A couple of weeks ago I had to provide a bio page for the Catster site and one of the questions they asked me was, “What are my pet peeves?” to which I glibly replied, “I’ve never had a pet peeve. Where do you get one? I’ve had cats, dogs, rabbits, frogs, guinea pigs, and hamsters … do they count?” Wow, well color me corrected, because it turns out I DO have a pet peeve and it is a BIG ONE.

Unsolicited emails and SPAM comments on my blog. Okay, make that two pet peeves… I realize it’s the nature of the beast when you blog to be targeted by SEO monsters, but enough is enough. As it stands, I get so many SPAM comments from Louis Vuitton that I could open my own flea market and sell handbags on their behalf, because apparently they love me and find my posts, especially the one’s I have been doing recently on spay/neuter of particular relevance to them… And yes, I do have a SPAM filter on my blog so it really is a matter of just one keystroke to obliterate them from my sight, but I still find it highly annoying to have to go through any effort about it whatsoever.

I guess I should probably cut them some slack – clearly they think I am independently wealthy and can afford their merchandise as a result of all the other emails I get from the King of Prussia who has so generously offered me, and me alone, to deposit untold amounts of wealth into my bank account as long as I just give him some frivolous information like my name, address, phone number, social security number, bank account number, and my ATM pin number. I’m sure it’s all perfectly legitimate. Not to mention, his father, or is it his brother, is dying of some horrible illness and for some reason these millions of dollars can’t stay in his country.

The SPAM I get from people that are just trying to be helpful are also wonderful. Obviously anyone that reads my blog knows that I could benefit from posting MORE pictures and posts with MORE content. Um… Right. If there is one blogging rule that I break over and over, it’s the one where you’re supposed to keep it short and sweet. I’m a writer with a teaching background who is trying to educate people… Content is my middle name… But thank you again for the advice. And thank you for taking the time to read my blog to get to know what I’m all about…

And then, of course, are all the emails from caring people that noticed I could do better in my SEO ranking and all I need to do is contact them to magically help me become number one in my category. Because apparently it is mathematically possible for ALL cat bloggers to be number one in the category of cat bloggers on search engines.

The emails that I get from people who said they enjoyed meeting me at a conference I NEVER attended or asking me to review dog collars are always nice too. The dog stuff doesn’t completely bother me – I do happen to love dogs, and at least it is pet related, but people, a little courtesy please. Do your homework. I will do posts on dogs if it is for good cause like raising money or food or awareness, but I am not reviewing a dog collar.

Then, I really thought I had seen it all until last week when someone emailed me and said, quote, “I was checking out your page about beauty treatments and I thought you might be interested in this infographic that includes acne treatments as well as celebrities with acne. We were thinking since you talked about beauty treatments on your site that you would want to share our link.” Really? You were looking at my site about CATS and saw a page on beauty treatments? Now granted, my cats are quite lovely, but unless someone contacts me about celebrities with acne who have cats with skin disorders, I am not interested. But hey, thanks so much for thinking of me.

I went off the deep end a couple of days ago, hence the reason for this post and my momentary bout of insanity, when I finally hit the roof after receiving this email:

“I noticed that you talked about baby gifts on your site and thought you might be interested in seeing these crazy unique baby gifts that celebrities bought for their children. You can check it out here (I refuse to re-share the link they inserted here).

I would really appreciate if you wouldn’t mind mentioning this on your site. It would be great for your site, traffic, and rankings to continually update your site with fresh content. If there is anything that I can do in return please let me know.

I appreciate your time and hope you have a great day!”

This email came as a result of a post I did about Zoey and her kittens… I very firmly emailed this person back and told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his suggestion that I share his link on my CAT site. I realize it will not go anywhere and it did NOT make me feel any better commenting back to him in a firm, sarcastic, and curt manner. Upon further investigation, this email is part of some subscription service that I NEVER signed up for in the first place that I can unsubscribe from, which I did, not that it will help. I notice that most of the emails that I unsubscribe from just crop back up in one form or another.

Maybe rather than unsubscribe, I should just barrage these people with my own stuff – email them all day long with text and links about how if they buy my book, it will enrich their lives and increase their site traffic or emails about shopping on my Zee/Zoey Zazzle boutique to find unique baby gifts or acne products for celebrities that just so happen to feature unrelated pictures of my CATS. Or, how about we all pool our efforts and email these people back as one collective cat coalition with our own endeavors. Sigh… okay, I’m done…

Sorry about the rant. To ensure that I am not upsetting anyone who came here to see pictures of my CATS on my CAT blog, here is one of Rolz who also hates to have his personal space and privacy invaded. In this particular photo he was testing out the NVR Miss Litter box, which is actually a product for a CAT. It’s a great litter box for those of you that might have problems with cats who like to perch on the edge of litter boxes and spray the walls with urine. This one has high walls and completely eliminates that problem. You can read the review here. As far as the unsolicited emails and SPAM, I think ending the post talking about litter is about right… because that’s where they belong in my opinion!!!!