Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 423

Guess What’s Back?

My custom error page is back! The guy who gave my blog last year’s redesign never put it back and I was kind of bummed about it. But when my human installed and customized the new theme, she made sure to add it. Never seen it? You can take a look here.

Maybe I should update the photo, but… uh… no.
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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!

On Memorial Day…

Enjoy your day off and your barbecues and get togethers… but also remember the men and women who toiled and fought and gave their lives to make sure we could keep having days like these.

Photo montage courtesy of Beverly on flickr.
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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: The Superhero Cat Rescuer

I actually think all cat rescuers are superheroes, but there’s a new comedy video series that takes it literally! The star of the AdvoCat! series is your typical cat rescuer on the surface: a middle-aged cat lover who would do anything to help a cat in need, and who has little patience for humans who don’t take proper care of their kitties. But when she runs across the latter, she gives them a dose of their own medicine! My human is especially enamored of the episode below because the rescue human metes out justice to a pair of really annoying hipsters (a species of human that she sees a lot of around here). But enough of my meowing — here’s the video:

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

This is only the second AdvoCat episode so far — in the first one, our heroine comes to the rescue of a dog. But the really cool thing about this series is that the creators are teaming up with rescues across the county to add an adoptable pet at the end. Any rescue that wants their kitty featured at the end of the video above can find out more at the AdvoCat website.

Filmmakers like the AdvoCat humans and the CATastrophes humans are using their awesome talents to help cats in need! Please support them by spreading the word!
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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 Blog Design Edition

I am going to cheat a little bit for today’s Caturday Art post because instead of having my human create some new digital cat art, I am going to explain a little bit about how she did my blog redesign. If you stay calm and keep an open mind, you may find out that lots of it is not as scary as you think!

Because my human isn’t well-versed in things like php code and is not really a web designer, she began with a pre-made theme. It did not take her long to find one she liked. It’s called Modern Blogger Pro:

As you can see, it’s already very pretty. This designer has some very nice, clean designs and I hear she has great support for you (although my human hasn’t used it yet). If you want a pretty WordPress design you might check out her work. Anyway, Modern Blogger Pro is based on the Genesis Framework. What that means is that the creators of Genesis did the heavy php code lifting to make the basic design work on WordPress. Modern Blogger Pro is a “child theme,” which means the Modern Blogger Pro designer added the code and images that made it look so nice, and added additional functionality too.

The two parts of the design that my human worked with were a) the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and b) the images. Every blog has a CSS page (often more than one). The main one is almost always called style.css, and you can find the path to it in a Chrome browser by going to the top menu and clicking on View->Developer->View Source. It is generally near the top of the page. It looks like a mess of letters and numbers to non-coders, but there are meaningful bits in there that can easily be changed, like the fonts and colors.

When my human purchased Modern Blogger Pro (combined with the Genesis Framework, they are under $100 together), she got the style.css sheet. One of the first things she did was change the fonts for the titles, headlines and menus. Here are the original fonts:

Although she liked the original fonts for these, she wanted something a little more light-hearted and fun for me. So she browsed through Google Fonts. There are a bunch! And they are all available to use on blogs, if you have access to your style.css. I don’t know how to access or change that file on Blogger, but if you go to the Blogger Template Designer and click on Advanced, you will find a bunch of fonts there. These are the fonts she chose for my blog — as you can see, she stuck with Lato for the body (post) text because she liked it:

One note on picking fonts. It is okay to use cute or fancy or high personality fonts for titles, but it is a bad idea to use them for your whole post (that would be Text Font in the Advanced section of Blogger’s Template Designer). It is exhausting to read a whole paragraph of a fancy font. So those fonts should be kept simple and fairly traditional.

Next, my human changed the colors of the Menu bar and the links. She didn’t feel the magenta color was right for me, and she likes yellows and oranges because they go nicely with my fur and eyes. On websites, the colors are identified by a series of 6 numbers and letters, preceded by a hashtag. White is #ffffff and black is #000000. Red is #FF0000. She wanted to change the colors on the style.css — but she needed to find what the number was for the magenta.

The Chrome browser has a cool function where if you right click over a section of a blog, it opens up a menu that includes “Inspect Element.” Click on that and it shows you the code behind it — and the colors often have a little colored square next to them so you can easily find them in the middle of all the gobblety-gook (yes, much of the code looks like that to my human too!). To find the colors she wanted to use, she either used what was on my old blog design or used a cool web page with an html color picker. When she found what she wanted she opened up the style.css (after saving a version with the original code in case she messed up!) and replaced the color numbers she didn’t want with the ones she did.

To open up the style.css, by the way, my human used a free program called Text Wrangler. She likes it because it’s basic, and the coding is in different colors so it makes it easier to identify what is going on (if you know coding). She just did a find and replace search for the color codes. Text Wrangler is only available for Mac, but I am sure there are Windows text editors out there that do exactly the same thing. Once she made these changes and uploaded the new style.css to my blog, she demo’ed it to make sure the colors worked together and didn’t make any of the menu or button text hard to read. It is easy to do this in WordPress — you just go to Appearance->Themes on the left hand menu in the Dashboard and you can live preview any of the themes that are there without making changes to your blog until you are ready.

You probably want to know about the background images too. These came from a site called Deposit Photos. My human got an “image pack” on special some months ago (thanks, Glogirly for the head’s up on that!), and she used credits to download the black and white cat background and another background that contained the fishbones. She fiddled with them a bit, resizing them for the web and lightening them a bunch when she knew there was going to be text on top of them. She also saved them as .png files instead of .jpgs because graphics look better on the internet saved as pngs.

When she downloaded the Modern Blogger Pro theme, it came with the images you see there, so she just figured out where they were listed on the style.css and made sure the original images and the ones she was replacing were the same size, if they had to be (like the fishbones in the header). Then she uploaded her new images in the same folder as the original ones were and switched out the names on the style.css (and crossed her fingers), and it worked!

While a lot goes into designing the way a blog looks, there are some things like colors and fonts that non-coders can change that aren’t hard (images are little riskier, but still not difficult if you are already used to working with them). And they really do make a difference!
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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!

More Facebook Funnies

Like so many other kitties, I find Facebook and its attempts to make us buy views really annoying. But even with all that trouble, I still manage to find some funny cat pictures. In fact, I’ve found some really funny ones in the past couple of weeks, so I thought I would share them with you today!

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.

This one has gone viral around Facebook, but I believe I was one of the first to post it (by the way, it is an oatmeal cookie, not chocolate like some people thought):

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.

This image actually caused a debate between several of my fans about whether He Man or Skelator should be riding the kitty:

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.

Cats and books have gone together since time immemorial:

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.

This one isn’t humorous, but I thought you would enjoy seeing these kittens:

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.

And this painting is just plain awesome:

Post by Sparkle the Designer Cat.


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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!

Bid on a Card Reading From Me and Help The Baby!

I know many of you have heard that The Baby from the Katnip Lounge has been sick and the Cat Blogosphere has begun an auction to help with all the medical costs. When the call went out for items to auction, I wondered what I could do — so many of you have my books and my clingy human wasn’t about to give up any of the plush kitties she has lying around. She wouldn’t let me put Binga up for auction either. Oh well. So I thought about it for a while and came up with something pretty cool! I decided to offer a card reading from the Mystical Cats Tarot deck. It will be the same Nine Lives spread that I gave Truffles, so it will be pretty detailed! I’ll email the winner the results, and also post them on my blog!

If you would like to bid on a card reading from me, it is #18 on the auction page! There are lots of other really awesome items to bid on too! The auction is open until May 30.
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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!

Sparkle’s Human Astrology for Cats: Gemini

Gemini

May 21 – June 21

Humans typically are supposed to create a routine that their cats will appreciate. Unless the cat lives with a Gemini. Then it’s the other way around — barring a more grounded Rising or Moon sign on the Gemini’s behalf, you may be the one setting the schedule for your restless, changeable human. If your Gemini has a job he or she needs to be at every day, it will make your job at setting routines easier, except on the weekends, when who knows what will happen? Gemini will probably have plans, but those plans may have changed a few times before Sunday night arrives. Sometimes Gemini will make several commitments and at the last moment, decide which one is the most appealing. Don’t worry, you’ll get fed at some point and maybe even played with. But exactly when? Who knows!

Living with Gemini is like living with two (or three or four) different humans. That’s because Gemini, whose symbol is the Twins, is dualistic in nature. They can change personalities — from charming to cranky, or from passionate to distant — without other humans expecting it. You, being a cat and having more finely honed instincts, might catch the changes a millisecond before they happen. You’ll see that twinkle in your Gemini’s eye flicker, or body posture slacken, maybe even before Gemini realizes they are switching gears. Humans of other Sun Signs may be wondering why Gemini decided to go right when they were so determined to turn left just a minute ago, but we kitties have already factored any modifications into our day. Humans have to be quick on their feet to keep up with Gemini. We cats are already light on our paws.

Because of their changeable, dualistic natures, the good and bad of living with Geminis is heightened, compared to other Sun Signs. When you met your Gemini, no doubt you were immediately attracted to her fun personality and the way she knew exactly the right way to pet you. You wanted to come home with her right then and there. Little did you know that dinner was going to be at a different time every day, that she would suddenly disappear for days, abruptly leaving you in the care of a pet sitter, or that she’d move the both of you into a new place on a whim without checking to see if cats were allowed… and then have to sweet talk the landlord into allowing you to stay. Not all Geminis are so flighty, inconsiderate and manipulative as to do the latter, but this scenario has happened to some Geminis and their cats — and probably will again.

You may have heard that Geminis are fickle and can’t remain true to one mate, and you may wonder if the same is true for cats. I have good news and bad news for you (that dualistic nature of Gemini again). The good news is that Geminis are less likely to bring home a bunch of cats to invade your space. Gemini likes to travel light and the responsibility of so many pets overwhelms most of them. But if your Gemini is a true cat person, he won’t be satisfied with just you, no matter how awesome and affectionate you are. He will probably know all the cats in the neighborhood, and may even volunteer for a local rescue. So your Gemini human will likely come home smelling like other cats quite frequently. But consider this a positive instead of a negative — after all, he may play around with these other cats but you are the one he chooses to come home to. And in spite of their fickleness, you may be surprised to know that Geminis do stick to their relationships, human or feline. Their love may feel light and frothy, but it lasts.

One interesting note: Oriental breeds or breed mixes get along especially well with Geminis because both of you like to talk so much! Lots of humans enjoy talking to their cats, but Geminis doubly so. And they will love it if you talk back. You may even get an extra dose of those skritches they are famous for.

You will have the most fun with your Gemini human when you are young and energetic and eager to play games. Geminis have a childlike sense about them and kittens and young cats appeal to them. In fact, Geminis may inspire you to stay younger a lot longer than you might with other signs. When you are older and less playful and nap more, they may become a little restless. But know that when they switch personalities from light-hearted to gloomy, they will appreciate your quiet company, and it will remind them of why you two got together in the first place — because you are the only creature outside of their own inner twin who is truly there for them always.

As you can tell, not every cat will have an easy time with a Gemini human. You Libra and Aquarius kitties will have the best luck — you breeze through life the same way as Gemini does. Libra cats and Gemini humans make a winning, charming pair, and Aquarian kitties will keep their Gemini humans guessing about what crazy thing they are going to try next — and that will delight Gemini to no end. You Sagittarius kitties may be more passionate and one-minded than Gemini, but like Gemini, you know that life is meant to be a game. You two will have lots of fun. So will Aries cats and Gemini humans. Aries cats are a lot more passionate and one-minded than Geminis, so you may occasionally overwhelm your human, but you will also entertain them. Leo cats will be proud to have such a charming human as a Gemini — and while a Gemini won’t worship you and may sometimes tease you (how annoying!), you will be glad to know you are the star of your relationship. You Virgo cats may think you are living with a certified nutcase who doesn’t scoop the litter box with enough regularity — and you may have a point. But Gemini will usually cajole you out of your mood with a few treats. Cancer cats will need to loosen up if they want to live peacefully with Gemini — your clinginess may get on their nerves, and the poorly scheduled mealtimes may make you a little crazy. I must caution Scorpio cats — you guys are intense, and Gemini won’t take anything in life as seriously as you do. But when they make you mad, don’t bother dropping cryptic hints like destroying Gemini’s favorite shirt or knocking over a cup of coffee onto the laptop. It will only confuse and upset them and you still won’t get what you want out of them. Just accept them for who they are, and appreciate the good face(s) they show you. Capricorn and Taurus kitties, you are both straight shooters who love security, so you will likely be thrown off by capricious Gemini humans. Funny enough, Gemini may actually like your stoic natures because in spite of their need for constant stimulation, they will appreciate having one (but just one!) steady thing to come home to. Since Geminis are not known for their depth, they will probably never fully understand the Pisces cat… and that suits the Pisces cat just fine. Pisces cats enjoy having an aura of mystery, which will keep Gemini endlessly fascinated. A little more attention from Gemini would be appreciated by Pisces kitties, but you may have to ask for it, in your sweet, subtle way.

What about Gemini cats and Gemini humans? There will always be something new going on at your place! You both can expect the unexpected, and something new always going on — and you’ll never get bored with one another.
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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!

Bags or Boxes: Which Wins?

Everyone knows we cats like both bags and boxes! But which do we like best? I thought I would put that to the test here. And since so many of you said you thought Boodie looked sad yesterday, I decided to put her in charge of it.

As you can see she was thrilled. So we all gathered together to make our decisions. Binga went first and she chose…

The bag! I decided to go next, and guess what?

I picked the bag too! Surprising, isn’t it? Which one do you think Boodie picked?

She took some serious time making her choice…

And she picked the bag too! That makes three for three for the bag. The box got zero.

What about you kitties? Do you prefer bags or boxes? Now I’m really curious!
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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!

Teed-Off Tortie Tuesday

What?! You order cards with that graphic of Binga on them and you expect me to pose with them? The nerve!

How come you don’t have a graphic of me that says “SOMALI” on it? Huh? Huh? Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me ’cause I’m not looking at you.

And now this? Seriously, it totally is not fair.
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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!

Super Fun Giveaway From The Natural Pet Company!

I’ve been waiting to do this giveaway for a long time! Can we get this box open before…

Oh well, nevermind.

Oh, and can we get this photo shoot back on track so I can talk about the cool toys and nip I received from The Natural Pet Company? She will just make a mess.

There is lots of great stuff in this awesome box (not to mention the awesome box itself)! The humans behind The Natural Pet Company have worked hard to make their toys and catnip as eco-friendly as possible, along with being fun for us kitties! Let me show you what I have here.

It’s an awesome Feather Wand toy! And it comes with two refills for when you kill the first one and it can’t be revived.

Also this very cool Luxury Cat Dangler! Binga loved it lots! In fact, a little too much because she loves chewing on elastic, like the string the toy is on. She tried biting the toy off the string (one of her many bad habits) and my human had to make her stop.

The Luxury Cat Dangler is part of the Cat Toys Variety Pack that also includes three Wicker Bell Balls and a Mouse Rattle Chew. They are all very fun!

To top it all off (literally and figuratively) is this huge package of Premium Quality Catnip! It is very fine so it can be sprinkled on toys and lots of other things. I consider it an appropriate photo shoot bribe. Note that I am allowed to have as much as I want because I use it sanely.

All these awesome toys are available at Amazon:

Amazon.com Widgets

Or you can enter my giveaway! The Natural Pet Company Humans said I could give away five of these awesome super fun packs! That’s right — five of you will get the Feather Wand Toy, the Variety Pack and the catnip!

To enter, use the Rafflecopter widget below. If you have issues with it, just let me know in the comments and I will enter you manually!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The giveaway ends at midnight next Monday, May 26, and I have to apologize to my international friends once again, but it is for U.S. residents only! Good luck everyone!
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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!