Well, I’m back from BlogPaws safe and sound and you can see that the cats are thrilled to see me… Normally I come back with kitty swag overload to bribe entice them back into my good graces quickly, but I am sad to say that I did not even have a single feather toy or measly catnip mouse to pull out of my suitcase bag of tricks for them.  There were dog toys galore at the conference, but for us feline lovers, we were left  in the dust with the exception of several bags of tasty kibble treats.

Once the cats realized I had nothing to offer other than treats that they are already accustomed to getting on a daily basis, they took a brief moment from napping to glare at me and then went back to treating me with the proper disdain I deserved after abandoning them for three days…

I promise once I catch my breath and collect my thoughts I will update you with all the BlogPaws comings and goings for those of you who could not make it. But here’s a hint for you, despite the lack of cat swag, it was fun!!

Oh kitties… Even though I am having fun with all my blogging friends, I miss you too and promise I will be home soon… Please don’t be too mad at me – I will have lots of great swag to share with you!!

Well, here we go again! It’s hard to believe I am getting ready to leave today for my third BlogPaws Conference!! This year I am determined to stay the entire duration and respectfully ask that all hurricanes stay away from Tyson’s Corner, VA. I can’t wait for the infamous cheesecake to see my old blogging buddies, as well as to catch up with other bloggers that I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet. I am also looking forward to attending some great seminars and doing some serious networking.

I will be sharing a bunk with Christine Michaels of Riverfront Cats and she and I are hoping we will be able to spread the word about our non-profit, Pawsitively Humane, that we will be officially launching with all kinds of great prizes in the next month to come!  This is a whole new ball game for us, especially me, so I am looking forward to learning all about  how to run a successful non-profit from the pros and ways to raise awareness on pet responsibility and increasing shelter adoptions.

But, what I’m most looking forward to is what I always look forward to, seeing just how many people I can convince to wear cat ears for the sake of a picture. As you can well imagine, it’s really not that difficult…

One of my favorite, “please wear my cat ears” pictures was from last year’s BlogPaws. This willing victim is Dino Dogan, founder of Triberr.

The thing about a Mom is that they come in all shapes, sizes, colors, species, and sexes. That’s right, a Mom doesn’t even have to be female or have given birth to be a Mother. A Mom is symbolic of the act of being nurturing or supportive or an important part of your life that is universal to every living being. Or not. Truth be told, maybe your Mom or Mom figure wasn’t nurturing or supportive. Maybe she wasn’t your best friend and confidante, or maybe she was. Moms have an array of personalities and some bring up fond memories for us, and for others, they don’t.

So to celebrate Mother’s Day today, I respect that the day has different meaning for all of us. I happen to be blessed with a wonderful mother who is still with me. I also share a household with Zoey who happens to be the mother of three very darling cats that mean the world to me as well. And I am a Mom myself – I have two sons who are long grown and I have three step-children that are dear to my heart.

So, whatever the circumstances are, Happy Mother’s Day and may we continue to try to fill the world with love, hope, inspiration, and compassion.

Just a quick post to wish you all a wonderful Caturday! Mine is going to be an all day marathon of running errands, cleaning the house for the Mother’s Day BBQ I am throwing tomorrow, starting to plan what to pack for BlogPaws, paying some bills, and doing laundry. In other words, all those things I should have been doing ages ago, but have put off to the absolute last minute that I can no longer procrastinate over. Luckily for me, Rolz has agreed to help me do the vacuuming and Jazz, Mia, Peanut, and Zee are helping me pack.

That’s my day. What are you all doing today?

Oh, and just in case we are not able to catch up with you tomorrow, Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there in what ever traditional or non-traditional sense that might be!

When it comes to animals, there is no shortage of special days, weeks, and months devoted to either celebrating or promoting awareness about them in one fashion or another. For example, this week happens to be “Be Kind to Animals Week” and it is also “National Pet Month.”

In the social circle I am part of, I am quite certain we really don’t need any particular daily, weekly, or monthly reminder to know that every day is pet day and that animals should be treated with kindness. But, the point of these tributes is much larger in scope because not everyone understands the love and companionship a pet can provide and not everyone understands that animals have feelings and deserve kindness and compassion. That is why it is so important to take advantage of these national and worldwide events to promote awareness to a broader audience when we can.

Be Kind to Animals Week (May 5 – 11) was founded in 1915 by the American Humane Association (AHA) with the intention of promoting several key messages about animals, such as reducing the numbers of animals euthanized in shelters by encouraging pet adoptions, increasing awareness on proper pet responsibility to ensure pets live long and healthy lives, to respect wildlife, and by reporting cases of animal abuse.

National Pet Month began over twenty years ago and originated in England where it is celebrated in April each year. We now celebrate it here in the United States in May and very similar to the intentions of the AHA, the five specific goals of National Pet Month are to promote the benefits of pet ownership, support pet adoptions, promote responsible pet ownership, increase public awareness of services available from professionals who work with animals, and raise awareness of the role, value and contribution to society of service animals.

Service animals provide an invaluable service and irrevocable bond with their human companions by allowing them to live a more fulfilled and productive life. It is wonderful to know as well that many service dogs are rescued from shelters to be given their own second chance at life. Photo courtesy of servicedoghouse.com

All I can ask is what I always ask. Please do me a favor and have the message catch on like the wave at a national sporting event. If we only do one thing today, let’s do it collectively and with intention. If each one of us reading this post were to grab the icon of the graphic I created for National Pet Month, or the graphic from AHA and use it as their facebook profile picture, for example, that would start to send a very strong message of solidarity (AHA has other great images that include a dog, a bird, and a rooster if you prefer that). Share my post, or write one of your own, or share someone else’s, but share it somewhere you normally wouldn’t so that if each one of us does that, maybe we can start to reach that mainstream audience outside of our animal box that doesn’t know as much about animal advocacy, kindness, compassion, and responsibility as we do.

It may not make a huge difference, but then again, you just never know…

Editors Note:  I also wanted to thank all of you who stopped by to comment on last Saturday’s post - “Making the Grade – What Makes a Blog Post Successful?”  The feedback and response was incredible and I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s unique perspective on the subject. The one thing we all had in common, however, is that we are all respectfully ”imperfect bloggers” and proud of it!

Now before anyone gets in an uproar, after all, I am up for a Nose-to-Nose Award from BlogPaws for Best Blog Writing, let me explain. For those of you that blog, I’m sure you have seen the “must do” guidelines for being a good blogger and how to create a perfect post. The lists vary, but there are a few suggestions that seem prevalent amongst all those giving advice, with the first one being that ever powerful acronym, SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. In real estate terms, that would mean location, location, location, but for a blogger, it means keywords, keywords, keywords.

Basically, a blog post and title should be rich in key words that trigger search engines like Google to bring your post to the top of the page rankings when people are looking for a relevant topic, product or service. So, if you are blogging about a review you are doing for NVR Miss Litterbox, you better include those words in the title and not something generic like “My Cat Fluffy Meows About her Bathroom Habits” and think that will drive traffic to your site for people who genuinely want to read a review about NVR Miss Litterbox.

This photo is taken from the NVR Miss Litterbox review that I did last year – I must have done a good job with the keywords, because I am still getting feedback on this post.

That’s odd…. I don’t know how my book that would be the perfect Mother’s Day gift got in this shot of Zee in the kitchen…

My feeling is this – you are all intelligent human beings and I respect your time. I try to make my posts as entertaining and compelling as possible, but if you don’t want to read them in full, or at all, then that is your prerogative and I don’t begrudge your decision either way. There are plenty of blogs that are written in a variety of styles – some with less content than mine, and yes, believe it or not, some written with more content than mine. I am not going to bend on this one and humbly except my “C-“ with no intention of changing my style to conform to the cookie cutter, sound bite world we live in. And, to my credit, I do fill my posts with a lot of great pictures to keep the topic interesting and not one big, long article, which brings me to the next bit of advice that is given to have good blog posts. Pictures…

If there is one area where I can easily say I follow the golden rules of being a good blogger, it’s with pictures. No matter what the topic, I always make sure to have at least one or more great photos, as a matter of fact, watch this:

Gratuitous picture of adorable kittens that has nothing to do with the post at hand, other than to momentary distract you from the overwhelming length of this post. These kittens do not pertain to my life at all and I have no idea who they are, other than being cute… .

The last “to be a good blogger rule” that I break on a weekly basis, giving me a pitiful grade of “C” is the one that suggests you must blog every day to keep your reading audience. People, I’m sorry, but my cats and my life is just not that interesting, not to mention, I work a full time job and can barely keep up with posting twice a week. I do my very best to be relevant and keep up with things, but just how many national this and that days and themes are there? I pick and choose the ones that are important to me, but I leave the rest for other bloggers who do it so much better than me. Not to mention, if you don’t want to miss any of my elusive posts, all you have to do is subscribe to my post notifications and that problem will instantly be solved.

Between all the causes, themes, and everything else to keep up with in the blogging world, sometimes it’s just too overwhelming and I want to say, “Calgon, come take me away!” (Remember that commercial?)

I love an editor like Peanut who tells me to take a break from blogging and play Fairyland on Facebook instead… Priorities people, priorities…

A cat’s tail speaks a language of it’s own and in this case, I would use the words plucky, confident, happy, and self-assured to describe what our little Mia with her tail held high and proud is projecting  as she enjoys one of those precious morning jaunts outside when we give the kitties a supervised break in our fenced in backyard. I love, love, love her message and I love this picture of her. Mia is perpetually a happy and content girl and her flagship tail is one of her most endearing trademarks. She is what a I would call a “puppy-dog-cat” and is prone to following Dan and I about the house, always with her tail at full attention as she enjoys being part of our comings and goings!

With eight cats, you can only imagine the amount of “tail conversations” that go on all day in night in our household, but this particular message happens to be my favorite one and seemed the perfect way to say “Happy Wordless Wednesday” – only a few more days until the weekend!

In what is probably the most shocking development the Zee/Zoey household has seen since the time aloof Rolz actually let his human’s pet him and pick him up without squirming (this may actually be pure speculation and wishful thinking and not confirmed fact), Kizmet has declared he will remain reclined out next to his human’s computer keyboard in an adorable pose for as long as it takes without food while waiting  for his picture to go viral, or until it is time for dinner. Whichever comes first.

Kizmet is adamant and dedicated to his cause. As he puts it, “I’m just as cute as those other famous cats are and what’s the big deal with playing a keyboard or looking grumpy?” He continues, “I catch paper balls all the time and bring them back to my humans, plus I have a very endearing habit where I expose my belly, which is off the charts adorable. How much more does a cat have to do to prove they deserve to go viral?” “Not to mention, what’s up with Nyan Cat?” “He’s a flying cartoon cat with a body made out of a cherry Pop-Tart. Really? My body girth looks like an over sized loaf of rye bread, yet that doesn’t seem to catch anyone’s attention.”

As imagined, Kizmet’s boldness and desperate cry for attention has caused quite a stir with his other feline housemates who have allowed me to question them as to what they think of this developing situation:

Zee and Zoey remain respectfully unaware of the unfolding developments with Kizmet and quite frankly, even if they were aware, would still not care…

This appears to be Mia, Peanut, and Rolz but honestly I can’t tell them apart and feel it’s best I just let them nap. No point in waking them up for something so unsettling as a campaign by Kizmet to go viral because again, like Zee and Zoey, quite frankly they won’t care…

Jazz is one of those kitties from the older generation and he doesn’t even know what the Internet is… No reason to wake him to discuss something about cats being grumpy. He lives with seven other cats and has seen all of them grumpy at one point or another…

Harley says, “Who’s Kizmet?” “When did we get another cat?”

Stay strong buddy, stay strong…

On a more serious note, today is Free Feral Spay Day – please click here to see a list of participating vets and organizations in your area.

Last year’s task was to make a celebrity of my choice out of the fur I collected from brushing my cats and naturally I decided to embarrass myself in the name of cat health to make the one and only celebrity I’ve ever wanted to meet my whole life, Ellen DeGeneres. I thought for sure I would have been invited on her show immediately after my tribute, but alas, my phone has still not rung. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there – the first matter at hand is a quick lesson on what a hairball is, why they are potentially dangerous to you cat, and how you can help manage them.

Me last year with a FURminating deShedding tool and the likeness I made of Ellen out of my cat’s fur. And I wonder why she hasn’t contacted me yet…

Some breeds are more susceptible to hairballs than others, like Maine Coons and Persians, and some cats are more fastidious with their grooming than others. But, the good news, with products like the FURminator tool, the amount of fur a cat can ingest is greatly reduced, as the deShedder quickly and thoroughly removes the cat’s undercoat and loose hair which is the major source of shedding.

I have now had my FURminator for a year and my cats still enjoy it very much, which means I have greatly reduced the amount of fur that they can ingest. They love the feeling of the deShedding tool and I love how soft and silky their fur is after I use it. Because of all that FURminator love, I figured why not get to the task at hand and have some mustache making fun for a good cause. Here goes:

The first step to making a mustache out of your cat’s fur is to find a cat. Preferably one that has hair. If you happen to have a Maine Coon handy like I do, all the better.

I have eight cats so I decided a nice eclectic mix of fur from all of them was in order to make my mustache as stylish as possible…

And here’s where it starts to get interesting. And messy. You try and glue cat hair to a piece of card board shaped like a mustache and you’ll see what I mean. Go ahead and try it – I’ll wait…

OKAY, LET’S SEE WHAT WE GET AS A RESULT OF ALL THAT HAIR… DRUM ROLL PLEASE…

My first victim was Kizmet… and don’t worry, no kitties were harmed in this exercise  I merely took the image of the mustache photo, brought it into Photoshop, cut it out with the pen tool to extract it from the background, saved it as a new path layer, and placed it into a new file with the picture of Kizmet. Easy as making Thanksgiving dinner…

Wanting all my cats to partake in the exercise, I repeated the same fun process with Kizmet’s above picture. The only difference, all I had to do was find a picture of each of my eight cats and painstakingly extract their images from the background of the photo they were in to transfer to a new document to showcase all of them, while at the same time, finding an image of sunglasses to reduce to size to fit on each of their faces along with the jpeg image of the mustache. I could do this in my sleep at this point and nothing is safe from the pen tool with me…

As with anything regarding your cat, pay attention to his or her needs to determine what course of action needs to happen. Regular grooming is the first step to preventing hairballs and the FURminator deShedding tool not only removes a significant amount of your cat’s hair safely and effectively, it encourages bonding with your cat which is a great bonus. The FURminator is available in different styles for special hair lengths and I invite you to check out their facebook page today for all kinds of great posts and pictures that other bloggers and FURminator fans have shared, as well as information on how you can get your own FURminator deShedding tool!

Editors Note: I normally only post once a day, but today is also National Kids and Pet Day and I could not resist posting about such an important topic. Please be sure to click here and visit – I share some very adorable pictures that will melt your heart!