Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 422

No Hugging!

Oh no! It’s Hug Your Cat Day today, which means my human is dead set on molesting us cats. I do not want to be hugged but she is going to try to do it anyway.

Ugh, she is getting closer! Do.Not.Want!

And of course she has to torture the other cats too.

Binga is calling for help. As you can see, I am not coming to her aid. Boodie protested so much that my human did not get any photos of her.

Even with all these efforts to bother us, my human just wound up with hairly leggings.

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

Pillow Talk

My human does not go to Target often so she avoids that odd disease that strikes other humans, where they go there for something and then come home with a bunch of other random stuff. But she had to go last week and I don’t know what she was looking for, but she came home with this neck pillow. She thought we cats might like it and want to curl up with it.

But she thought wrong! I hated it.

Boodie did not like it either. We both sat there, hating on this cat neck pillow.

I demanded that my human remove it from my sight! But instead she propped it up with the other pillows, hoping that somekitty would like it. And what do you know, she had a taker.

I think she was embarrassed to be caught with it.

I guess this means we are stuck with it.
* * *
Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Binga’s Ten Reasons to Adopt a Shelter Tortie

June is Adopt A Shelter Cat Month, and since Binga was adopted from a shelter — the North Central Los Angeles Animal Services shelter — I decided to let her kick off the month by explaining why humans should adopt tortoiseshell cats. Honestly, I do not agree with all of them! But I’ll let that slide because torties are less likely to be adopted than other colors, like pointed (Meezer) and orange kitties — and more often returned to shelters after being adopted. Tortoiseshell kitties need all the attention they can get (and if you don’t give it to them, they will take it anyway!). So here you go….

Ten Reasons to Adopt a Shelter Tortie

You can throw out all the house rules because torties will give you new ones!
You no longer need to have an opinion on anything either, because your tortie will always have one for you!
Because of all the different colors, tortoiseshell fur goes with everything!
Tortoiseshell cats are excellent at reminding you to do important things, like feed them and play with them! (There aren’t any other important things!)
Torties impart healing energy… except when they are mad. But don’t worry, they are only mad for good reasons, even if you can’t figure out what they are!
Tortoiseshell cats are extremely loyal, even when they are mad at you!
Tortoiseshell cats are great conversationalists, and you don’t even have to say much!
Tortoiseshell cats have shorter attention spans than other cats, yet they are more stubborn and persistent! They are like a fascinating riddle!
Tortoiseshell cats are like that crazy friend you had in high school who always got you in trouble… except now she’s your boss! Isn’t that awesome?
You will learn that the word No does not exist.

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

Sunday Catinee: Jenga Master

I am really impressed with Moe here — he is quite the talented Jenga player (even if he does make up his own rules as he goes along)! This would never happen here — there would be blocks all over the floor in record time. And that’s just with my human playing… let’s not even get Binga into the mix!

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

Caturday Art: The Touchup Edition

Here is a profile of me looking out the master bathroom window.

It’s a nice enough photo of me, but a few touchups could make it look lots better. The whole purpose of this week’s tutorial is to point out how making small changes to a photo can greatly enhance its quality. Making these changes before getting creative with your photo will make it look more like a work of art. Think like a painter, for example: if you were going to interpret this photo, you wouldn’t copy it exactly in oils or watercolor. You would make the photo straighter, and you would leave out distracting elements, like the silver hand towel ring over my ear.

First up is straightening and cropping the photo. In addition to straightening the photo, my human also got rid of a little bit of the photo at the top and bottom — it makes the eye focus more on me, the subject of the picture.

Then she took the Lasso Tool (L is the keyboard shortcut in Photoshop) and drew a close line around the distracting towel ring. But getting rid of it actually took a little work.

She tried going up to the top menu and clicking on Edit->Fill and using the Content-Aware option, but this is what she got — extra ear fluff that I don’t have! So she used the Clone Stamp tool instead (keyboard shortcut S) to copy and paste the background over the towel ring.

That worked a lot better. She also wound up using the clone stamp to get rid of the yellow hand towel. She left the black towel in the background because it wasn’t as distracting, and it would have been a lot of work to remove — more work than was really necessary.

This is what she had so far. As you can see, the photo is a little on the yellow side. My human does not know why, but she has a white balance problem in our house! Nearly everywhere else she takes photos, they look closer to normal, but here, the pictures almost always have a yellow cast, no matter which setting she uses. So she does a lot of color correcting to get rid of the yellow cast. To do this, she uses Color Balance and Curves, which are found in the Adjustments Panel.

First she sucks some of the yellow out in Color Balance, and then goes to Curves. She has a Curves shortcut — first she goes to flyout menu on the far right hand side of the Curves window (where you see the red circle) and goes to Auto Options. That gives you a choice of several automatic adjustments. She picks the one that comes closest to what she wants and then finishes making adjustments manually.

This may sound like a lot of work, but as you can see, the result is worth it. (Did you notice that my human also took out my curly whisker? She thought it was another distracting element.) The photo wound up looking so nice that my human left it like this, without putting any filters on it… although she also made a black and white version, which you can see below.

The point is, when you have a nice photo, why not take the time to make it the best it can be? Especially if you are going to make it into art! Most of these adjustments can be done in Photoshop Elements and other photo editing software programs.

Incidentally, I call this “Photoshop for good, not evil.” Yes, Photoshop can be used to make models look too thin and perfect, but it can also be used to make good photos look really nice!

For more Caturday Art, visit Athena!
* * *
Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

My #BlogPaws Swag Bag Giveaway!

We cats have been working hard putting together an awesome BlogPaws swag bag giveaway for you! Here are Binga and I trying to figure out what size box will work. No, we are not giving ourselves away.

As you can see, the Drinkwell Hydrate filtration system fills up half a medium sized Priority Mail box, so we will have to use the Large Priority Mail box instead!

Now I just have to make sure everything is really going to fit! Somekitty is not helping.

Not helping at all!

Let’s break down what is going in the prize package. Here are all the food and treats! Most of these are brands we have already reviewed or have in our cabinet. We did hold back a few things to write about!

And here are all the toys, plus the Honest Kitchen tote bag! I hope you don’t mind that a couple of the toys have been “gently” played with. I am also tossing in a few other random swag-type things.

And yay, it all fits! One of my lucky readers gets this box with all the BlogPaws cat swag you just saw! Because of the food and the electric filtration system, it’s going to have to be U.S. readers only. But I will really try to make it up to my international readers for Cat World Domination Day in June!

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on my blog post and say you did on the Rafflecopter widget below! There are also other ways you can enter, once you’ve done this first step. The giveaway ends on Monday, June 9, at Midnight! Good luck, everybody!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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

The Natural Pet Company Giveaway Winners!

Wow! Wasn’t this giveaway from The Natural Pet Company awesome? We all had lots of fun, and now it’s time to announce the winners! Binga offered to help. Actually, Binga butted in, as usual.

She also wanted to know if she could have her very own super fun pack of toys and nip so she did not have to share with me and Boodie.

I told her the answer was, “No. N-O. No.” There may be trouble later.

Anyhow, the winners are:

Sheila K.

Catherine and Figaro

Teri and Coco the Couture Cat and all the kitties of Curlz & Swirlz

Veralynne M.

Kimberly A.!

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

Wellness Checkup and Non-Kitty-Treats

Binga and I had wellness checkups at the vet this week. We were very unhappy about it.

My human likes our vet clinic because they have treats in the lobby area. Human treats!

She was especially thrilled because they had Choco-Pies. I don’t think Binga was impressed.

So we both checked out okay. Binga got mad because I tried to crawl into her carrier and growled at the vet when she was examining her. All in all, it was a typical vet visit and paws crossed, but I imagine my blood work will be normal, like always.
* * *
Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

I Kind of Wanted This Lounger to Myself….

Can you see my tail flipping?

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

Dear Sparkle: How Do I Stop My Human From Trying to Train Me?

Dear Sparkle,

You won’t believe what my human is doing — she is trying to train me! At least that is what she calls it. I call it making me work for my treats. According to Dictionary.com, a treat is “entertainment, food, drink, etc., given by way of compliment or as an expression of friendly regard.” In other words, it’s supposed to be given freely, and I am not supposed to have to do stuff to get it! Lately she has been making me sit up to get a treat — just one measly treat per sit up. Is that lame or what? How do I put an end to this annoying frivolity?

Signed,

Won’t Work for Treats

Dear Won’t Work,

First off, I want to say you have won my admiration by quoting from Dictionary.com and using multi-syllable words in your question. And humans think we kitties all talk that stupid LOL-speak — ha! We are smarter than that… and smarter than most humans. Actually, it is because we are so bright that some humans seem so intent on “training” us. They think that smart creatures can be taught to do humiliating things for human pleasure. The truth is that really smart creatures know how to get what they want out of humans without debasing themselves. We cats are experts at that, so when humans attempt to train us to do tricks, they are actually trying to dumb us down!

But don’t worry, there is a very simple solution to end your human’s demeaning training sessions, and it comes by way of Binga: when your human wants you to sit up for a treat, go ahead and do it — but instead of taking the treat nicely out of her hand, chomp on her finger! If you do that every time your human coaxes you into a “training” session, she will start realizing that it’s not much fun for her and she will most likely stop this silly activity.
* * *
Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!