A box arrived yesterday morning. The UPS guy delivered it into my hands and the boys milled close by, wrapping themselves around my legs in anticipation of the delights to come. I knew what was in the box. The boys, Andy and Dougy, just knew it was a box, and, you know, “We are cats. Boxes are us!”
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The boys wanted that box, now, and they wanted it empty for their inspection. Dougy sniffed the box for all the wonderful scents it picked up in its existence and the long journey to our house. Andy waited for his turn. If nothing else, Andy and Dougy mostly respected each other’s inspection time. There were smells aplenty!
Excitement at our house yesterday: The UPS guy left a surprise treat! It involves Cats At The Bar. What?!
“Later, we can climb in it, too! Box fun!” said Dougy, my box addicted kitty. (Andy isn’t quite as obsessive about them.)
Aw, the table…! Thanks to the cats, I never can keep it organized for long. It’s my letter addressing and stamping spot. I put magazines there till I can read them. Mail I need to sort through plops down there. Kitty treats. Yep, there. And more.
Kitty cats, for example. And they create chaotic messes, knock things off the table, walk where I eat. Ick! You can sanitize, but you know where kitty paws have been.
And that’s Dougy sneaking a closer look at the contents, from the top of the table! Dang kitty! I set the contents of the box on the table, one by one. Dougy left the box to Andy so he could personally inspect the contents.
They came through in good shape! Each was wrapped in a yard of bubble wrap, a treat for me!
By now, the element of surprise about the box contents must be unbearable. Oh, you’ve seen the mugs two photos back…. Um. Never mind! That’s the power of kitties: You lose track of everything else, and people wonder if you actually can function in real society with your cat obsession!
Aren’t they fun, the mugs? And two of them aren’t even cats, though I grant that’s tokenism on my part. They still are fun! Squirrels and doggies are fun. Trust me.
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Well, you can’t have too many cats, and Cats At The Bar, a Canadian blog, features 18 of them! Yes, one family has that many cats (and one dog!), and the man (T. von Kapherr) who posts this blog always features great photos of his cats being cats…with hilarious captions.
You know us cat people. We put words in our little sweeties’ mouths, and they always are clever, fun, wise, and have great cattitude. We and other cat people chortle with glee when we share our kitties’ bon mots.
What clever little animals they are and they eat mice and other pests that invade our places! They inspire art and other things.
For a treat, check out the source of this hilarity, catsatthebar.org . I love the quirky humor, the beautiful cats, and, now, a chance to add a few more mugs to my critter mug collection.
Great mugs! I’m wondering how you keep all that stuff on top of the table. I have a cat dedicated to bringing all things located above floor level to floor level. Anything under five pounds hits the floor.
I’m having one of those days where technology is beating me to a pulp. I thought I posted a response to your comment, but don’t see it. I suppose when I post this, then go to my post, I’ll see TWO responses to your comment. It’s been that sort of day!
That said, yes, those are great mugs! I don’t usually buy new mugs designed by other people because I have so many mugs now I could have a yard sale. I’m slowly moving toward only Andy, Dougy, and Louie the ginger cat mugs (he was the start of my cat mug obsession…!), but these mugs with Elayne’s quirky, fun drawings definitely are worth adding to the collection! I’ll use them for juice most likely since I make one large mug of coffee a day, and that has to be drunk in Andy or Dougy mugs, by contract with Andy and Dougy as a condition for allowing me to use their images. Spoiled cats! They’ll get use by company, too, since not everyone wants a 15 oz./44.4cl mug of liquid of any sort.
Such a lovely post!… I <3 those mugs too…
Last but not least…I have nominated you for an Excellence Award. Please check out the nomination at the end of this post:
https://aquileana.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/greek-mythology-nemesis-the-goddess-of-revenge/
Best wishes, Aquileana 😀
Thank you, though I confess I am not one to get involved in the award business. I’ve posted my feeling on that in an earlier blog.
The essence of my objection is the chain letter aspect of nominating 10 more people. I feel bad saying this to anyone who has the thoughtfulness to show appreciation for these posts, but the math quickly shows there aren’t enough people on the earth beyond Level 10.
LEVEL~~~~Nominators~~~~~~Nominees
~~1…….1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~10
~~2…….10~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~100
~~3…….100~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1,000
~~4…….1,000~~~~~~~~~~~~10,000
~~5…….10,000~~~~~~~~~~~100,000
~~6…….100,000~~~~~~~~~~1,000,000
~~7…….1,000,000~~~~~~~~10,000,000
~~8…….10,000,000~~~~~~~100,000,000
~~9…….100,000,000~~~~~~1,000,000,000
~10…….1,000,000,000~~~~10,000,000,000
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. Glad you like the mugs. Elayne is a wonderful artist. 🙂
I’m really pleased with the mugs and the boys think the box is meowderful! And, yes, Elayne is a wonderful artist. She has a delightful way of teasing a laugh out of a few squiggly lines!
True, she does. My favorite is the facial expressions she’s able to capture. They really are my pests to a tee. 🙂
Thanks to your excellent ability to capture cats being expressive, I can say in all honesty I know what you mean and agree totally!
Which is probably why I toss out a lot of shots. I’m so busy looking at the faces, I don’t see the person in the background with his finger in his ear. 😀
By the way, I couldn’t help noticing, you don’t use categories on your posts, only tags. If you put for example Cats as a category you’d get a lot more exposure. 😉
I’ll give that a try. I have had a slow but steady increase in follows since I rethemed my blog as “surviving retirement with two cats” and went from occasional posts to nearly daily. I feel the nearly daily posting probably was the biggest booster.
When you use categories it puts your posts in those sections for the public to see. Daily posting as opposed to two or three times a week increases your traffic by 60% on average. I’ve experimented with posting schedules and I find once a day is optimum. You and I have the advantage of “working” from home, so have the time to spit out daily ramblings. 🙂
I found a category/tag conversion feature, and did a conversion on to cats. (Though I recognize some way back have nothing to do with them, so will, if I have time, return to them and come up with a proper category.) Today is Day 1 of the experiment. I have 360 following (though I see a different number in the 220 range elsewhere…another WordPress mystery) at the moment.
LOL, mystery one; Followers, you have 360 combined followers, this includes your flowers on Facebook and any other sites you post to. 220 is what you have on WP. The default category to cats is good. But when you do your tags at the same time add two category listings Cats and Pets. You should see an increase in new traffic. 🙂
This is very helpful advice that I will make use of too. I haven’t even got cat or pet categories and that seems daft once I think about it!
That comment, back in 2014, refers to 360 followers. By 2017, it was up to 1777 or so, largely because I followed that advice. Most of that increase happened in 2016-2017. It was very slow at first, so slow I really good back in amazement at blogs that increased from zero to thousands in months, not years. Eventually, though, I realized I was happier with close increases so I could “know” regulars coming a[-back each day, both as bloggers and as friends. Good luck with your blog! Is is a worthwhile one, i think, and deserves a larger following!
Thank you very much 🙂 I’ve been pretty overawed with the level of response and I’m only on day 7. I am enjoying the part of getting to know lots of new (cat) people and reading other peoples stories. It’s been great fun so far.
Hard to believe so many cat blogs can co-exist on the WP, but we do! Same for dog blogs. And, of course, cat and dog dog people love talking with each other about our little buddies!
I hadn’t even thought about dog blogs! I think I know what I’ll be hunting down to read tomorrow
http://easyweimaraner.wordpress.com/ Features Phenny the very energetic (and funny!) Weimaraner. Phenny lives in France, so there is the side bonus of getting to see a bit of the French countryside when you follow Phenny!
https://lifeofbenji.com/ Features Benji and his “sister” Ms. Zulu. These Florida dogs interviewed Andy and Dougy, and Andy and Dougy interviewed them. Highly recommended! Here’s the link to the interviews:
https://weggieboy.wordpress.com/the-ms-zulu-and-benji-interviews/
There are other dog blogs, of course, and I suggest looking in the blogs followed by these two for additional ones. These blogs are much like cat blogs in that the people who post them love their pups as much as we love out kitties, and that makes the blogs appealing on many levels!
Thanks so much for the links, you’re too kind! I’ve got so much to explore 👍
I enjoy sharing blogs I find exceptional in one way or another, and both of those are entertaining, with appealing dogs!