Our cats give us Mother’s and Father’s Day cards, respectively. For as long as I can remember my husband had been giving me these HUGE cards for Valentine’s Day. Last year or the year before he did not. He said the store was out of them. It is funny because I shop at that store and I have never seen them at all, but I guess it would help if I actually walked down the aisle that has the cards. Anyway, this year it seems that the cats wanted to give me those humungo cards, too. For Mother’s Day. These ones have recordings of songs in them. And the cats really loved their choice of cards because every time I opened one they would come out to listen and sniff.
It is amazing what they can do with cards now-a-days, huh? Recorded songs or even, in some you can record your own message. Amazing. These ones not only have recordings in them but FLASHING LIGHTS! Cards are not cheap, so it is really amazing that they can do all that and still make them relatively affordable. So incredible.
Here are the cards I received from our girls on Mother’s Day.
So many pictures of the cats and I keep taking them. This is one of a series I took when I was trying to get a picture of the cats this morning to send to my hubby. The sun was so bright, here is Nessa rolling around in it.
At the end of last week I was walking down the stairs and my eyes landed on our black cat. I was struck with the thought of how black she is. Then it occurred to me that we have had a lot of rain, a lot of days without hours and hours of sun. I call Teagan my Sunshine Girl because she LOVES to be in the sun. She will go from window/door to window/door to get the most sunshine throughout the day. She will sit in the sun until she is so hot it makes me wonder if it is good for her. When she sits in the sun hour after hour she starts to rust.
Yeah, it’s a real thing. Black cats can “rust”, their black coats start to turn a lighter shade, it becomes somewhat brown. It kinda looks like rust. According to Wiki the black fur pigment is fragile and cats that sit in the sun a lot “rust”. The black fur pigment is called eumelanin. Information on the internet also states that a tyrosine deficiency could cause a black cat’s fur to turn red. If a cat is being fed a nutritious diet of food formulated for cats, this type of deficiency is rare. I am confident that Teagan does not have a tyrosine deficiency, especially since she was so black.
I have noticed her rusting in the past, I think that is why I noticed her total blackness recently. It took me a while to acknowledge she was a deeper black than she usually is. She is always a black cat, but as I said, it just occurred to me that she was very black with hardly any of the brown undertones. I say “was” because the sun has been out for days now and she and her sister are taking advantage of it. With the temperatures warming up to hot (for me) the doors have been open pretty much most of the day for the past few days and both cats have been parked in front of one of them soaking it up. I think Teagan might already be starting to rust.
To me the rust looks like it starts in the undercoat and not at the ends as does a bleaching of human hair in the sun. I could be wrong, but it seems as if the brown is more visible when her fur is brushed one way or the other.
If the cloudy days are gone, then Teagan will continue to rust and get lighter and lighter as the days go by.
If you want to interact with the cats it might be a good idea to plan a visit before meal time. When you visit a cat after a meal they tend to be sleeping. Not all of them, but most cats like to nap after a meal. I went to The Dancing Cat for another Henna Tattoo Event and most of the cats were asleep. I couldn’t even identify all of the cats because some of them were just passed out. Some cats don’t mind being bothered while they are sleeping but some do . . . and either way it is not very nice to bother them. One was looking around and I tried to get a picture and she turned her head clearly not into it so I left her alone. I managed to get a quick picture of two of the other sleeping felines. There were about four that were walking around. Currently they have nine for adoption. When I visited there were at least 10 with the tenth one on schedule to be delivered to his forever home on Sunday. He was one of the ones walking around and he was a big ol’ sweetie.
Snow, again, he has beautiful markings!
Here is a breakdown of the cats I was able to get pictures of; Snow – the boy off to his forever home (at the time of this posting), Ruby, a tiny little treasure of a black cat, Layla – who never opened her eyes, Monique, who was wandering around, and Penny, who was passed out in the Sanctuary.
I don’t even know the current exact count of how many cats The Dancing Cat has adopted out. I know it is over 300. That is a lot of cats for a thing that started out as a pop-up. It was only going to be opened for about six months. And it closed down temporarily for a few months, but it re-opened and is going strong.
Tiny Ruby.
They have all kinds of events; yoga, Mew-sic, cat photography, birthday parties, henna tattoos, cat education talks, even escape rooms!
The “I Knead My Mommy” book had “The Lap” poem in it. I found both the title of the book and the poem to be very funny!
My henna is the flowery one, I hadn’t even thought about a “Halloween themed” one, but here is one that she did.
I do hope if you are ever in the area and feel the need to visit with cats you will check it out. If you are local and you like cats and want to help support the safe housing and adoption of cats, schedule a visit with the cats or attend one of the many events The Dancing Cat hosts. With that you get the benefit of the event you decide to attend AND a visit with the cats.
Have you made it to The Dancing Cat? Do you have a cat cafe/lounge in your area?
I believe that the lizards in our yard are fascinated by the cats. I think they come to the windows to visit with them. One day there was one on the screen hanging on checking out the cats. They come over to the window and just stare at them. The cats “ick” at them. They range anywhere from two inches to 7 inches long. The majority I see are in the middle of that range. I think they are fascinating.
Here is a picture of Nessa looking at one for today’s Friday Photo. He stayed at the window for quite some time.
I know I just posted a picture of Teagan LAST Friday, but I was going through some pictures and I found this one. WOW! Now you know why we changed her name from Smokey to Teagan. This was taken in February 2016. So, I guess I do have some good photos of her, just not as many as I have of her sister. And this one – in 2016 – was an anomaly. She wasn’t fond of getting her picture taken. She is getting more used to it now, as I stated last week.
Wow. This cat was letting me take her picture. She was moving the entire time, but she was letting me take her picture. This is kind of a new thing. I think she is beautiful. Remember that black cats have a more challenging time being adopted due to the superstition that surrounds black cats. For cat lovers that is very puzzling, but for those with the beliefs that a black cat is bad it is an actual deterrent. So . . . if you are in the market to adopt a cat, please consider adopting a black one.
I can’t remember why exactly . . . I think it was because when we adopted Teagan (Smokey) and Nessa (Esmeralda) The Dancing Cat used pellet litter . . . . so I started researching litter. I liked the litter that we used when we first got Spot, but Costco stopped selling it LONG ago and we had switched to Arm & Hammer. I liked it. It clumped well and it — the unscented kind — did a good job of keeping the smell in check . . . at least with Spot. But I got very tired of the dust. I share a room with the litter box and just regular dust is hard to deal with, but add cat litter dust on top of that and I just was tired of it. My research revealed that Dr. Elsey’s Ultra Litter was pretty much dust free. Of course, that was the old formula . . . according to the reviews. Seems like about the time I was thinking about buying it they switched their formula/litter and loyal customers were upset because the dust free litter now had dust. I decided to try it anyway because there were a few reviews that said it was good. Well, I think it is a lot less dusty than the litter we used to buy. It might be more dusty than it was at one time, but it is still less dusty so we use it. And the cats had no trouble at all adjusting from pellets to one litter the the next. They are such good girls. This story is all leading to #Orangeinside.
The last litter bag we opened had an orange collar inside. (Ha! That is not what #Orangeinside is about. 🙂 ) I picked up the package and read “Share a photo with #Orangeinside on Instagram for a chance to win a year supply of Dr. Elsey’s Ultra cat litter.*” And I said to my husband, “Will you do it for me? I don’t have Instagram?” And then I went on to say what a brilliant way to market. Send out an orange collar with your website on it and have people take pictures of their cats in it and post it on Instagram! I thought that was brilliant. I don’t even HAVE Instagram and I was going to do it — or have it done. I could use a free year of cat litter. Heck yeah!
But then I flipped the bag over and read the other side of the enclosed card. It said that less than 5% of missing indoor cats are returned home, that a cat with an orange collar is an indication of an indoor cat, a cat with an orange collar should not be outside. Ha! I hadn’t read past that because I thought that was a great idea. Now that I am reading the entire thing I understand what the white strip on the collar is. It is a space to write your phone number so someone can call you when your cat is found. This is cool. I like this program.
I also noticed once I really looked at the collar that, there is a little kitty face on the breakaway buckle and if that kitty face is facing outward the website does not show, only the spot for the owner’s number.
The thing is . . . my cats are indoor cats and they don’t wear collars. That is one reason I love indoor cats, they are unfettered by collars. I was planning on putting the bright orange collar on our black cat for a photo because I thought the orange and black would really stand out. But when I thought about it I don’t know where she was and her sister was right there. So I tried it on her. Well, I am not posting all the blurry shots I have. She wouldn’t really sit still. She was trying to get it off. I did manage to get one or two, but not of her face.
Today as I was preparing to write this post I put it on the black cat. She was in mellow mode so she just laid there and actually let me get a few photos.
When I googled Orange Collar the result was a lot of sites selling orange collars. The few articles that came up showed a year of 2015 in the summary . . . so I am thinking that this orange collar for indoor cats has been around since at least 2015. I think it is a neat idea.
Have you ever heard of the orange collar thing? Do you have an indoor cat? Does your indoor cat wear a collar? WOULD your indoor cat wear a collar?
Sometimes I take pictures of the cats and I – selfies – and text them to my husband. Sometimes I do post them elsewhere, but most of the time I just end up with a bunch of pictures of me and a cat. Today they were both too close to the slider for me to get behind them and put the camera in front of us. But I did get a few shots of Teagan’s eye. You can see a bit of my head. Failed selfie.
I was going to post this picture as the Friday Photo, but I decided to save it for the actual anniversary. Today, June 25, four years ago our beloved cat was called back to her original posting as an angel. She is missed everyday. She was a very unique cat. Our current cats are great cats. They are so sweet. They are entertaining and very funny at that. But I still miss Spot. I can love new kitties but still miss kitties we had previously.
It was a beautiful day when she died. I snapped this photo as I looked up. John and I sat in the yard for a while. The house was so empty.
I am just going to point you to some of my Spot posts. And post a few pictures. The pictures have nothing to do with the posts, except they are of Spot and the posts are about her.
