Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 468

Tortie Mani-No-Pedi Thursday

Binga hates having her claws trimmed, but she will spend an excessive amount of time grooming them herself.

You would think she had the best manicure in town with all the work she puts into it.

But trust me… those claws are still plenty dirty!
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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: Peaceful

(My human liked the photo effect she used on the above photo so much, that she added it to another photo of me and put it on her own blog. Cheater!)
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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!

The Book Experiment

Everyone knows how cats enjoy sitting on books, right? So my human was wondering if digital books would ever replace physical books — for cats. As an experiment, she placed her Kindle Fire and the handiest book (which happened to be the recently-reviewed Cats & Daughters) next to each other. Then she expected me and Binga to cooperate by showing our preference. As you can see, we were dubious about this.

Not to mention uncooperative. I saw no reason why I should sit on either of these things. After all, the book had been read already! Where’s the fun in sitting on it now?

Binga was even less inclined to help out my human with her experiment. The book and the Kindle Fire sat on the rug for days. Eventually my human charged the Kindle, since the battery died, hoping that maybe we would be attracted to its warmth. It did not work.

Just when it looked like the experiment was going to be an epic fail, I decided to give my human a break and make a choice. As you can see, I picked the old school, made-from-trees book.

Honestly, I am not sure what this was supposed to prove.
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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!

Ask Me Anything Day!

My human goofed off all weekend, and come Sunday night, when I expect her to help me with my blog, she showed up empty-handed! Can you believe it? The person who told a bunch of professional cat writers that their blogs should have an editorial calendar, has nothing on the schedule! The moment I find a replacement, she is so fired.

Fortunately, I came up with an awesome idea! I’ve seen a couple of my fellow blogging cats do this and it is pretty cool. See, I have readers who have followed me for nearly a decade, and readers who only discovered me last year… or last month… or last week! And I am sure there are things you want to know about me. It could be something that you have wondered for years, or it could be something that just occurred to you now. So ask in the comments below! I will answer these questions in a series of future blog posts. Just so you know, they will all have the tag “Ask Sparkle,” to make them easier to find at a later date. I can’t promise I will answer every last one of them or when I will answer them, but I will answer as many as I can!

So what do you want to know about me? Ask away!
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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: Big Cats and Boxes

I had something else planned for this week’s Sunday Catinee, but I saw this video from Big Cat Rescue on Cokie’s blog yesterday and I just had to share! It shows that the kitty fascination with boxes works, no matter the cat’s size! Enjoy:

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

Photo Hunt: Zoom!

I bet you can tell by the super-focused look on my face that I am watching something zoom by… but it is zooming so fast you can’t identify it! I will tell you what it is — a guitar string!

You have to be quick to catch these things!

In fact, you have to be pretty zoom-y yourself!

I swear on my scratch lounger, guitar strings are some of my favorite cat 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!

Free Feral Cat Spay Day Is Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the fourth annual Free Feral Cat Spay Day! It was started in 2010 by Alley Cat Rescue with a simple request that vets and organizations offer free spaying and neutering of feral cats for this one day. The first year, 150 vets across the United States participated! And South Africa jumped in, making the campaign international!

We are lucky to live in a city with a great organization, Fixnation, that works very hard to offer free spaying and neutering to as many ferals as they can handle every day, along with offering inexpensive veterinary services to low-income families. If you want to see if there are any clinics in your area participating, check the list here. Even if you don’t have a feral kitty that needs to be spayed, please make a point to thank any participating local vets for doing something good for feral kitties, and your community! If they know their work is being acknowledged, it will encourage them to continue their good deeds!

Caring for colony cats does a lot of things — it keeps their population under control, helps prevent disease, and builds a kinder, more humane community. Ferals who have been spayed or neutered and vaccinated are as healthy as most housecats, even if they are not as friendly! If you have some wild kitties in your neighborhood, you can make a difference — visit Alley Cat Rescue or Alley Cat Allies to learn how.
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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!

Finally, a Sleeky Lounge XL Winner! And New Giveaway Coming Up

I bet you were wondering what happened with the Sleeky Lounge XL giveaway, since it ended and no winner was announced! Well, I picked a winner and emailed them… but they never got back to me! And they were somebody I don’t know, so I had no way to get in touch with them other than their email address. I can almost bet the emails I sent them are sitting in their spam folder right now. So let this be a lesson to you — if you enter a giveaway, when it is over you might want to take a quick look in your spam folder to make sure you didn’t get an important email! (And yes, I checked my own spam folders to make sure a reply didn’t get lost in there.)

But enough about that. I went back and picked a new winner, and it is somebody most of us know! So concatulations to…

The Florida Furkids!

And there is more great news: I made the maximum on my commenthon, so my human is donating $50 to Tabby’s Place!

I have at least one giveaway coming up in May, and while it is not as big as a Sleeky Lounge XL, it is something you kitties will really love! It will start in a couple of weeks. And I just want to give a plug for my newsletter. It comes out monthly and includes highlights from the past month, a short editorial from me and occasionally a newsletter-only giveaway! And in between issues, if I have a contest or commenthon coming up, I send out an email blast to let everyone on my list know about it! So if you do not visit here at least once a week, you might want to consider subscribing so you never miss a giveaway or commenthon! The signup form is on my righthand sidebar.
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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: Photo Bomber

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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!