Sunday Musings - almost my blogiversay

Happy Sunday everyone! Do you know what Thursday is? It's my blogiversay! I'll do a special blog for Thursday recapping the last year. I'm also working on a possible giveaway. I'll know fur sure tomorrow if I'm gonna be able to do that, so stay tuned! Also, in honor of my blogiversary, I've got a chip-in going trying to raise money for Duncan's Place. That's where Candy & EK came from. I'm trying to raise $500. I have over 1,000 Twitter followers. If only half donate $1 each, I'll meet my goal.

Edit: Got word today and it's official. I will be having a giveaway from the wonderful people at Nutro for my blogiversary. Come back Thursday for details.

We woke up to snow on the ground again this morning. It's supposed to be spring. We had no snow all winter and now we're getting snow. :( That's the way it is here. We'll go from winter into summer with practically no spring. But we get so much sun and so little really bad weather that I don't think I'd want to live anywhere else.

As you know, Candy got the stroller ride last week. Mom took lots of pictures, but for some reason most of them came out fuzzy, but these came out really good.

Yellow Headed Blackbird

Robin

The Colorado Rockies. Don't know which specific peak. Possibly Long's Peak.

Mom was real excited to get the picture of the yellow headed blackbird. They usually fly off before she can get the picture.

So that's it until Thursday. Make sure you come back then for my special blogiversary blog and (hopefully) give-away.

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.

Candy & EK Have Arrived!

My new fursibs have arrived. Mom picked them up on Friday from Duncan's Place.They are very little, and I guess they're cute. But boy have they taken over! They're constantly climbing on Mom and rubbing and purring on her, the little suck-ups. EK's climbing all over her right now while she's trying to type for me. They climb all over my cat tree and have usurped my little red tent. So far they haven't gotten in my stroller, but I bet that's just a matter of time. They haven't slept in Mom's bed yet, either, so that's still all mine, too.

 EK (short for Evel Knievel. And he's definitely evil.)

Candy. She's ok. She's quieter and doesn't bug me as much.










So far they don't seem very interested in toys, so my toys are still all mine! I did get Mom all to myself yesterday for #PPPawty so Mom could type and upload pictures for me. Mom's also been trying to give me special treats just for me, but I didn't eat them. Not sure which squirt wound up with my shrimps.

Speaking of toys, most of my favorite little toys have been missing for a long time. Mom looked all over for them. She even got a friend's kid to help her look under the furniture. She even looked under the fridge. No luck. Well yesterday, we heard all this squeaking and EK wasn't playing with my squeaky mouse on a stick toy. So Mom goes to see what he found and he was reaching under the little wine fridge. Mom moved it and there were all my toys! Over a dozen of them. I was so happy to see all my toys again. I guess squirts are good for something.

Anyway, Mom went crazy with the flashy box. There's lots of pictures and even some video. I'm in some of the pictures, too. Because of the video, I did a link this time to the album. Click on the picture below to see more pictures. Enjoy!

New Kitties

So far we've sold 25 copies of 'Summer at the Lake with Petie'. I'm not sure how much money I've raised because the website keeps some and Paypal takes some, but its around $70 and probably more. Copies are starting to arrive at pals homes. @LilyLuWhoT has gotten her copy. Mine should arrive tomorrow. As you know, my goal is 100 copies sold. If anyone has ideas how to sell more books, please DM me. The kitties at Duncan's Place and the humans caring for them really deserve the help. I did look into Amazon, but that would just make the books more expensive. I guess I need ideas how to publicize it better without being annoying about it.

Speaking of help, my wonderful friends, @whsker and @dashkitten, are not only getting a copy of Summer at the Lake with Petie, but they wrote about it in their blog: Dash Kitten's Mewsings, I was so surprised!. I think that was such a nice thing for them to do. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. Dash and his human are always writing about others and are always looking for ways to help everyone. They are some of the most thoughtful pals out there in the Anipal Twitterverse and the Cat Blogoshpere.

The other excitement this last week was Petie and Pandy's shower. The guys went hiking and the girls went shopping, and all kinds of interesting happened while we were out. Everyone had a wonderful time, and a few pals wound up in Twitter jail! That's all I'm gonna tell you. What happens in Twitter stays in Twitter!

*purrs and pawhugs*

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).

Barr Lake State Park

Mom took me someplace new today - Barr Lake State Park. This park has a nature reserve area (that pets aren't allowed in) and a part that has a boating dock. The trail around the lake is over 8 miles, but we just did a couple of miles. It may be fall on the calendar, but it was 90 degrees today and there's very little shade on the trail.






This is one of Mom's favorite parks because it has over 300 kinds of birds. I'm not sure I believe her because we didn't see hardly any birds. But we did see lots of these:

The water in the lake was very low. It's the end of the season and most of it has evaporated. In the spring the water comes practically up to the trail.

 We also saw some things I've never seen before. Mom said the little fuzzy one is called a woolly worm. What a funny name! The big one is called a horse. I have a horse pal on twitter, but I didn't know horses were this big and that a person could ride one.

There's more pictures. You can see them here: Barr Lake State Park. And here's a video. The video is just leaves, but listen real hard. You can hear the cicadas in the trees. It was really loud.

Like I said, it was hot and we didn't find much shade, so we didn't stay very long. Cooler weather is coming and I'm looking forward to longer outings and visiting more new places.

Sunday musings

Here it is Sunday night, and I haven't written my Sunday Musings yet. I was going to write about Blogpaws, but so many other pals have written about it that I don't know what to add, especially since they all write better than I do. I will say that I had a fabulous time, met some amazing and wonderful people, and learned a lot. My pictures are all in Facebook if you want to see them.

Packing for BlogPaws
BlogPaws Day 1
BlogPaws Day 2
BlogPaws Day3

This weekend I spent a lot of time at the #lakewithpetie. I had the idea that we could collect all the pictures from the weekends at the lake and make a picture book of them to sell for charity. @Petiethecat would pick the charity. I even talked to @thepetbooklady about it and she's offered to help. As usual, I got ahead of myself. I was saving the pictures people used from Twitpic and asking them if I could use them. Well I didn't think it through properly. I'd have no way of knowing what pictures were original and which were gotten from another source, or who to credit for the pictures. Also, a lot of the pictures are just too small to use. I get hold of an idea and I get a little overexcited and start running away with it. I'm nothing if not enthusiastic. MOL.

Spoke to Petie and he and his folks are ok with this project, so I'd still like to do it. I need to collect pictures from pals who have ones they want to contribute. I'd need a good size version of the pictures and assurance from the pals sending them that they own the pictures and can publish them. This way I'll know we're legal and I can give proper credit to the pals that contributed pictures.

If you have pictures to contribute to The Lake With Petie Memory Book, please send them to pumpkinpuddy@gmail.com. And remember, they have to be pictures you have the legal right to contribute. Sorry, the book won't have a picture of the alien ship cleaning up the campsite. Mulder already told me that was a borrowed picture. I'll let you all know what charity this is going to as soon as I hear from Petie. I'll know more about price and everything once I get it all figured out with the Pet Book Lady.

That's all for this week. I can't wait to get started on this project! Get your pictures in. I'd like to have the book ready in a month or so.

Update: We now have a charity. With Petie's approval, the money raised by selling the book will go to Duncan's Place Cat Sanctuary.

An invitation

It's almost summer here, and Mom says that summer in Colorado is just beautiful and everyone should see it. I haven't seen it yet myself cause I was born in the fall, but I'm very excited about it. I can't wait to explore summer here.

It would be so much fun to share the exploring. So I'd like to invite any of my pals that can travel by post to come and visit. Mom says she'll take us to lots of exciting places. But you have to like nature. Mom's favorite places to go are mostly outside. She says she likes to see critters when she goes exploring.