Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 432

Professional Pet Sitters Week and Suitcase Tips

I did not want Professional Pet Sitters Week to pass by unnoticed! Because if there is a pet sitter coming to your home, it means (usually) that your humans are going away. And it is important to know how long your humans are going to be replaced by a pet sitter! See the suitcase above? That is a small suitcase. When my human packs this one, it means she won’t be gone for more than a weekend, three days at the longest.

This big suitcase is Bad News. It means that someone is going missing for several weeks! Fortunately for me, it is always my human’s boyfriend who packs this suitcase. He is a touring musician and when he packs this suitcase, he is usually going to Europe, or has a bunch of shows to play on the East Coast. I don’t care if he is gone. In fact, I kind of like getting to use his pillow when he is away.

There are a couple of in-between suitcases, and when my human packs one of those, it is usually good news because she is probably going to a conference like BlogPaws or the Cat Writers Conference, and she is going to bring back a goody bag of swag for me, Binga and Boodie!

As you probably have guessed, we kitties have lots of experience with pet sitters! The first one we had was back at the old house, in 2004. My human went back east for some shows her boyfriend was playing and we got a nice woman named Nora. In those days neither my human nor her boyfriend had a cell phone, so Nora put temporary tags on the collars we were wearing at the time that had her phone number, in case something happened and we got out. If you want to read more about Nora, and the humans’ trip, you can read my September 2004 blog post!

Here are just a few suggestions about what you kitties can do about the whole travel and pet sitting thing:

Sitting in the suitcases may seem like a good idea, but it really isn’t. For one thing, it won’t stop the humans from leaving. For another thing, you do not want to be shut inside the suitcase! Luggage does not usually get the First Class treatment a kitty deserves and you may wind up the worse for wear.

Pet sitters may smell funny and unfamiliar at first, but don’t worry, you will get used to it.

Sadly, if you are on a special diet or you are not supposed to have extra treats, your pet sitter has been told this and you will not be able to wheedle any goodies out of him or her.

If you do not like your pet sitter, there is a chance your human will fire them! It’s true: one time, after Nora moved away, we had a pet sitter that did not make us happy. How did my human know? I was really happy to see her when she came back! Usually I am mad or indifferent. If I was happy, she knew I must not have enjoyed my time with the pet sitter, so she did not use them again.

Pet sitters are usually pretty cool! If they are anything like most of the ones we’ve had, they treat you better and play with you more than your actual humans! Our current pet sitter sleeps over when the humans are away, and even Boodie hangs out on the bed with her.

One bad thing about pet sitters — it is quite possible they will take photos of you. They do this to send the pictures to your humans. Yes, there is no escape from the paparazzi!

I hope you enjoyed my tips! And nice as they can be, I hope your experiences with pet sitters are few and far between!

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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!

Kong Treats Winner!

I am disgruntled no longer! Why? I have a winner for this package of Kong Moist Treats! And it is a pair of longtime blogging pals!

Let me be the first to concatulate…

Emma and Buster!

The treats are on their way to you two as of today! I hope you enjoy them.

I don’t have a winner for the gift from my Designer Cat shop yet because I haven’t heard back from them. If you entered, check your spam filters on your email to make sure my message to you didn’t get snagged! If I don’t hear back from the name picked by Rafflecopter before the deadline, I will have to choose another! In the meantime, I have an awesome new St. Patrick’s card for you in my shop!
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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!

No Blarney With This St. Catrick’s Day Card

I have a new card for St. Catrick’s Day! Some of you may recognize the image and the quote from my 2014 Wall Calendar. I thought it was too good to use only once.

You can get my Leprechaun Cat card 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,” 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!

We Hate the Hello Kitty Basket

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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!

Fun on Tuesday!

Weeks ago, I got this surprise package in the mail. I will tell you in a minute why it has taken me this long to post about it! But I will tell you right now, it is not treats. I thought it was, but when my human opened it for me, I found out it was something different.

It was a little gift from the Ask Fisher human and kitties! I really love their blog lots, but I can’t seem to get their blog in my Feedly reader. Feedly and their old Feedburner feed both default to their old blog and not the new one! So I have to remember to type their name in manually. If you are on Bloglovin’, you can subscribe to them there, though.

Anyway, the gift was a couple of cool, braided handmade cat toys! My human couldn’t wait to get some photos of me playing with them… except there was a problem! My favorite time to play is around midnight, when it’s dark and she can’t take photos! And then she got caught up in a bunch of other stuff and then it rained and was overcast this past weekend.

Finally we got up yesterday and guess what? For once, I felt like playing in the morning!

It just goes to show, sometimes the best toys are the most simple! Even better, Binga and Boodie were napping so they couldn’t hog it.

I got to stalk and kill this toy to my heart’s content. Or at least until Binga woke up.

Thank you so much, Jobi! And I’m sorry it took so long to let you know how much I like your toys!
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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!

Your Cat’s Language – Deciphered!

I have noticed something about humans: they have a very hard time speaking any language but their own. And even then, they are pretty bad at understanding each other. So I thought I would do you people a favor and spell out some cat language for you! Of course, cat language is usually non-vocal, so fortunately you don’t have to learn any actual words or worry about accents.

If you are a cat, these are all really basic, so try not to laugh — if humans are reading this, it means at least they are trying.

If you’re holding a cat and she starts washing herself furiously after you put her down, she is licking off the human cooties. Yes, really! She is covering your stinky human smell with her regular scent so she can feel like herself again.

When a cat is swishing his tail back and forth, he is mad! So do not touch him. It is usually dog people who mistake this angry tail swishing for tail wagging, and they are totally wrong. We kitties are friendly when we have our tails up. When a cat’s tail is not only up, but is curling over so it looks like a question mark, it means he is in an exceptionally friendly mood.

Yes, headbutting is a sign of liking someone or something, but don’t take it too personally. I headbutt my human, but I also headbutt the sofa.

When we roll on our backs and expose our tummies, it means we are happy! There is one way to instantly make many kitties unhappy when they are doing this, and that is to actually touch their tummies! We cats do not understand why you humans persist with this. Only a limited number of kitties like their tummies rubbed, and once you have found out which side we are on, that is not going to change.

If a cat rubs up against your legs when you are getting her breakfast or dinner, it means she is excited that she is about to get fed! It is more a display of enthusiasm than affection. She is also marking you so that other kitties know that the food preparer belongs to her and no other kitty!

If a cat loves and trusts you, he will sit a few feet away from you with his back to you. The meaning of this is twofold: he feels safe enough not to have to face you, and he is keeping an eye out for intruders so he can protect you, or at least let you know if there is an invasion going on!

Yes, you can send your cat a warm greeting by blinking at her, but make sure that as soon as you are done blinking, look away! It is rude to keep staring at a kitty after you have done the “slow blink.” In fact, we are kind of annoyed by it. If you look away, most of the time, so will your cat. If you both stay there without looking at each other or vocalizing, it is a “cat hangout” — the same way we cats hang around with each other. So if you and your cat do this, it is like you have joined the kitty club, at least temporarily.

Do you like my kitty language tips? Are there any more you would like me to explain?
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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: Jay Leno Says Cats Are Smarter Than Dogs!

Jay Leno recently left The Tonight Show, which I find sad, considering how awesomely he stood up for us kitties! Check out this clip, from his appearance on The Ellen Show in late January, in which he proves his point! In fact, you even get to see Jay’s own cat in action too.

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

This was not the first time Jay praised our intelligence, and backed it up with video proof! Last year, he featured a couple of cat and dog video clips that showed our feline superiority!

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

Come to think of it, do you think dogs had anything to do with Jay’s leaving The Tonight Show?
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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: Fun With iPhone Apps

When my human first got her Instagram account, she went crazy with downloading iPhone photo apps and adding all sorts of filters to her photos. These days, she’s calmed down a bit and has gone back to Rule One of digital photo art (note – this is a rule she made up): there has to be a purpose behind the effect. Does this effect do something that adds interest to the image? Is it evoking an emotion from the viewer? Is it enhancing this photo in any way? And if not, then why use it? So she scrolled through her iPhone photos to find one of me that she thought might do well with extra added effects.

Here is the one she picked, completely unretouched, with eye booger and chin acne included:

The first thing my human did with the photo was use the Snapseed app to crop it to a 1:1 ratio (square) and make minor adjustments to contrast and ambiance. Sadly, she could not remove the eye booger — she had to do that in Photoshop after she added the effects. That’s not to say that there aren’t retouching apps that can do that — she just hasn’t looked into it yet. She is very serious about her apps and it takes her a while to pick out the ones she thinks are the best.

After she adjusted the photo in Snapseed, she randomly picked the Sketch Guru app and added a “gouache” filter. Right away, she was pleased with the effect, and even though she tried some others, it was the only one she was happy with for this particular photo:

Next she took the same adjusted photo and opened it up in the Picfx app. The cool thing about this app is that you can easily adjust the effects and layer them on top of each other. Of course, my human didn’t do any of that. She just added an effect called “Paint Peel” and decided it didn’t need anything more! Paint Peel is one of those effects that just stands on its own. It’s really strong and doing too many other things to the image would be overkill:

Now for the last filter. You might remember that the first time I joined this blog hop, it was with a sketch app. My human decided to revisit that effect with this photo, using the first sketch app she ever downloaded. It’s called… wait for it… Sketch! Out of the sketch apps she has used so far, it creates the most realistic looking sketch effects. The only problem is that if you want to use one of their colored backgrounds, like a parchment paper or a lined paper, it doesn’t look realistic. So my human just used a white background and took it into Photoshop, where she created a simple ivory canvas texture and put the image on top of that. Then she changed the blend mode of the layer with the sketch image on it to “Multiply,” and that made all the white parts transparent. She also touched up some of the edges of the sketch to make them look better and, thankfully, removed the eye booger:

One note about using these apps — when you are done and you are uploading the photos from your smart phone or emailing them to yourself, use the largest size possible! That will help you retain the best quality, and if you want to do something more with the photo than just post it on the internet, like print it out or put it on a mug or something, it will look much better!

Visit Athena for more Caturday Art!
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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!

Nipcoin: Digital Kitty Currency Done Right

I have some very exciting news for you today! I am going into high finance! I read this week about all the troubles a digital currency called Bitcoin has been having. One of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, went offline and Bitcoin-holding humans may have lost millions of dollars! Add in the the possibility that Bitcoin could be used for black market activities, and I thought to myself, “We cats can do this so much better!” So I have invented my very own digital currency especially for cats! We rule the internet already, so we should be in charge of the currency, right? So here it is, the kitty currency that will change digital finance forever:

Nipcoin is the money that all cats will want! Seriously, do you really want a bunch of silly green papers? Binga doesn’t!

The new Nipcoin currency will have real value because each unit will be worth a set amount of catnip!

That’s right — unlike Bitcoin, and for that matter, modern U.S. currency, we are on a strict Nip Standard! If you hold a certain amount of Nipcoins in your virtual Nip Mousie, you can rest assured that there is actual catnip standing behind what you are holding!

The great thing about using catnip as a currency is that there is constantly new nip growing! Unlike gold, catnip is self-perpetuating! That way, if a kitty invests wisely, she can easily become a Nipcoin millionaire both virtually and actually! And since only cats will be allowed to buy and invest with Nipcoins, the possibility of Ponzi schemes or black market abuse is practically nil! That is because, unlike humans, we kitties are not (too) greedy!

This new currency is liquid, secure, private — and best of all, it smells good!
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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!

INtakes

I’ve shared lots of outtakes with you (with my human’s itchy shutter finger, we certainly have enough of them!), but how about some INtakes today? In other words, pretty photos that never made it onto the blog for one reason or another? My human found a handful over the past few months and I thought you would like to see them.

This got lost in a bunch of other afternoon sun puddle shots that actually weren’t as nice looking as this one.

Here I am, doing my Shironeko imitation.

Another late afternoon shot. I love watching Bird TV at this time of day – it’s dark inside so the birds can’t see me very well… but I certainly can see them!

And here is the be-all and end-all of intakes:

That’s right — my human went through all the trouble of putting together this New Year’s graphic… and then never used it! Happy New Year, a few weeks too late!
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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!