Pet Blogger Challenge 2017

Today we’re pleased to be joining the Pet Blogger Challenge for 2017, hosted by GoPetFriendly.com. This is the 7th annual challenge, but it’s our first time participating. We found it to be a great way to think about what we accomplished last year and what we want to do in the year ahead.

1. When did you start your blog and, for anyone who is just seeing it for first time, please provide a description of your site. Would you say your blog focuses more on sharing stories with your readers, or providing a resource for your audience?
We started blogging a little bit back in 2013 but didn’t get more serious about it until 2015–2016. The Cuddlywumps Cat Chronicles is all about cats in history, mystery, and culture. It is written by Miss Cuddlywumps, a fluffy-tailed calico cat who is both classically educated and familiar with mysteries. Miss C gets keyboarding help from author Roby Sweet, since paws are rather inefficient for typing. Together, we review books, movies, and apps, we interview cats and their people, and we write short features on cats in history or in the news. The Real Cats, Paisley and Webster, also make regular appearances.

2. What was your proudest blogging moment of 2016?
I redesigned the layout of the blog—changed the colors a little bit, made the page wider (allows for larger pictures), and created a new, custom header. The header especially was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. It’s so much better than just having the blog title up there, plus I can change it up for different holidays, which keeps it fresh.

3. Which of your blog posts was your favorite this year and why? (Please include a link.)
“Back to School Vocabulary Word: Pre-Furred.” This post was just a lot of fun to write and came from a sudden, unexpected burst of inspiration (where all the best ideas come from). I was just folding some laundry, noticing how all my clean clothes were already covered in pet fur…

4. Year after year, one goal that we all seem to share is that we want to reach more people. What one tool did you use or action did you take this year that had the most impact on increasing traffic to your blog?
I started participating regularly in blog hops, specifically Caturday Art, Friendly Fill-Ins, Pet Blogger Bloopers Round-up, and Sunday Selfies. Besides just being fun to get involved in, hops are a great way to meet other bloggers, and they give you something to blog about on certain days of the week or month, which is really helpful when you’re trying to find topics for 5, 6, or 7 days every week.

5. Which of your blog posts got the most traffic this year? (Please include a link.) Have you noticed any themes across your most popular posts?
“Our 6 Favorite Cat Cozy Mysteries of 2016.” Our book reviews usually do pretty well, and so do our Cat of the Week posts, where we highlight a senior cat in need of adoption.

6. What blog do you find most inspirational and how has it influenced your blog? (Please include a link.)
Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries & Meows. This was the very first pet blog I ever read, and it gave me the idea to start blogging. If I only have time to look at one blog on any given day, Melissa’s is the one I read. That sweet little tortie named Mudpie always makes me happy!

7. What is one thing your readers don’t know about you or your pets that would surprise them?
Miss C (who is a totally fictional cat, though sometimes I forget that) was not always a calico. She started out as a gray and white tuxedo cat when I began writing her first mystery. But every time a new idea for the book came into my mind, the cat that showed up was a calico. So I did some rewriting, and Miss C was born.

8. What is something you’ve learned this year that could help other bloggers?
If you keep putting up quality content, keep promoting on social media, keep engaging with readers and other bloggers, you will grow your readership.

9. What would you like to accomplish on your blog in 2017?
So many things… Obviously I’d like to attract new readers. I’d like to use social media more effectively, especially Facebook, which usually just frustrates me because I don’t use it enough to know how to work with it. And I want to do more to promote senior cat adoption and let people know how great it is to have a mature cat. I’m starting to think about doing things with video, but that is just a “baby idea” right now; it needs a lot more thought/work before it will amount to anything.

10. Now it’s your turn! You have the attention of the pet blogging community – is there a question you’d like answered, or an aspect of your blog that you’d like input on?
I’d love recommendations for working with Google Analytics. I have an account and look at it regularly, but I’m always left thinking, “Okay…So?”

Visit the other blogs listed below for their thoughts on 2016/2017:

Caturday Art: Smoky Webster

Today we join Athena's Caturday Art blog hop for the first time this year, with this image of Real Cat Webster:

To create this image, old SoLT used a Smoke effect in Lunapic and added a Sketchedy frame in PicMonkey.

Here's the original:

Words with Webster (Deflategate), Giveaway Winner, Plus Friendly Fill-Ins

It’s a busy day on the blog today! We have three items for you, so let’s jump right in with Webster’s word.

Words with Webster: Deflategate

Hey, everybody. Webster here. I really wasn’t going to have a word this week, but then an, um, incident happened Wednesday evening and Mommy said it was too good not to share. See, I was just trying to check out some neat stuff on top of Mommy’s desk, by way of the sofa and her balance-ball chair. She told me it probably wasn’t a good idea to do that, but I was feeling adventurous, and so onto the balance ball I went.

Have you ever tried to balance on one of those things? It is NOT easy.

A lot of things happened really fast then: I danced on top of the ball for 1.2 seconds, some stuff fell off the desk, I fell on the floor (landed on my feet!), Mommy laughed really hard (which I did not think was very nice). Everything seemed okay, but then this morning when Mommy went to work, she found this:

That crumpled green thing used to be a big ball you could sit on. Obviously it's not functioning anymore. And so my word for this week is “deflategate.” You may think this is just a football term, but for cats it applies to balance balls as well. Specifically, “deflategate” refers to all the grief that happens when your person discovers their chair is permanently deflated. It is A LOT of grief. If you want to mess up someone’s day, just destroy their office chair!

“Deflategate” can be a noun or an adjective. Here it is used in a sentence:

We had a whole big deflategate today because Mommy’s chair got broken.

I think you should all make sure you never have to use this word.

Giveaway winner!

Next, we are pleased to announce that Jamie R. has won the MCI print library. She will receive all four of our books, and we hope she enjoys them. Congratulations, Jamie, and thanks to all who entered!

Friendly Fill-Ins

And now it’s time for Friendly Fill-Ins, from 15andmeowing and McGuffy’s Reader. They are a fun way to learn a little bit about the authors of the blogs you read. All four questions are answered by old SoLT this week. The first two are from Ellen of 15andmeowing, and the next two are from Annie of McGuffy’s Reader.

1. I have seen Michael Jackson play in concert. It was in the ‘80s at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. Sad to say, I really don’t remember anything about the concert.

2. I would like to attend any concert at the Black Rock Center near where we live. They have classical, jazz, bluegrass, and rock concerts in a small setting. I used to go to five or six concerts a season, but it just hasn’t been in the budget lately. Maybe next year!

3. In the dead of Winter, I try to keep my skin from flaking away completely. It is a hard battle.

4. The main ringer on my cell phone is The Pink Panther Theme.

The Egyptian Mau: Pharaoh of the Living Room

A "smoke" Egyptian Mau shows off the breed's athleticism--and spots.
Photo by Borcard Serge [CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0],
via Wikimedia Commons.

 The Egyptian Mau is a handsome cat with a lot of history, and you know we’re all about the history here. Egyptian marshes, world wars, a Russian princess, a Syrian Embassy, and an Indian zookeeper all figure into the lore of this breed, which we are pretty sure could be the subject of a blockbuster movie. But first, just what is an Egyptian Mau?

Physical characteristics of the Egyptian Mau

The Mau is one of only two naturally spotted breeds of domestic cat (the other is the Bahraini Dilmun Cat; I know—I’d never heard of this cat either, but as the name implies, they’re from Bahrain). The Mau's randomly spotted coat is quite handsome and hard to look away from, as are their “gooseberry green” eyes. They have distinctive facial markings that include an “M” across the brow and “mascara” lines on the cheeks. One story says that Egyptian women copied the cats’ pattern when applying their eye makeup. Their coat color can be silver, bronze, or smoke.

A bronze Egyptian Mau. You can clearly see the
"M" on the forehead and the "mascara" lines
on the cheek.
Photo by liz west,
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons.

These cats are medium sized and are known to be intelligent, athletic, and agile. They are loyal to their humans and generally enjoy interacting with them, though they can seem aloof, especially with those they don’t know. Egyptian Maus love to play with toys. They have even been known to retrieve… Oh, and sometimes they wag their tails. Check out the video below to hear some sounds from a Mau:

From Egypt to New York, by way of Rome

Can you spot the spotted cat in this fresco?

Maybe ancient Egyptians used cats as retrievers.

Fresco from the Tomb of Nebamun, Theban necropolis.

After 1450 BC.

Now in the British Museum.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mau meant “cat” or “sun” in ancient Egypt, and spotted cats bearing a striking resemblance to today’s cat appear in Egyptian art going all the way back to about 1900 BC. Sometimes they appear in domestic scenes, where they are often shown with a woman, and in a wall painting from Thebes, the cats are shown with human hunters in the marshes, where they seem to be retrieving birds. Spotted cats are also seen in Greek and Roman art, notably in the Pompeii mosaic seen below. Nice-looking cat!

Jumping ahead several hundred years… The breed was known in continental Europe in the early 20th century, but their numbers declined as a result of the two world wars, and they were in danger of being lost completely by the end of World War II.

Surely you can find him now.
Detail from the marsh fresco.
Public Domain, via
Wikimedia Commons

Check out the spotted cat in this Roman mosaic
from the House of the Faun in Pompeii.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Enter the Russian princess. She was actually an exiled princess named Natalie Troubetsky. She lived in Rome in the early 1950s and learned of the Egyptian Mau. The cat captivated her, and she acquired two of them, a black male and silver female. Stories vary, with some saying the princess first encountered the Mau while she was in Egypt, and she imported two of them to Italy. Another story says that a little boy gave her a kitten in a box, and this kitten spurred her interest in the breed. At any rate, the princess had a female named Lulu and a male named Gregorio. She later imported another male, Geppa, from Egypt by way of the Syrian Embassy (or so the story goes).

The princess bred her cats, and when she immigrated to the United States in 1956, she brought along three cats that had resulted from this breeding. She went to New York City, where she started the cattery called Fatima. Egyptian Maus from the princess’s cats are called “traditionals.”

A new line, a bright future

There is a problem with breeds that are based on only a few individuals: inbreeding eventually weakens the breed’s overall health. The modern Egyptian Mau in the United States started with just those three cats Princess Troubetsky imported, and new blood was needed to strengthen and expand the breed.

Enter the Indian zookeeper…

The so-called “Indian Line” began with two Maus that were born in Egypt and then adopted by a zookeeper in India. They were imported to the United States in 1980 by the breeder Jean Mill. These cats added some diversity to the breed’s gene pool. With careful breeding, Egyptian Maus have become a healthy breed.

Today, Egyptian Maus create a stir in the show ring and delight humans with their playful, loyal nature. They remain rare, and are all the more special for that.

Sources

“The Egyptian Mau.” (2002). Cat Fanciers Almanac. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau/EgyptianMauArticle.aspx

“Egyptian Mau.” (n.d.). Cat Fanciers Association. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau.aspx

Pickeral, Tamsin. (2013). “The Egyptian Mau.” In The Elegance of the Cat: An Illustrated History. Hauppage, NY: Barron’s Educational.

 Wydro, Bonnie, and Melanie Morgan. (1999). “The Egyptian Mau.” 1999 CFA Yearbook. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau/1999EgyptianMauArticlepage1.aspx

A silver Egyptian Mau kitten. Such lovely coloring!
Photo by Svetlana Valiiskaya, via Adobe Stock.

Cat of the Week: Coral in New York City

Each week in this space, we feature a senior cat in need of adoption or sponsorship. Please remember all the great older cats in shelters. They make great companions, and they (probably) won’t climb the curtains! Adopt a senior cat, and give him or her the best years of their lives.

Today we’re introducing Coral, a 7-year-old tabby with beautiful tiger stripes. Coral was discovered pregnant and wandering the streets of Brooklyn back in 2010. Fortunately, she was savvy enough to follow a Bideawee staff member, who did what Bideawee does and brought her to the shelter. There, Coral had her kittens, who were later all adopted. Their mom, though, is still waiting for that special someone to take her home.

Coral is described as smart, feisty, and confident (in other words, she can be kind of a handful!). She would do best as the only pet in a home with an experienced cat person. Just look at how she eats up the love in this video:

And check out what a fantastic mom she was:

Learn more about Coral here.

Can’t adopt but still want to help Coral and other cats at Bideawee? Learn how you can sponsor a pet, become a Bideawee member, or make a donation.

Cat Classics: The Curse of the Cat People

First, I should tell you that if you are interested in seeing this film strictly for its cat-related content, you should watch the first couple of minutes, during which we see a black cat in a tree, and then you should go do something else. As it turns out, The Curse of the Cat People does not have anything to do with cats and does not have much to do with the earlier film Cat People.

What’s wrong with having an imaginary friend?

This 1944 movie was produced by Val Lewton and stars Simone Simon, Kent Smith, and Jane Randolph. The story centers around Amy Reed, daughter of Oliver and Alice, whom you may remember from Cat People. Six-year-old Amy isn’t like all the other children. Instead of playing with the others, she spends a lot of time imagining different things, chasing after butterflies…things like that. That seems perfectly normal to us, but it is driving her father nuts, as it reminds him too much of his first wife, Irena, who was from a village of “cat people” and who ended up dead because of it. Okay, sometimes Amy confuses make-believe with reality, but she is only six.

Anyway, Amy is having trouble making real friends, so—and this is where things get a little weird—she ends up befriending the ghost of her father’s first wife. She also befriends an aging actress who lives with her grown daughter (but who she insists is not her daughter) in the neighborhood’s requisite spooky house. (The house includes a taxidermy wildcat with a bird in its mouth, so technically that is two cats in the film.)

The almost scary parts

Honestly, we kept waiting for the Big Scary Thing to happen in this film, for the giant cat to scratch Amy and curse her to become a cat person…but it never quite rises to that level. This is not to say that there aren’t spooky parts: the scene where the old actress tells Amy the story of the Headless Horseman, for example, and the later scene when Amy runs across a snow-covered bridge hearing loud hoof beats behind her are kind of spooky.

Our verdict

We expected The Curse of the Cat People to have something to do with cats, or at least to have something more to do with Cat People than it does. In that respect, we found it disappointing. Taken on its own terms, though, it is an enjoyable film. It touches on themes of the real vs. the imagined and how a father’s fears affect his daughter. There is some mother-daughter stuff in there too, between the old actress and her daughter, but we thought that story wasn’t as fully explored as it might have been, and we still are not sure why the actress insisted her real daughter was dead (more reality vs. imagination, perhaps?).

I am withholding one paw because of this movie’s almost complete lack of cats or cat-related material. Otherwise, we think The Curse of the Cat People is worth watching, though we did not enjoy it nearly as much as Cat People.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good movie; two paws is for a great movie. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the movie through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account.

Sunday Selfie: New Year's Eve Excess Ends in...Cone of Shame

Hello, everyone, and happy new year! We are pleased today to join the Sunday Selfies blog hop, hosted by our friends at The Cat on My Head. Well, everyone is pleased except Resident Dog Layla, who is the subject of this week's selfie. Layla is currently in the Cone of Shame, but not due to New Year's Eve excess specifically. It's more excess in general that landed her in her current predicament.

Like to leap over gates? This could happen to you!

See, a couple of nights ago, Layla opted to leap over the pet gate in the middle of the night instead of staying downstairs with old SoLT like she's supposed to. While leaping, she hit her hind paw on the gate and tore one of her nails off right down to the quick. This resulted in a trip to the vet, who wasted no time in producing the Cone of Shame.

The Real Cats thought it was fascinating to see their dog in a cone. Unfortunately old SoLT did not have a camera handy to capture their reaction. Let's just say it was priceless.

Layla has to wear the cone only when the people aren't around to watch her and stop her from licking her wound, and it should only be a week or two before she's off it completely. From now on, old SoLT will not close the gate at night. She will just close her bedroom door.

Sometimes, life "cones" you, leaving you
disoriented, sad, and wondering what the
heck just happened.