A few years ago we were on a west coast road trip and stopped at the Whole Foods in La Jolla, CA for a snack. There were some nice young ladies working a table outside from the Stray Cat Alliance, a California-based non-profit that seeks to raise funds for the sterilization and care of feral cat colonies in California, and the sterilization and care of non-feral strays in shelters until they can be placed with a guardian in a forever-home.
Of course, I was broke at the time.
Of course, I gave them the last $5 I had in my wallet.
Now the SCA is teaming with one of their board members (and friend of Ex-Boyfriend!), Jackson Galaxy. You may remember Jackson from such thrilling things like his awesome show My Cat From Hell on Animal Planet, as well as the many gushing blog posts I write that mention him.
Anyway, Jackson has a new book (you remember books, right?) coming out:
I’m super-excited enough for the book, but by pre-ordering on Amazon via this link, you and I can help the Stray Cat Alliance raise funds for their continued operation. Just pre-order between now and May 10th and forward or scan & email a copy of your receipt to CatDaddyBook@gmail.com, and Tarcher/Penguin publishing will donate $1.00 to help these awesome shelter critters.
Plus, if you’re on Twitter (or just hate reading more than 140 characters at a time), for every picture of your cat you tweet with the hashtag #CatDaddy throughout the month of February, Tarcher will donate an additional $0.05 — seemingly not much, but there’s NO LIMIT on the number of tweets this applies to, so spread the word — make ‘em say “ugh” “MEOW”!
Spielberg wisely left this nugget on the cutting-room floor:
Add your captions in the comments section below! Winner gets the self-satisfaction of knowing that they made the best joke about Nazis presenting a kitten with a dandelion and a grenade EVER!
I know, I know! She was the subject of the LAST Fuzzy Friday post… but she’s so awesome! SEE?! This is seriously all she wants to do — even when I feed her, she looks back and forth from the dish to me, like she’s conflicted about whether she wants food or to continue being petted. Kitty delight!
Also, we’re still a couple months away from our annual SPCA fundraiser, so if you have the cash and the inclination, please make a donation to Tamar over at I Have Cat, one of our fave kitty-blogs, in the form of purchasing one of the magnets at her online shop. 100% of the profits from each sale go to helping her cover the vet & food bills of Max, a handsome senior cat whom she’s fostering until he can be re-homed (his family of FOURTEEN YEARS gave him up due to “allergies”! If it takes 14 years for you to figure out you have an allergy, yer doin’ it wrong.) Anyway, say hi to Max:
Also definitely check out Tamar’s blog, as well as her Facebook page, for fun fuzzy pix and tales of her escapades with her feline roomies:)
We met this tiny pile of cute last week on the street near our optometrist and have been fostering her while we wait for her spaying appointment and try to find her a new home. She looks a lot like our cat Oliver, so we’ve thought about naming her Olivia, but I’m trying to hold off on actually calling her that to prevent her from getting confused once she leaves for her forever-home. She’s awesome, and I’ll be posting more pix and video of her in the coming weeks!
Typically I try to not let my home life bleed into these posts too much — I am boring, Japanese robots are not. But the other night after I was done working, I laid down on the bed and Oliver just made a bee-line for my arm, and well…this happened:
Bliss complete.
Have a great weekend, guys! And for those of you mid-Atlantic folks still trying to shore up your holiday shopping, you could do a lot worse than stopping by my booth at the Punk Rock Flea Market in Philly on Sunday! I’ll have free stuff like comics, candy & stickers waiting for you, plus event-only deals on shirts, belts, bags & more! Not too shabby for a meager $3 entry donation, eh?
THE PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET-DOME
461 N. 9th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19123
Also, in case you missed it: my very own Whale Trip tee was featured quite prominently all over this week’s episode of ABC’s Modern Family! Alex Dunphy knows what’s up; do you?
You know what would make a classic album cover better? Replacing the humans depicted on them with kittens. Thank goodness amyvisuals rectified this problem with The Kitten Covers!
From Bowie to Ol’ Dirty Bastard to the Velvet Underground, amyvisuals does a great job of selecting worthy albums for inclusion in the series and then pretty seamlessly Photoshopping the kittens into the cover images with the same picture quality as the originals, from the back-lit graininess of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. I to the stark, crisp clarity of New Order’s Low-Life!
(Via Flavorwire.com, by way of Chris [who is not actually a fan of kittens]!)
Things at the MDSPCA have been a bit up in the air the last few months, at least as far as the foster program goes, as they’ve transitioned from one foster coordinator to another. But happily I got the call yesterday, and am excited to introduce you all to our newest temporary tenants:
As per usual, the provided names left much to be desired; these two girls are half of a four-kitten litter, and every one of them got saddled with a ridiculous food name: Grits, Gravy (pictured above), Cocoa Puff (pictured below), and though I didn’t catch the fourth one’s name yesterday, I imagine it was something like Chicken-Fried Steak. So I’ve renamed the cutie above Buttercup because of the chocolatey and peanut buttery coloring of her fur.
This little one has been tentatively-named Butterscotch because of the markings on her head, but I’m not really feeling it, and am worried about the possible confusion that may arise. I’m thinking I might switch it to Toffey, but maybe I need to just move away from the food-based monikers altogether—think outside the bun, as it were.
Anyway, I’m sure there will be many more pix and vids of these two over the next couple of weeks while we fatten them up for surgery, so be sure to check back soon!
And don’t forget—enter HALLOWEEN10 at checkout through October 31st for 10% off your order(s)!
I was delighted to get an email yesterday from Elizabeth at Tenth Life, a St. Louis, MO-based cat rescue organization that focuses on treating abused and/or injured stray cats with special needs before adopting them out to forever-homes. A friend of her’s put her in contact with me after seeing my booth at Renegade Handmade a couple weekends ago in Chicago, and she very politely asked if it would be OK to name one of their new admissions after Fuzz Aldrin. Of course it would! 3-D Fuzz is pictured above. He’s had a rough go of it recently; Tenth Life’s vet believes Fuzz was clipped in the leg by a car a couple months back, which causes him to walk with a pronounced limp. So far he seems to be doing well, and following his upcoming neutering and microchipping, Fuzz will be available for adoption in St. Louis. C’mon, Cardinals/Rams/Blues fans—who could turn away a face like that?
To learn more about Tenth Life’s mission and how you can help (even from far away—Cash Rules Everything Around Us!), visit their website, and be sure to check out their video to meet some of their success stories.