Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 458

Photo Hunt: Planter

The patio part of our backyard has some built-in planters. But I only care about one of them.

There are some of the planters. Can you see the one I am looking at?

Can you see better now?

Here it is in all its glory — my catnip garden! My human caught some wayward calico dipping into it the other day. But there is still lots there, even if it does look a little ratty and yellow around the edges.

My human cut off a lot of the flower buds because she wanted to keep the plants kind of bushy, but finally she gave up and let them bloom.

Remember the marigold seedling my human brought home a few weeks ago? It is still there, and while I can’t say it is exactly thriving, it is growing and continuing to flower. My human cut off some of the dead flower heads to keep it flowering, but she has also let some of them dry up and go to seed, so we will continue to have more.

Of course my human was not allowed to go out and photograph my nip without bringing in some cuttings.

Uh-oh, I think my nip party is about to turn into a smackfest!
* * *
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 Repeat: We Cats Rule the Internet

I found an interesting fact in this BlogPaws post: there are more dogs in the U.S. than there are children! Now this is a pretty awesome statement… because there are even more cats in the U.S. than there are dogs! More intriguing statistics from the same story: 14% of U.S. dogs have a Facebook page (at least according to some poll on a dog website) — so considering the prevalence of cats on the internet, I can only conclude that an even higher percentage of cats are on Facebook! We kitties all like to claim ownership of the WWW, but I get even more excited when it is backed by truth!

Want even more proof? I love this one: Facebook ads featuring a cat got a higher response than an ad showing female cleavage!

Why am I crowing (as they say) about this? Well, remember a couple of weeks ago I asked you guys to help me put the MEOW into BarkWorld by supporting my entry to win a trip for my human to this dog-centric conference? It worked! I am one of the winners!

You may wonder why a kitty like me is so excited about sending her representative to a conference that is so unabashedly dog-leaning that it’s even in the name. The conference actually has a lot of really smart social media and blogging sessions that are good for any species. They have Matt Silverman of Mashable as a keynote speaker. And there are even a couple of sessions that are feline inclusive, including a MeowWorld Breakfast for Cat Influencers. (Let’s see my human make it to that one — 7 A.M. Eastern Time will be the middle of the night to her jet-lagged Pacific Time brain! But she’ll try really, really hard to be there.)

So thank you, BarkWorld humans, for letting this kitty into your dog conference. Of course, you do realize I am going to take all the valuable information I get to strengthen the feline position on top of the internet media chain. The dogs will have to console themselves with chew toys and dog treat swag.
* * *
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!

A Note About My Newsletter

Some of you subscribe to my email newsletter. It features blog highlights from the past month, so if you don’t get around to my blog every day, it’s a great way to see if you missed anything good. I also write a small editorial every month and occasionally have newsletter-only giveaways. Plus I send out an quick email blast when I am having a giveaway and/ or commenthon (like I did last weekend for my human’s birthday — newsletter subscribers got an email from me about it Saturday morning). It’s pretty cool, and if you don’t subscribe but would like to, you will find the signup form on your right, where it says “Get Sparkle’s Newsletter.” (If you would just prefer to have the actual blog post in your email box every day, you can sign up where it says “Get My Blog Posts by Email!”)

But the main reason I’m here right now is I wanted to quickly let Gmail users know about a new development that may change how you get my newsletter. As you no doubt already know, Gmail has formatted their inbox so that the emails are separated into tabs. Let me show you how it looks in my human’s Gmail. She doesn’t realize it, but I have her password. I hope the webcam doesn’t catch me doing this…

Oops! Well, anyway, this is how it looks:

If you are subscribing to my newsletter, and you don’t see it under the Primary tab, it might be under the Promotions tab. I hear a lot of newsletters are going to the Promotions tab. That is fine, if you remember to look, but some people don’t look at the Promotions tab every day. I know my human doesn’t. And if I am having a giveaway, my email is time-sensitive and you might miss something good! So you Gmail humans might want to move my newsletter over to your Primary tab. You can just drag it over, or here are some instructions I found, thanks to Ask Fisher, if you want to change things up even further — it’s just a couple minutes long:

My next newsletter goes out Monday morning, if case you are wondering!
* * *
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 Make My Human Play With me?

Dear Sparkle,

My human spends all her time hunched over some big board instead of playing with me! She just sits there, holding these colorful sticks and rubbing them on paper. Isn’t that weird? Everyone knows that paper is for sitting on and sticks are meant to be batted around! So I am always jumping on the board trying to show her the right way to use these toys (after all, I have nothing better to do), but then she gets mad. She calls me things like “incorrigible” and “out of control.” She acts like there is something wrong with me when all I want to do is play — I mean, isn’t that typical for a young kitty like me, who’s barely a year old? Why is she trying to make me feel like some freak of nature?

Signed,

NOT a Freak!

Dear Not a Freak,

The only freak here is your human, for thinking there is something wrong with a cat who likes to play. If she wanted a non-playful cat, she should have adopted one who was older, like over 10 years old… although, I have to say, all of us here are over 10 and we still enjoy playing and one of us who happens to be the oldest one here (cough, cough… Binga…) is legitimately a troublemaker, not just a fun-loving kitty like you.

Sadly, you are not alone. Many young, active cats are accused of being “crazy,” “psycho” and the like when nothing could be farther from the truth. The real problem here is that you, like many kitties in your position, are just bored and live with a human who doesn’t realize how important play is — for both cats and humans. Humans need to set aside time to play with their cats every day, especially cats like you, who are still basically kittens. In fact, at your age, they should be setting time aside two or three times a day for playtime! It does not have to be complicated. It is just a matter of throwing around a spring toy or a catnip mouse, or making a wand or stick toy like Da Bird fly around so you can leap after it. The key is for your human to play with you until you are worn out. Then maybe she can get some peace at her silly board, misusing the colored sticks and paper.

I would encourage you to instigate playtime with your human, since she seems to be too dense to think of it on her own. If there are no cat toys in the house (and it is very bad of your human if that is the case), find something that works as a toy that you won’t get yelled at over, like a milk jug ring, and bat it around a few times in your human’s presence, then pick it up and drop it on her hand! Depending on your human’s intelligence level (or lack thereof), you may have to do this several times before she gets the idea that she is supposed to play with you. But even if she does not get it right away, persist. Humans function better when they take breaks from whatever “serious” stuff they are doing to play and refresh their minds. So when you want to play, refuse to take no for an answer. Playtime is a win-win situation for you both.
* * *
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: Keeping an Eye Out for Binga

* * *
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!

Kitty Bungalow Donation and G-Zees Treat Winner!

First I want to thank all of you who stopped by for the commenthon and who shared. Because of you, I hit the maximum number of comments (and a few more), so my human has donated the full $50 to Kitty Bungalow! If you live in southern California and would like to attend the star-studded A CATbaret benefit for Kitty Bungalow, my pal Cokie is giving away a pair of VIP tickets with After Party passes! Click here to enter the A CATbaret giveaway — it ends July 25, and even if you don’t win, you will get a discount code! A CATbaret is August 4 and my human will be there.

Now it is time to announce the winner of the G-Zees treats, and it is…

Willow of Devoted to Willow!

Concatulations, Willow! Make sure your human gets back to me with a mailing address so I can pass it along to the Zuke’s humans.

Now that I am done, I can enjoy my reward!

Maybe I have to work for my treats, but at least I do not have to jump through hoops like Binga!
* * *
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!

Are You a Rescue Cat? Anthology Looking for Submissions

I have a big announcement, especially if you are a rescue cat who is also a writer or aspiring writer! My human’s independent publishing company is putting together an anthology of rescue cat stories! And she doesn’t want human-written stories — she is looking for stories written by cats! I guess I have taught her well after all.

You can read about it and find out the submission guidelines here, but I will give you the basics. She will need 12 stories from 12 cats, each between 3,000 and 5,000 words, and the net profits will be split in thirds: a third to the writers, a third to the publishing company and best of all, a third to cat rescue! And it gets even better because each cat will have their own rescue that they support. For the first 13 months of the book’s release, each cat will be assigned a month (except December, 2014 ). When each cat’s month comes up, that is their time to promote their book (and get their human to help), and the rescue profits for that month will go to the rescue they have chosen! At the end of 13 months, the cat whose month earned the most sales will also see their rescue get December’s rescue profits — that is pretty awesome because December is a big sales month for books (it is also why my human separated December from the other months — any cat given that month would have an unfair advantage).

My human is not only looking for cats who write well, she is also looking for cats who are social media savvy, and I know a bunch my friends are amazing at both! Kitties with blogs or a solid Facebook presence will get priority consideration.

I am so excited about this project because I know it will involve a number of friends of mine, and it will help kitties in need! Do you want to be part of it? Find out how to submit here! Submissions close October 1, 2013, so start putting together your samples soon!
* * *
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: Fireman Saves Kitten… and Makes Video

What’s better than a vegan firefighter who saves a kitten’s life? How about a vegan firefighter who saves a kitten’s life — and who has a sense of humor? Cory Kalanick of Fresno always wears a helmet cam, and one day it recorded a very special rescue — Kalanick found a lifeless kitten and resuscitated him. This was already heart-warming enough, but then he decided to edit the clips into a mock film trailer:

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

If you want to see a newsier version of the story, here is the report from CBS47:

If you can’t see the video above, 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!

Commenthon and Giveaway for My Human’s Birthday!

As some of you may know, my human’s birthday is Sunday. Normally I would not mention this at all, since it is not particularly significant, but I am making an exception this year because I am having a commenthon in her honor! For every comment on this blog post, she gets to donate 50 cents to Kitty Bungalow Charm School for Wayward Cats, up to $50! I like Kitty Bungalow because they practice TNR and socialize kittens born to feral mom cats. They do lots of good work in the Los Angeles area. I also like the idea of my human having to give something on her birthday instead of just sitting around expecting presents.

Since it is the weekend and I wanted to guarantee I got the maximum number of comments here, I am also holding a cool giveaway! The Zuke’s humans sent me some G-Zees cat treats for me to try out! And they said I could have a giveaway too!

They sent me one of each flavor, Savory Salmon and Tasty Turkey — and whoever wins my giveaway will get one of each flavor too!

But of course, I had to put my paw of approval on these treats before I could go ahead with a giveaway…

And they passed my taste test! They were really yummy!

They passed the taste test with Boodie too.

And they made Binga go crazy! Can you see me in the background, telling her not to eat all of them?

She was frantic to get more. She missed one, though… which Boodie found.

In addition to being really delicious, these G-Zees are also grain-free, and they have added glucosamine and cranberry for urinary and joint health. Usually, I don’t like treats with supplemental healthy stuff added to them, but this was a BIG exception! All of us couldn’t get enough of these!

So if you want a chance to win the G-Zee treats, say you are entering the giveaway when you comment below. Comments left before 11:59 PM Sunday night, July 21 will qualify, but it is open to U.S. residents over 18 years of age only. (Don’t worry, my human is over 18 too. Maybe even in cat years.) The winner will be announced on Monday.

And spread the word so that we get lots of comments to support Kitty Bungalow! Plus, if you live in Los Angeles, or know someone who does, they are having an awesome CATbaret benefit downtown on August 4 — check it out!
* * *
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!

Friday Fun With the Play Circuit

Here’s my favorite part of being a cat blogger — toy testing! This is another one of the toys I got from EntirelyPets a few weeks ago. It is a Catit Design Senses Play Circuit. They say it was carefully designed “to entice, engage and entertain your cat while appealing to his natural hunting instincts.” So let’s see how that goes.

I have to admit, my heart dropped a little when I saw all the pieces. I wondered how long it was going to take for my human to put it together.

It turned out that it was not long at all! I was impressed by the sleek design and simplicity of assembly. The latter is important when you have humans who are careless about reading instructions.

Ball and track type of toys are Boodie’s favorite, so she pretty much took over the Play Circuit. I think somekitty was not thrilled about this.

I was beginning to wonder if I was going to get a turn too! But it was really okay, since she is a little too big to comfortably fit into the Twinkle Chute I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. So I guess she is owed a toy.

The cool thing about the Play Circuit is that it can be taken apart by an obliging human and reassembled in different ways. Boodie was not thrilled about the circle.

She liked the question mark shape a lot better! You can even get a couple of them and make more elaborate formations! And since there is a discount on the Play Circuit right now (and the Twinkle Chute too, actually), it is not that expensive!

Boodie exhausted herself playing with the Play Circuit, so she gives it four paws (and a tummy) up!



Note: We got the Catit Design Senses Play Circuit for free from EntirelyPets, but our opinions are totally our own. Links to EntirelyPets are affiliate links — to help pay for our blog hosting and cat treats!
* * *
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!