08.18.06
Posted in Cat News at 12:54 pm by pawpathblog
AP Photo: In this undated hand out photo, Sebastian, a Persian cat with long black hair, sports gold crowns on his two large teeth, which grew sticking out from his lips in an underbite similar to a bulldog’s. Concerned that his cat’s exposed teeth could be damaged, Dr. David Steele a dentist from Alexandria, Ind., had gold crowns made for his cat pet. (AP Photo/Dr. David Steele via The Herald-Bulletin)
Read more about this on Yahoo! News: Sebastian the Cat Gets “Grilled”
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08.17.06
Posted in Just For Fun at 10:18 pm by pawpathblog
- “Cats like doors left open–in case they change their minds.”- Rosemary Nisbet
- “Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously.” - Louis F. Camuti, DVM
Bambi: Let me in!
Leo: Let me out! How come you get to be outside and not me?
Bambi: Why do they always close the screen?
Leo: Okay, Snapfish over there needs to stop taking pictures and make things happen!
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Posted in Marketing & Opinions at 2:24 am by pawpathblog
In June, the world’s first cat reality show, “The Meow Mix House,” premiered on the Animal Planet. It is a commercial in disguise for the cat food giant Meow Mix Company, where 10 cats bunk together in a posh, tricked out cat apartment in New York City, and cats get voted off. The winner gets a kush “position” at Meow Mix, and the outcasts get adopted. Read more about the premise of this show in my previous post about the premiere of Meow Mix House. Their much nobler goal, they insist, is promoting cat adoption alongside ASPCA.
The final & 10th, episode will air on Animal Planet on Friday, August 18th, during the 9:00pm hour (it’s a 3-minute segment so it will air at approximately 9:10PM EST).
These cat-estants have a blog, too! The site shows which cats have already been adopted, and there are 3 cats yet to be adopted: Bambi, Cisco, and Zen. Read about adopting Bambi on ASPCA.com
Myrna Blith on National Review Online reported on June 15, 2006 that Meow Mix seemed to be getting good publicity before the show aired, and one cat favorite, Ellis (who has since been voted off) already had 20,000 votes before the show even began. She admits she doesn’t like cats, and wonders whether this show is just “painfully dumb or just some silly summertime fun?” Read more on her review entitled “Cats Gone Wild.”
So is this idea dumb? Painfully dumb even? Maybe so, but it’s been generating a whole lot of publicity. The official website for Meow Mix House boasts over 250,000 votes for the show… not too shabby! (Voting has been closed). Grand Central Marketing cooked up this idea with Meow Mix, and it seems to have been a success, garnering over 150 million media impressions, and covered by the New York Times, The Today Show, E!, and much more.
My opinion? I watched the first segment when it premiered and I felt that the host was irritating, and I wasn’t crazy about the assigned personalities to the cats, so it wasn’t quite my bag of chips. But I’m biased as I am not a huge fan of “reality” tv shows in the first place (I put “reality” in quotes because all of those shows are fabricated, just like the cats’ personalities) However, I thought the concept was really cute, as an elaborate commercial. The cat pad was adorable, and if Leo and Bambi, my cats, had any interest in tv (which they don’t), they would have been meowing for some of the goodies in that apartment.
And let’s face it: us cat lovers always want to see more cute cats! It’s just always entertaining and fun. So will Meow Mix House produce another season? Who knows. But was it a success? I’m not a marketing expert, nor do I have access to Meow Mix Company’s statistics, but it does seem like from a publicity point of view, it was a success. Meow Mix does a good job of conveying to consumers that they care about cats - and hey, sure, maybe they do. There’s got to have been a reason why Mike Myers used the Meow Mix jingle in the first Austin Powers film to entice Mr. Bigglesworth. The company is great at advertising!
But with actually buying cat food? Leo & Bambi have the final say in our house, and they are not swayed by advertising, no matter how groundbreaking or weird. Leo had a Meow Mix phase, but both of them are Fancy Feast cats. What can I say? They’re pretty fancy.
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08.16.06
Posted in Cat Articles at 1:05 am by pawpathblog
I’m refusing to eat my food. I’m an extremely fussy eater. How many times do I have to say, I only like Leo’s dry food. I know it’s the same kind, but I just like it better when it’s in his bowl! Sometimes I’ll sit in the kitchen for extended periods of time silently asking for a substitute to what I have been given. Well, my humans think I’m being silent since I’m not verbally loud like Leo, but I’m communicating! Ugh, they just never learn. I learned to understand them; humans are so slow! If I don’t get treats for a while, I’ll give up and just eat my meal. I have a rotating diet of tuna, lean chicken tenderloins, and 3 Fancy Feast flavors (I really like the new chicken feast with egg souffle and garden greens!).
-Bambi
——
It’s a fairly well known fact that chocolate & Tylenol is toxic to cats, but here’s a list of common foods and household items that you may not have known are harmful to kitties:
- Canned tuna in excessive amounts (*Read note below)
- Onions
- Garlic
- Alcohol
- Salt in large amounts
- Mushrooms
- Macademia Nuts
- Aspirin or Acetaminophen (or any human medication unless expressly cleared by your veterinarian)
- Coffee grounds, beans & tea (caffeine)
- Pear pips, the kernels of plums, peaches and apricots, apple cores
- Potato peelings and green looking potatoes
- Moldy/spoiled foods
- Yeast dough
- Potato, rhubarb, and tomato leaves; potato and tomato stems
- Broccoli (in large amounts)
- Raisins and grapes
- Cigarettes, tobacco, cigars
- Milk & Dairy Products(most cats are lactose intolerant)
- citrus extract/oils
- Antifreeze & Ice Melt
- insecticides, herbicides, fertilizer
- liquid potpourri
*Note on Canned Tuna: Giving your cat tuna as an occasional treat is okay, but it has been said that if too much canned tuna is consumed by cats, it can lead to many health problems such as yellow fat disease. One reason is that tuna for human consumption lacks vital nutrients. Read more about feeding cats tuna and raw meat on Google Answers.
So please be careful when giving cats human food. Baby food can be bad for cats, too, since many contain onion powder. Instead of regular milk, get a lactose-reduced cat milk drink such as Whiskas Cat Milk +Plus.
A few table scraps of cat safe foods here and there won’t hurt (rule of thumb is that table scraps should be less than 10% of a cat’s diet). Cat treats are always a better choice.
It’s a good idea to keep a list of harmful substances. We used to use Seventh Generation all-purpose cleaner thinking it was safe since it was all-natural, but it contains citrus oil, which is toxic to cats! Yikes! Thankfully, we never used it near our cats.
One of many reasons to keep your cat indoors is to prevent him from walking on fertilized lawns and ingesting it, which can be extremely toxic, leading to serious health problems and even death.
Other sources:
Visit Aspca.org to see ways to keep a poison-free home - they have an extensive list of common household plants & substances that are toxic to cats.
See a useful chart of Foods Not To Feed Your Cat
See Human Foods To Avoid on about.com.
For a collection of books available online about cat nutrition, visit our Cat Nutrition Book Store.
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08.14.06
Posted in Marketing & Opinions at 3:30 pm by pawpathblog
We’re delighted to have been featured on the blog Pajama Market as “Small Business Blog of the Day” at http://www.pajamamarket.com
Here’s the link to the review:
To remind some of you, our blog has stemmed from our online store, www.pawpathlittermat.com. Although this blog was created to post updates on our store and bring traffic into our store, an equally important factor is to showcase our beloved cats, Leo & Bambi, and connect with other cat lovers and cat bloggers, whether or not they become customers.
The blogger of Pajama Market, Brian Brown, is absolutely charming in our correspondence, and his review was very well written and thorough, and 100% appreciated. The review has constructive criticism about character blogs (blogs written by ficticious or non-human characters), and recommends that we should stop letting our cats using the computer…so, for the sake of argument, I’ve asked Bambi and Leo to, er, hold their tongues on this post. This got me thinking about arguments for and against character bloggers. And this topic is not so cut and dry, folks.
Here’s an exploration about character blogs (as a marketing tool, and not a purely personal site) and I’ve sited some references on both sides. Read the rest of this entry »
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08.12.06
Posted in Just For Fun at 10:58 pm by pawpathblog
We’ve been tagged by Miss China Paws! Here’s the game: List 5 weird things about us cats and our humans.
Here are the rules: The player of this game starts with “5 weird things/habits about yourself.” In the end you need to choose 5 people to be tagged and list their names. The people who get tagged need to write a blog about their 5 weird things/habits as well as state this rule clearly, then tag 5 more victims. Don’t forget to leave your victim a comment that says “you’re tagged!” in their comments and tell them to read your blog.
Bambi
1. When I nap on MY king size bed, I sleep on my side using a pillow and with the comforter up to my neck, just like my mom!
2. When I’m happy and excited and dashing around the house, I go out of sight and only then, I sing in a very loud and mysterious voice. Otherwise, I almost never talk except in tiny, small meows.
3. I say “hey” to my mom in a unique way. This is something new. When I’m taking a stroll and she happens to be sitting in my way, I walk by her, and without breaking my pace, give her a light love nip on her arm to let her know how much I love her, and then I just keep going where I was headed.
4. At night, when I let mom sleep on my bed, I like sleeping on the side she faces. If she turns around, I get up, walk over to the side she is facing, and fall back asleep.
5. I’ve perfected the ”dog begging” technique when my family is eating: I make a sad & and irresistably adorable face from a highly visible area near the dinner table (even when they’re eating stuff I don’t like), and I don’t turn off my adorable sad face until they let me sniff (or, when appropriate, sample) whatever it is they are eating.
Leo
1. I have a great gift for vocalization. When I was a kid, we moved, and I cried nonstop in a plane for 13 hours straight. (I had special permission to be in the cabin with my family sharing a carrier with Bambi) I literally did not stop crying except to take short breaths in between yowls the entire flight, and then I lost my voice for a few days. But that didn’t stop me from trying to voice my discontent at being at a new house.
2. Whenever my family gets a flower arrangement or any kind of centerpiece, I sit right next to it so I get the attention. Look at me! Look at me!
3. I once escaped from the house to chase a strange cat. I chased him away, but when I looked up, I realized I had no idea where I was. When my mom came looking for me, I was just at the end of our (very small) backyard. I yelled loudly when I saw her and then I ran back to her in a panic, in a straight line, bumping into everything in my path.
4. When I want a hug (which is almost always), I climb up and put my front paws around my human’s neck.
5. When I eat too much cat wheat grass, and I feel like it’s starting to come back up, I like to yowl really loud to let everyone know that I’m gonna barf. And then I just let go where ever I am (over the side of a table, onto the window shades, etc), whereas Bambi chooses convenient locations when he gets sick - what a goody two shoes!
Humans (collectively - I’ll write this in the third person)
1. One is very good at imitating Leo’s meows which irritates him but never ceases to amuse her.
2. One uses packing tape to get hair off of ‘Bambi’s’ bed, and Bambi hates the sound
3. One can watch a movie and forget it soon after, so she’ll be amused and surprised each time she re-watches it.
4. One has an amazing ability to retain massive loads of information and and he is like a human encyclopedia.
5. They all have numerous nicknames for both Leo and Bambi, so there are many names they’ve had to learn!
I tag:
Rosie & Cheeto, Prince Muddy Paws, Four Furry Cats, Whippy Curly Tails and…?
I will tag one more…just looking for blogs who haven’t been tagged yet…we’re pretty new to this community - any suggestions?
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08.11.06
Posted in Cat Trivia at 11:26 pm by pawpathblog
Most Expensive Pet Wedding
In September 1996, two rare “diamond-eyed” cats, Phet and Ploy, were married in matching pink outfits at a ceremony in Thailand’s biggest discotheque. It cost Phet’s owner, Wichan Jaratarcha, 410,979 Thai Bhat ($16,241).source: Guinness World Records
Leo’s commentary: Wow, this is just silly. Everyone knows that cats are not normally monogamous. And duh, most of us HATE wearing any human clothes of any kind, nor does a ”discotheque” sound like fun, whatever that is. It sounds really unpleasant! I’m just speaking for myself, but that $16,241 could have been better spent on, say, (1) treats (2) catnip and (3) toys. Now THAT would have been a party!
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Posted in Store Updates at 12:16 am by pawpathblog
That’s me pretending to read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey since my human sister asked me to pose. I wasn’t really in the mood so I look a little reluctant, but I complied, because I’m a really good sport. However, I do understand the importance of books to you people, so I wholeheartedly support our Cat Book Store we’ve added to our site, where we’ve painstakingly selected quality cat books from their enormous collection. Come for a visit!
We’ve expanded our selection of cat books in our store by adding over 200 titles… we have many categories to browse through, from books on Cat Nutrition if you want to cook up a healthy meal for your precious kitties, books with advise on Cat Behavior to figure out some of our more mysterious or perplexing actions, Children’s Books with Cats to entertain, teach, and delight the littler and cute humans, Fiction & Literature with cats to see how we’ve inspired various literary works from detective novels (we seem to have a knack for solving mysteries) to haikus to clever anecdotes. We even have a page with the complete books by the cat-loving novelist Lilian Jackson Braun who writes about 2 cats who solve crimes with a detective in her best-selling “The Cat Who…” series.
There’s also an ample selection on Cat Humor so you humans can make that loud “laughing” sound you seem to enjoy so much, as well as Cat Calendars & Planners. We even threw in a selection for new age & alternative beliefs that includes books on paranormal and psychic phenomena surrounding us magical cats, as well as ways to read our horoscopes. So what are ya waiting for? Browse through our cat book store!
-Bambi
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08.10.06
Posted in Cat Sites - Our Picks at 12:28 pm by pawpathblog
Hey everyone, listen up! Cat bloggers assemble! Go visit a really cool group of cats dubbed “The Crew” - their names are George, Tipper, Max & Misty on their blog at http://www.crewsviews.blogspot.com/
-Leo
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Posted in Just For Fun at 1:09 am by pawpathblog
I had a fun day today…I took a long leisurely nap out on the deck, as the weather was so beautiful, and then I came inside and played with my favorite toy Pinky. This picture is a bit blurry because I was moving, and also there was no flash used so it wouldn’t bother my eyes. - Bambi
Here’s another great blog about cats: Cat-Pause.com
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