Adopt the Internet Day

Today is Adopt the Internet Day and Petfinder.com's 15th birthday!

You all know that I was rescued from a trailer park by my mom's friend and given to mom, but not all kitties (or dogs for that matter) are as lucky as I am. Some pets need help finding new homes like EK and Candy. They're both from Duncan's Place.  Duncan's Place lists their available cats on Petfinder.com. Mom looked at lots of cats on Petfinder.com before deciding on EK and Candy.

Did you know that Petfinder.com has other pets besides cats and dogs? They have rabbits, horses, fish, birds, and all kinds of wonderful fuzzy furriends waiting for someone to love them. If your home needs a new addition, Petfinder.com is the place to start.

If you're full up, please join the blog hop and help spread the word.

Natural Disaster in Japan

My dear furriends. We've all heard about and seen the images from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I posted in Twitter asking where we could send money to help the animals that are victims of this disaster. It was easy to find links of where to send money and things to help people, but I couldn't find anyone focusing on saving animals. @kurousanohaha, who lives in Japan, saw my tweet and was kind enough to send me this link: Animal Refuge Kansai. Edit - just did my donation. It does the donation in yen, so you'll have to look up the exchange rate to figure out how many yen equal what you want to donate in your currency.

I know there have been a lot of appeals lately for money, but this has been a bizarre year for unusual natural disasters all over the world. My mom's old, and she can't remember ever seeing so many natural disasters happening in so many places so quickly, one after the other, like there's been the last year or so. I really hope we can all dig down a little deeper and find an extra dollar or two to send. There are a few thousand of us anipals here on Twitter, and if we each just send a dollar that would be a few thousand to help save animals suffering because of the earthquake.

You can also give money to the SPCA International. And I just found out from Life with Cats that the American Humane Association is also collecting to funds targeted for Japan.

More sites with links:
Curls and Swirlz, Life with Cornish Rex Cats
Japan Animal Aid
The Conscious Cat - This blog has a bunch of links to places giving help. Some the same as what's already here and some are different. Besides, who doesn't want to meet a new blog pal? Check it out!

It's Saturday and that means Blog Hop! Join the fun:

Okey's Promise: Art for a Cause

Ok folks. Pay attention cuz this is important. Anipals and their humans know about the link between violence against animals escalating into violence against people. Unfortunately, there's too many people who don't know about it or don't really understand or believe it. Well, @BZTAT is working really hard to do something about it. The details are here: 
Okey's Promise: Art for a Cause
It's really important that you act on this quickly. @BZTAT has to get pledges of $5,000 or no one's pledges count. Unfortunately, she still needs almost $1,000 and has to raise it by noon EST on January 27. That's a lot of money to raise in a really short amount of time. There's an awful lot of us out there that know how important this is. Thousands of us in fact. If each of us gave just $1 we could make that goal. So get over to 
Okey's Promise: Art for a Cause
and donate today. Tell your furriends, your relatives, everyone you know.

Sunday Musings

We must be the luckiest kitties in the whole world! We got wonderful stuff for Yule. Take a look!



A couple of these are videos so you may need to go to Picasa to see them.

Our pal Sweet Praline is pawticipating in Paw it Forward. We told her we wanted to pawticipate, too. So for our Paw it Forward we're gonna give some of our toys to the local shelter. We were gonna take them today, but we were talking to @BabyPatches at the #catmasweve pawty and found out her mama put lots of stuff on sale for after Catmas. So Mom ordered some more stuff from Nip and Bones to add to it. When that stuff gets here, Mom's gonna take it to the local shelter. I think we'll send Evie to snoopervise and report back on the visit.

This has been an interesting year. It started out kind of iffy. As some of you remember, we almost didn't get to keep our pretty house. But the bank people finally saw sense and fixed things so we could afford to keep paying.

Then in the summer, Mom went to Massychewsits. She was gone a long time and I was very lonely without her even though I had a kittysitter. So when Mom came home, I got antsy every day when she went to work. I was always afraid she'd leave me alone again for many days. Mom decided I needed fursibs so I'd never be lonely again. At first I wasn't thrilled with the idea, but as usual, Mom's right. Now that the squirts have been here a while I really like them. And I love having playmates. Even though I like them I'm still gonna call them squirts. MOL

We made some wonderful new furriends this year, but lost some of them before we even really got to know them. I miss Inigo very much. I'm glad Ryker decided to tweet from OTRB because otherwise I'd miss him something terrible. And there were Sniffie, Mookie, Hollie, and so many others. It's been a very sad fall. I wish we didn't ever have to be sad, but just the fact that we're here, blogging, tweeting, and making and losing furriends just shows how lucky we are. Every time I lose a furriend, I think of all the poor animals that don't have homes or furriends at all. Or worse, homes where they're abused. The fact that we're all loved the way we are truly does make us the luckiest animals in the world.

'Summer at the Lake with Petie' did fairly well. 43 copies sold, allowing me to donate over $160 to Duncan's Place. My goal was 100 copies, but I guess that wasn't a realistic goal and I'm pretty happy with how the book did.

Mom's coming up on a very busy time at work, so I'm not gonna get much computer time the next couple of months. Please forgive me if I don't comment on your blogs. I am coming by to visit even when I don't let you know I've been there. I do want to keep up on what's going on with my pals.

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope the coming year brings peace and love to everyone, especially those that don't have it right now. I wish everyone in the world had as much love in their lives as we have in ours.

The Excitement Continues.

The excitement from last week continued right through this week. I got great holiday cards from @Ryker_Tyker & family and from @DuchessCrabtree. I also got greeting cards and TokiPoki cards from @Mariodacat, @Yoda_the_Dog, and @BorisKitty. The Pink Kritter Kondo Deluxe that I won from Kritters that Twitter came this week, too. I can't wait for nice weather to try it out.

Then yesterday the doorbell rang and rang. The first package had the Cafe Britt coffee in it that I won from @Petethecat at #pawpawty. Mom hasn't tried the coffee yet because she has a cold and can't taste anything. She wants to wait until she can taste properly before trying the coffee. The next package was a present from Amanda from Greenies - a huge bag of tuna flavored Greenies. I couldn't believe it!

Later in the afternoon Mom went to the mailbox to get the mail and came back with more packages! The beautiful bear I won from @I_am_fuzzy showed up. That was really a surprise because Evie (that's the bear's name) came all the way from England! Her compartment even got opened in customs and still only took a week to get here. On top of that, the necklace for Candy that I won from @MizzBassie came yesterday, too. What a day!

There are too many pictures for me to stick them in here, so I just put one picture. If you click on it, it links to the album with all the pictures and even a couple of videos.

I know there's more excitement coming because Mom's been hiding stuff from us for Catmus. If we aren't the most spoiled rotten kitties on the planet, I don't know who is! I sometimes feel guilty because I know there are so many animals that need lots of help and don't even have safe places to live or food to eat. I purr and purray for them every day and do what I can to help. I think after Catmus we need to go through all the toys and take some to the local shelter.

Happy Holidays my furriends. Lots of love to everyone.

Thankful Thursday

So far I've sold 34 copies of Summer at the Lake with Petie. Today I received my first payment in the amount of $119. I haven't been paid for all the copies yet so there's more money coming (but not until next month)! I took great joy in going to Duncan's Place and clicking on their donate button and donating that money. As both Blurb.com and Duncan's Place both use Paypal, it was very easy.

Ordering is very easy, too. Just click on the picture below and it will take you to the order page!

The deadline for ordering in time for Christmas in the U.S. is December 12. Blurb.com delivers all over the world, so don't think you can't order if you live outside the U.S.

Thank you to everyone who has or is going to order Summer at the Lake with Petie. And Happy Holidays to all!

Random Stuff on a Tuesday

Guess what I got today! A picture of GinaTheMinPin reading 'Summer at the Lake with Petie'. How cool is this?

Catching up on my reading

And another wonderful friend, @BunnyJeanCook, has written about the book on her blog, Bunny's Blog. Now, if you've never visited Bunny's Blog, you should. Unlike yours truly, Bunny tackles important stuff on her blog. Here's just a couple of the things she's written about:

Help Pawcurious Help Homeless Pets
Adopt a Less-Adoptable Pet Week

I hope you'll all add Bunny's Blog to your reading list!

If anyone else wants to send me a picture of themselves reading Summer at the Lake with Petie, please do! Maybe I'll make a whole page of the pictures.

In other news, @BorisKitty is still collecting green papers to help Peanut and Kiki's families with the v-e-t bills. These poor kitties were shot with a pellet gun and need lots of v-e-t help. And that means lots and lots of green papers. So help out anyway you can, even if it's just one or two little papers.

I'm sorry to say that I'm going to end on a sad note here. Yet another beautiful angel, Whiska Pusskat, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge to get his wings. You can read about him here: Whiska Pusskat: In Memorium. I hope you'll all stop by and say a word or two to his family.

There have been so many furriends crossing the bridge lately that I'm thinking I should add an 'In Memorium' page to my blog. Except I'm wondering if that's just a little morbid. What do you think?

In case we don't get to talk to each other again before Thursday, Happy Thanksgiving!

Edit: Here's @smokey8's sisfer, Princess.

She's been doing a lot of reading. Looks like she just finished not just  'Summer at the Lake with Petie', but also 'welcom to my werld' by my pal Henry Steiff (@henryandfriends). Looks like Princess is quite the reader. Now all she needs are copies of @maxthequiltcat's book, 'The Zen of Max' and @CheshireK's book,'Please Send Money' (which I read and thoroughly enjoyed).

Speaking of  'The Zen of Max', I won a copy from the drawing on Max's blog! I'll be doing a review of it after I read it. Can't wait!

A Book About Love

We've spent a lot of time in #pawcircles and porchsitting lately. We've seen too many furriends cross the Rainbow Bridge in a very short time. When our furriends cross the bridge, the circles are for love and comfort. But sometimes, the #pawcircles and porchsitting result in a furriend getting better. This book is about a success story. This book is about the miracles that love can work.

As we all know, our pal Petie (@Petethecat) had a difficult summer. When we heard our furriend was sick, we all did what anipals do in times of trouble - we banded together to help Petie get better. And Petie did get better! In fact, he's getting married very soon to the wonderful Pandora (@Pandafur).

@toughteddybear with his copy of
'Summer at the Lake with Petie'

It was just an amazing summer, and I wanted something to remember it by. I thought others might like to have something, too. So I put together a book: 'Summer at the Lake with Petie'. I gathered together stories, poems, pictures, memories, and whatever else pals wanted to submit to the book. There is a link in the sidebar to order the book and you can see sample pages there. The book is getting rave reviews from everyone who has already gotten a copy.

This book is special not just because it's about our love for Petie and the miracles that love can work. The proceeds of this book benefit the cat sanctuary that Candy and EK came from  - Duncan's Place. It's a wonderful group of people who foster cats in their homes, help them find furever homes, and help families down on their luck keep their pets with them. I wrote about them in an earlier blog - Blog the Change - Duncan's Place.

One thing we've all said over and over the last several weeks is how lucky our now lost pals were to have had loving homes. I want all the kitties at Duncan's Place to have that, too. Selling 'Summer at the Lake with Petie' is one of the projects I have going on trying to raise money to help them take care of and find homes for the cats in their care. My goal is to sell 100 copies of the book. So far, 30 copies have been sold, so there's still a long way to go.

I want to thank some pals who have been helping to spread the word about Summer at the Lake with Petie:

Rumblepurr put a link up on his blog: Rumblebum.

Whskr And Dash wrote a blog article about it on their blog and plan on writing another: Dash Kitten's Musings.

Blind Maximus wrote a blog entry and put up a widget for ordering Summer at the Lake with Petie on his blog, Adventures of a Blind Dog in a Big World.

I do have the best furriends! If anyone else is interested in putting a link or a widget on your blog, let me know. I'll send you the code.

I also have a chip-in on my blog for pals who want to donate. Or you can go to Duncan's Place web site and donate there. Whether you order Summer at the Lake with Petie or donate through my chip in or directly on their site, I hope you'll choose to do something, no matter how small, to help Duncan's Place. I want every cat to be as lucky as I've been.

Much love to my furriends,
Pumpkin (@Pumpkinpuddy)

Thankful Thursday

We been losing a lot of pals. The lastest was our pal @Ryker_Tyker. @MaggieTKat wrote a lovely blog about him and you can read it here: Remembering @Ryker_Tyker.

This may seem like an odd way to start a Thankful Thursday post, but all these losses  lately reminded me how grateful I am for all the wonderful friends I've made since I started twittering, blogging, and being on Facebook. Anipals and their humans are amazingly loving, giving, and so supportive of one another. Everyone I've met here works in some way to make life better for anipals and their humans, even if it's just by giving an animal a home.

I'm especially thankful for @Mulder_cat & Scully_Cat and @Staffpurrson. Mom knows @Staffpurrson from a different online community and he introduced Mom & me this wonderful community that we otherwise would never have known existed.

I also want to thank @Rumblepurr. He was the first one to find my blog the very first day I posted it. I don't know how, but he did. And then he wrote a blog introducing me and my new blog, and the rest is history!

So I just want to make sure you all know how much I care about you all and how glad I am I found you all. We sometimes forget to say that and just sort of take each other for granted. I wanted to make sure that my online friends know that I never take you for granted even when I forget to say it. Now I have to make sure I let my offline friends know it, too.

Hugs, purrs, smoochies and lots of love to all of you.

News!

All kinds of news this week. The first item is that the book about #lakewithpetie is finished and ready to order. It's called Summer at the Lake with Petie and is available here: Summer at the Lake with Petie. You can see a preview at the right. I was thrilled at how many pals sent stuff for me to put in the book! There are poems, stories, pictures, memories, and even original artwork. We have some very talented anipals in our community. Not only is this a wonderful way to remember the amazing summer we had, but the proceeds are going to Duncan's Place cat sanctuary. It will make a great Crispmouse present for your humans, so buy lots of copies!

Duncan's Place cat sanctuary is also where my brofurs are coming from. Cathy at Duncan's Place cat sanctuary sent me more pictures of them.

I finally have names for them. The cream colored one is gonna be Evel Kneivel and just EK for short. We've been told he's a bit of a daredevil. The grey and white one is gonna be Bandit because he looks like he's wearing a mask. Mom's picking them up Friday night!


Edit: Just found out from Cathy at Duncan's Place - turns out the grey & white one is a girl. So instead of 2 brofurs I'm gonna have a sisfur and a brofur. Cathy called her Babette and I think I'm just gonna call her that and not change her name again. Bad enough everyone thought she was a boy and called her Bob all these weeks. I'm not gonna change her name yet again.

So that's the good news. Now the sad news. We lost our good friend, Gunner, this week. He crossed the bridge on Thursday. PepiSmartDog escorted him across the bridge and arranged a wonderful welcome banquet for him. The banquet was held at Nipclub so that all the anipals could see Gunner off and wish him a good crossing. It was a wonderful banquet for a wonderful pal.

That's if for this week. Next week I'll have lots of news after the brofurs get here. Wish me luck! Smoochies!

Blog the Change - Duncan's Place

Pumpkin's Mom here. Pumpkin's letting me take over her blog for today.

I started this blog just for fun. It never even occurred to me that it would be anything other than fun. About the same time I started this blog I got involved in the Twitter Anipal community and started reading other pals blogs. I saw what others were doing with their blogs and with the connections they made through Twitter. I decided I needed to learn more about using social networking to help others and went to BlogPaws West 2010. I came away from BlogPaws determined to do what I could to help. I'm still going to have fun with my blog, but I'm also going to try to do some good with it.

I contacted some shelters letting them know I was looking for someplace to sponsor on my blog. It was amazing that none of the places got back to me. I finally had success when I contacted Duncan's Place. Duncan's Place is a cat sanctuary started by Cathy Campbell. They don't have a facility, so they foster cats in homes until they can adopt them out. Their mission is to make sure every cat in their community has home. I think that's a pretty awesome mission.

From Cathy: "Duncan's Place is named after my late beloved kitty. He was my first cat,and a lot of little furry lives owe a lot to him. Duncan was a Scottish Fold and was a rescue, too. I now have another Fold, Ainsley, who is also a rescue. The neat thing about Folds is that they can all trace their ancestry back to the same female Suzie, so Ainsley and Duncan are related."

I had a nice long talk yesterday with Cathy and asked her some questions. I was really curious about how she was able to run a successful cat sanctuary without a facility. It turns out she does manage to do it -  and quite well, too. Since 2008 when Duncans Place opened, they've rescued 133 and adopted out 113 cats. Not bad for a small operation with no building of its own.

Here are the questions I asked and her answers. Unfortunately I'm not great at taking notes, so the answers are all my paraphrasing and not direct quotes from Cathy.

Q: What happens to cats you can't place?
A: They stay in foster care until they're adopted. Sometimes they're adopted by the family that fosters them. None of the cats have ever been sent to another shelter because it couldn't be placed. They also try not to move the cats around to different fosters so the cats have nice, stable, comfy homes where they're cared for as part of the family until they find their forever home. Duncan's Place is a no-kill sanctuary, and cats stay in foster care until they find homes.

Q: Is the sanctuary how you support yourself or do you have another job, too?
A: Cathy is not supported by the sanctuary. She works as a vet tech and also as a massage therapist, both for humans and for animals. How she finds the time to run the sanctuary and coordinate supply distribution, listing the animals for adoptions, arranging adoptions, making sure all the cats are properly cared for, keeping up the website, getting donations, and doing all the other things that need to be done is amazing! I don't think I could do it.

Q: Do the fosters supply everything for the cats or do they get supplies from the Sanctuary?
A: Both. Duncan's Place has some extremely generous donors that give them lots of supplies. The foster parents buy some things themselves and the rest comes from the food and other items donated to Duncan's Place. These supplies are also distributed to families that need help feeding their pets and also to people helping to feed feral cat colonies.

Q: Do you find it's harder to get donations without a facility?
A: It's more difficult to get donations from the general public, but they've had some success getting donations from some corporations and some of the local businesses. Here is a list of some of the corporate donations they've received.

• Merrick Pet Food
• Avoderm Pet foods
• Drinkwell
• Bach's Flower Essences
• Catit Drinking fountains(Hagen pet company)
• Hartz
• Dr. Esley's Precious cat litter
• Idexx laboratories(FIV/FeLV/HWE tests)
• Home Depot(shed & cat enclosure)
• Lumber Liquidators(donated laminate flooring)
• Tiki Pet Products

That's a very impressive list for an organization that hasn't been around that long. And impressive as that list is, it still doesn't cover all the costs they incur. There's an equally impressive list of individual donors, but they still need help. Caring for so many cats and trying to help people in the community who need assistance caring for their pets takes a lot of resources.

Q: Is it hard to place the cats without a facility where people can just come and see them?
A: It is a little harder when people have to make appointments. On the other hand, people who make appointments are more serious about adopting. Out of 113 adoptions, only 3 cats have been returned. That seems like a pretty good track record to me!

Q: Would you like to have a facility someday?
A: Yes. Cathy would like to have a facility where the cats could be cared for in a cage-free environment. She doesn't want a large place, just a small one where the cats could get enough individual attention and be cared for in a loving environment until they find their forever homes.

I learned something about cats in foster care, too. Since they live as part of the family and interact with everyone in the household (including kids and other pets), they tend to adapt well to their new homes after adoption. I'd never thought about this before. All my cats came from friends whose cats had kittens, or were rescued from the street.

Duncan's place is about finding homes for cats. Sometimes that means helping families in distress keep their pets with them. This can be help with spaying or neutering, vaccinations, food and litter, or whatever else they can think of to keep cat and family together.

They also work with Northern Colorado Friends of Ferals. They help with the trap, neuter, release program. They've also taken in ferals that were young enough to socialize and helped them find homes.

Most of you already know about my first project to help the sanctuary - The Lake With Petie Memory Book. Pals have been sending me pictures, stories, poems, and memories to put in the book. The proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to Duncan's Place. I was hoping to have the book finished by the end of the month, but I'm waiting for one of the contributors to come back from vacation, so the book may not be ready until November. I'm still taking submissions, so if you want to add anything DM Pumpkinpuddy and I'll send you the email address to send it to. Please remember that you must have the right to publish whatever you send me. We used a lot of cute stuff that was copyrighted for #lakewithpetie tweets. That's considered fair use. But since this book is going to be sold, we cannot use that stuff without violating copyrights, so be careful what you send.

I've also signed on with Sponsered Tweets. Watch for the hashtag #ad on my tweets. For every #ad tweet link that gets clicked, I earn money. All money earned from ad clicks will be donated to Duncan's place. (@Boriskitty is doing the same thing for the places he supports, so please click on links in his ads, too.)

Sorry this is so long. Now you know where Pumpkin gets if from! Check out the Duncan's Place website, and if you can, make a donation. You can find them at duncansplace.org. You can also find Duncan's Place on Facebook (Duncans Place).