Spotted Cat Designs

Places to shop for for Cat Lovers:

Drs Foster and Smith all manner of fun and useful gifts.

Felinerina has kitsch black cat oriented gifts.

Moggies: Home of the Online Cat Guide in the U.K. for those who don’t know, Moggies is a term that means mixed breed cat. Notepads, calendars, cards, jewelry, soft toys and more.

When I went to Pricegrabber.com I typed in “Cat Lovers” and found over 70 books, and some other things. I go there to find the lowest prices on various items, especially expensive ones. Searching under “cats” gave me over 8000 results Cat furniture, Feline Pharmaceuticals, gifts etc. Keep in mind that not all of products suppliers are listed by them.

Teezz sells beautifully embroidered cats images on shirts, caps, bags, etc. (U.K.)

Gifts that Keep on Giving — For buying human gifts that help cats:

The Animal Rescue Site has lots of clothing, jewelry, household goods many cat themed. Supports many shelters in the U.S. Great service, I have bought lots of gifts and things for myself from here.

Best Friends Gifts of Life and Love you can sponsor a cat, make a donation, or buy a gift membership in this animal rescue group.

Endangered Species Chocolate supports wild cats through donations

The Mountain Lion Foundation supports intelligent conservation and public education for those of us who live in mountain lion territory.

Purina’s Pet Hug Fund when you order a plush cat or dog toy, Purina donates $1.00 to the Pet Hug Fund which gives money to many animal therapy organizations. These groups help people (and pets) by bringing them together for the emotional and physical therapy they provide.

While browsing for possible gifts I found these:

The humorous Ultimate Cats Catalog is a make believe catalog of things a cat might want to buy.

Night Before Cat Mass is a children’s book and a parody of the famous poem.

Catmas Carols contains many of the most popular Christmas carols rewritten with fabulous felines in mind.

Enjoy!

The Guardian Campaign addresses topics including how to start a humane education program in your community (i.e. a grassroots effort to raise public awareness, a club, etc.) Towards this end they offer free downloads of lesson plans and materials for educators, homeschoolers, and others who want to teach anyone from grades 2 through college age and beyond.

Their philosophy:

• Make a lifetime commitment to my animal companion
• Adopt animals only through responsible rescues and ethical breeders
• Spay or neuter my animal companion for their health and to prevent overpopulation
• Provide nutritious food, fresh water and daily exercise for my animal companion
• Care for the emotional needs of my animal companion
• Understand and work through my animal companion’s behavioral issues
• Treat my animal companion with compassion and gentleness
• Report suspected animal abuse or neglect
• Call myself and others “guardians” rather than “owner”
• Encourage others to embrace guardianship

Some of their first suggestions:

“Know your community. Each community has different animal-related problems. Talk to community leaders to get a grasp of issues and priorities and possibilities. Meet with members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, the Junior League, and other influential organizations to set goals and plan programs that have their support.

My intent is to keep my blog and web site family friendly at all times. This is a subject that affects us all so I have chosen to mention it. I will always warn you if a posting has something that your young children should not be exposed to.

Please note: In my opinion, the following web site is NOT for young children, or any child to see without parental consent, due to its grim information about the proven links between cases of animal cruelty that preceded human to human cruelty and crime. The Web site is: Pet-Abuse.com.

I quote from this site: “Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last 25 years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, … Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, … In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.”

I snipped out some specifics, visit the site for the full information.

The ASPCA
Animal Behavior Center
Cat Behavior
Dog Behavior
Pet Care

Introducing a New Cat

With 8 cats to feed, plus the strays that other people discard in my area, I buy our high quality cat food in 20 lb. bags where possible to save money. Then we transfer it to special air tight food safe containers. I also check the expiration date before buying. Eight cats go through a 20 lb. sack in about one and a half months. Overall, buying high quality cat food such as Royal Canin, Eukanuba, Hills, Purina Pro Plan, Nutro, Blue Buffalo, Wysong, etc. can save you money — your cats will eat less and be healthier (thus saving on vet bills).

We are also supplementing with more canned food, especially for our diabetic cat Panther. The canned foods we chose are higher protein, fewer carbohydrates, thus straining his metabolism less.
When you are shopping be sure to check the expiration dates before you buy any pet food or treats.

To read the ingredients on some canned food bring your magnifying glasses (only half joking) — until someone pointed it out — I did not see that Wellness brand foods contains small amounts of garlic which damage the red blood cells of cats and dogs. The label print is tiny!

Be sure that taurine is in the cat food you buy, until it was intentionally added to cat foods, cats were having heart problems from a lack of taurine. The Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research’s article explains this better than I can.

The article “Cats Are Different“by T. J. Dunn, Jr. DVM subtitled “Find Out How A Cat’s Nutritional Needs Are Different From A Dog” is a terrific layman’s level explanation of our pet’s nutritional needs. Read and learn!

Lastly, I found this article and thought you might find it interesting, too: Pet Food Storage Tips, Part One: Dry Food

We have all seen Cat Fancy, Kittens and Cats and others, in supermarkets, bookstores and pet stores. While browsing the Internet, I found some less well marketed publications.

Animal Wellness Magazine focus on natural foods, holistic treatments, homeopathy for cats and other pets. They have both paid print and digital subscriptions.

A fantastic newsletter called CatWatch is put out by the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. No ads so it is not cheap at $20.00US a year. The well written articles are authored by veterinarians. They cover every conceivable health and behavioral issue, dietary problems and solutions, feline anatomy and much more.

Yankee Magazine’s: Practical Pet Solutions for Dogs and Cats and Others is a well organized book comprised of both anecdotal and expert information about pets and pet care. The advice is from a selected group of veterinarians, pet trainers and breeders as well as their readers. I often find reading Yankee Magazine’s books both informative and fun.

Ooh.

I walked carefully into the bedroom late last night to avoid waking Susan and there was Charger nestled on her legs, and Nightstar curled up right below my pillow.

So I crawled even more carefully into bed to avoid waking any of them and tucked myself in next to Nightstar.

She soon got up, stretched, and settled down on the outside edge of my pillow. So I put my arm up around her to prevent her falling off the bed.

And we all stayed that way for hours. I know because I lay there smiling in the dark, listening to Nightstar purr until I finally fell asleep.

We not only have cats, we have reptiles and fish at our home. Since I work full time, time for shopping and especially for browsing is limited. My solution, like so many others is to surf the Internet. A lot of these places have email newsletters that I have signed up for, so I know about sales and special offers.

Some of my favorite commercial web sites for pet products are:

Amazon.com this is a direct link to Home and Garden, keyword cats

California Veterinary Supply over the counter remedies, treats, can also order with a prescription

Drs Foster and Smith

Collections inexpensive, but of varying quality, too. Worth looking at.

Improvements

Petsmart

Only Natural Pet Store A lot of good information and products. Warning: they carry Wellness which has GARLIC that is unsafe for cats and dogs. Garlic adversely affects red blood cell production.

Steps for Pets they donate money to shelters for each item your buy

See my previous post about Shopping While Helping Cats.

Yesterday I went to one of those parent-teacher meetings that schools have at irregular intervals, so that parents and teachers can both get a better idea of “what that idiot who’s screwing up a perfectly good child looks like”. Or something.

Anyway, there were all these teachers sitting in chairs about 6 feet away from each other all the way around the wall of the gym, with signs on the wall to indicate their name. Somehow I got a picture in my mind of Jennifur as a human-sized cat, sitting upright in a chair talking to two concerned parents, with her tail wrapped loosely around the chair legs, and the matching sign on the wall said “Ms. Jennifur”.

I got the giggles really bad while sitting by myself, which I’m sure did nothing to enhance my reputation at the school, which is already considerable