Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 444

Wordless Wednesday: Random

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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!

Tortie-less Weruva Taste Test

What’s she doing here? I’ll never get to taste test anything with this grabby tortie around!

Now that Binga has been sent downstairs, I can get down to business: trying out these Weruva Cats in the Kitchen cat food flavors. We have Pumpkin Lickin’ Chicken and Mack, Jack and Sam. Don’t worry, once I’ve had a chance to check them out, Binga will get some for dinner.

First up is the chicken, or actually, chicken in pumpkin soup.

My human didn’t even get the food out and I was already licking the yummy soup!

Here is what the food actually looks like. As you can see, I’ve already eaten some of it!

This was definitely a hit with me at the beginning, although I didn’t finish the packet (which is typical for me with shredded chicken food — I tend to lick the goodness out and then if I don’t eat it all right away, it dries up really quickly). The pumpkin part is great for cats like Binga who, um, need a little fiber in their diet.

Next up is the Mack, Jack and Sam pouch — that’s Mackerel, Skipjack Tuna and Salmon to you! Except for salmon every so often, we don’t get much fish around here so this is a real treat!

Boodie and I both enjoyed it a lot! Yes, we can share the same bowl — she is much politer than certain other cats around here.

Well, usually.

Both flavors got paws up from us kitties! We are fans of Weruva here because their food is manufactured in a human food facility that also makes pet food. And if you are wondering about it being made in Thailand, Weruva’s facility there actually conforms to British Retail Consortium standards, which are stricter than the standards in the U.S. That works for me! Chewy.com has lots of different Weruva flavors to choose from!
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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!

Does This Collar Make My Butt Look Big? A Diet Book for Cats

Does This Collar Make My Butt Look Big? A Diet Book for Cats

By Dena Harris

Relax, kitties! This is not a serious book that tells your human how to put you on a diet. It’s a parody book, based on dumb human diets and applied to cats… which just proves how utterly ridiculous the whole concept of dieting is! In fact, I think your humans may actually get a bit of insight into how silly diets like South Beach, Paleo, Eat Right for Your Blood Type, etc., really are — and maybe they will rethink their own attempts to lose a few pounds. There are some really funny moments here, such as comparing “Catty Craig” to “Weight Stalkers,” for example, and the instructions for humans on how to weigh their cat (it begins with the human weighing herself first and ends with her throwing the scale in the trash). I can wholeheartedly recommend this book for its humor — and no kitty will ever have to suffer through a diet because your human has purchased 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,” 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!

Study Proves Scientists Don’t Understand Cats

Did you know that scientists did a study on whether humans could understand what a cat was meowing about — and the humans failed miserably? They recorded a dozen cats in five different situations (getting fed, being in a car, etc.), and then asked people to listen and guess what was going on. They had no clue! Humans who lived with cats, or who were cat lovers scored better, but it was still pretty abysmal. But do you know what was really abysmal? The scientific study itself!

It is important for a scientific study to ask the right questions, if the researchers expect to get any meaningful results. And these guys were way off the mark because we cats don’t use our vocalizations as our primary means of communication. In fact, meowing is a last resort, and we only use it because humans seem to respond better to the sounds we make than to our more eloquent body language or facial expressions. When it comes to the nonverbal language we speak, humans are even worse at comprehending than when we meow at them. If scientists want to improve feline-human relations, that is what they should focus on, not meows.

Fortunately, smart humans who spend a lot of time with cats can easily learn feline body language. They know if we are blinking at them, we are being friendly, and that when we rub against them, we are marking territory as much as we are showing affection. And if any human has no idea what airplane ears mean, they probably are pretty bad at reading human facial expressions too. Compared to our nonverbal queues, meows are a clumsy and ineffective way of getting our point across. We only meow because you humans are always talking — so we are trying to lower ourselves to your level.

I bet if scientists did a study on whether we cats understood what humans meant, judging by their vocalizations, we’d score lot better that the humans who couldn’t understand us cats. What do you think, kitties? Am I right?
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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 Downloadable Calendar: December 2013

For fan members only — you must login to see this content. My downloadable monthly calendars are one of the perks when you join my fan club!
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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: Kittens and a Box

The title of this blog post is the same as the title of the video because that is exactly what it is: two minutes of kittens playing with a homemade box toy. This video needs no embellishment or witty introduction. Just sit back and enjoy it:

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

I do want to give props to Jan’s Funny Farm for finding this irresistible video first!
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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 Outtakes

It has been gray and rainy all week, which is bad weather for indoor cat photography, so I thought I’d pull out some outtakes today, just to show that even in good weather, my human can spoil a shot! Because these are all her fault. She did not have to push the shutter button when she did, after all.

I don’t remember why I was so mad in the above photo (it probably had something to do with Binga), but if I had known the package contained a pair of Kitty Kick Stix, I might have pulled my airplane ears out of flight mode.

No, I was not hurling on the one-of-a-kind CWA mug.

And as if that photo wasn’t bad enough, my human caught me with my mouth open again! Even Binga thought I was having an off day.

I look like a mutant in this photo. Thanks, awesome photographer! What talent.

When the sun comes back, I hope my human’s sense of photographic timing does too.
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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!

Dear Sparkle: How Do I Cheer Up My Unemployed Human?

Dear Sparkle,

My human had this “work” thing she had to go to every day but then suddenly it stopped. She said it was because of something called “downsizing.” I have no idea what that means, but at first I thought it was great because it meant she spent most of the day at home with me. But it has been a few weeks now and she is getting really depressed. She used to come home with toys for me all the time but now she never does and she’s starting to talk about how “bleak” the holidays are going to be. She is starting to depress me too, so is there some way to cheer her up? And what can I do about the toy situation?

Signed,

Bummed in Baltimore

Dear Bummed,

This is what comes from the human reliance on an odd an ineffective monetary system. They spend a huge portion of their waking hours doing something that is usually pretty meaningless, just so they can get a bunch of paper together — also meaningless — so they can obtain things that are necessary for their survival. I don’t understand why they never figured out how to adapt the Kitty Model to their way of life. We cats sleep more than we are awake and when we need things that are necessary for our survival, whether shelter, food or some recreational entertainment, we go directly to whatever it is and get it. Seems simple, right? But humans always have to complicate things because they think they can do it better than us kitties. And then something like this happens and it all falls apart.

But enough of my editorializing. There are two ways you can go with your situation. You can cheer up your human by entertaining her with homemade toys you come up with yourself, or you can make her so crazy that she will redouble her efforts to find another work thing, just so she can get out of the house and spend some time away from you! Actually, you can combine these two scenarios simply by your choice of homemade toys. If you use things you dig out of the trash — torn paper bags, small empty containers etc. — while using some of the near empty cat food cans and treat bags to lick and snack on, that is bound to put a little joy in your life while driving your human up a wall. You can also use small makeup containers and pens you find around the house as your homemade toys and once they inevitably get lost under the sofa or refrigerator, your human will go nuts trying to figure out where they are. Another idea: treat the blinds like mortal enemies and go in for the attack! This kind of behavior on your part may not exactly cheer up your human, but it is bound to make her forget her misery.

Actually, instead of moping around and dragging you down with her, you know what else your human could do? Maybe she should use some of that overload of free time she currently has to volunteer at her local cat rescue. That is definitely bound to make her feel better, get her out of the house so she stops depressing you, and who knows? Maybe she will meet some people who can help her find work. And then she can get back to being a cog in the ineffective human monetary system, which is what she wanted to begin with.
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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!

Better With Cats!

Purina had a “Better With Pets Summit” in New York City this week, and I made sure my human was there to see that cats were properly represented. (Well, actually the Purina humans invited her, but she had to get my permission to go.) The Better With Pets Summit featured 16 humans who spoke about the various relationships between people and pets — from the internet to up-close-and-personal relationships to life-saving relationships. It was a pretty awesome one-day event, from what I gather!

Some of the feline highlights of the Summit included Mike Rugnetta, host of PBS’s “Idea Channel” and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (pictured above with his cat, Karma, on the big screen). They all but admitted that we cats have conquered the internet! And not only that, but we kitties are also the conduit for bringing humans all over the world closer together. I can say from my own experience this is true because my human has friends world-wide, and my blog and I have helped her get to know them!

Dr. Robin Downing, a veterinarian who is the founder and Hospital Director at the Downing Center for Animal Pain Management, gave a very important talk about pain and pet behavior. One of the stories she related was about Flower, a pretty calico kitty who was almost euthanized because she was aggressive and attacked people. The truth was that she was overweight, arthritic and had such severe mats that she was in constant pain. That was what was making her act out. Dr. Downing worked with Flower and her human and saved her life. Since we can’t tell humans we are hurting, they need to be extra aware about what may be going on with us health-wise if our behavior changes.

One of the Summit’s highlights was Simon Tofield, the artist behind the Simon’s Cat cartoons! He drew for the audience and told stories about his four cats. That is his tabby Jess in the drawing above, in her favorite sleeping position.

Simon told the audience a big secret: two of his cats — Hugh and Teddy — who were the biggest inspirations for the star of Simon’s cat and the kitten who’s his sidekick (or nemesis) are black cats in real life! He explained that he made them white in the cartoons purely because that way it is easier to draw them.

One of the other highlights of the day was when a trio of kittens was brought out and put in a kitty playpen! All the cat bloggers were excited… and it turned out they were being fostered by Beth Stern (author and wife of Howard Stern). Beth is a passionate animal advocate and does a lot of volunteer work with North Shore Animal League. So far, she has fostered nearly 50 kittens and cats and has found homes for all of them… well, except one.

Kitna was a blind mom cat — the kind of kitty that would almost be guaranteed to be euthanized in a city shelter. Fortunately, North Shore Animal League got involved and the Sterns fostered her… and fell in love with her. That was a pretty awesome foster fail story!

This was an amazing event… oh yeah, and there were humans talking about dogs too. You didn’t think I was going to write about them, did you? If you want to know more, you can go to Purina’s Better With Pets website. Right now, they have clips of the talks, and will upload the full talks in early December.
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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!

Wordless Wednesday: Frenemies

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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!