book! It has a die cut cover to frame the picture of Grumpy cat, and slick full-color pages with cool layouts and lots of photos of Grumpy Cat. There are sayings like, “The best things in life are annoying” and “Don’t forget: Every silver lining is part of a larger, darker cloud.”

Can you tell how hard I am working at taking Grumpy Cat’s philosophy to heart?

So how am I doing? Do I look grumpy enough?

I’m sorry, Grumpy Cat, I can’t do it! I think there are some good lessons here, if you want to have fun learning how to be grumpy, but apparently I have no gift for grumpiness! If you want to give it a try, you can always buy Grumpy Cat’s book from Amazon.
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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!