RIP Yowie Yoga Cat (aka my bed buddy)

My loving bed buddy Yowie The Yoga Cat passed away several months ago, and I miss him terrible.

Yoga Yowie Needs His Sleep

The Yoga Cat is trying to get some shut-eye tonite, and people keep waking him up.  He’s all camped out on his down comforter.  Well, at least he thinks it’s his . . .  Possibly he’s paranoid I’ll kick him off it.

Intellectual Rights

Maneki Neko Cat courtesy of Andrew Zhebrakov of http://www.icojam.com

While I’m on the considerable subject of Copy Rights, Intellectual Rights, Piracy, and such, I wanted to reee-iter-ate something I posted some time ago, Namely the source of my header art, avatar, gravatar and all that.  I did not draw this cat.  The guy that DID draw this cat is Andrew Zhebrakov of http://www.icojam.com

Several years ago while looking for those cutie Japanese Maneki Neko cats, I came across his cats in icon form at http://www.icojam, and emailed him asking permission to use his cat icons on the web for my sites.  He graciously agreed to let me do that.  And for years his art has graced whatever thing I did to represent myself on the net.

He designed the cat, and I just incorporated it into my design.  He is really very good at what he does.  And I really like Maneki Neko cats.  I will do an article on their history later.  But the point of all this is that it is a good example of what you should do if you want permission to use someone’s artwork on the internet.  Sometimes they might refuse, which is within their rights, sometime they might ask for a fee (small or large), and sometimes, like Andrew, they just say go ahead they don’t mind.  I was flattered and real happy, because he’s a great artist, and his cat is real happy too.

Now I’m an artist, and could have done my own art for the web, but wasn’t ready to publish on the web, so he did me a great favor.

Be Real, Don’t Steal.

HAPPEE HAPPEE HAPPEE . . .

HAPPEE NEW YEAR!

I REFUSE TO RESOLUTE!

 

Where has Yowie Yoga Cat BEEN?

I know you all wonder how Yowie Yoga Cat has been doing with his CAREER.  Actually he’s been doing a lot of photo shoots lately.

I Was Here All The Time

Yowie Yoga Cat Parking

I Are Serious Cat

But Sometimes Shy and Un-Imposing . . .

Yowie Yoga Cat with his new fashion hat

Yowie Yoga Cat is a sexy thinking guy

Yowie Yoga Cat ends his day in the bath

HOWEVER . . . Nowdays, when he isn’t posing for a photo shoot, he hangs out with BUBBA his best friend.

 

BUBBA, Yowie’s friend (c) 2017

And he also hangs out with CHICKME, his maybe sometime girlfriend

CHICKME (c) 2017

 

 

YOGA CAT IN VACATION RETREAT

Yowie is resting from his exhausting yoga career. He is sure he cannot be found by his many fans.

YOGA CAT LIKES HIS UNDERWEAR

Yoga cat likes his underwear

YOGA YOWIE IS AT IT AGAIN!

Cat surfing can be hard if you are less than yoga FIT

Yowie yoga cat career continues . . .  He is now deeply getting into . . . SURFING!  (He always did like the Beach Boys)

Yoga Cat asks for his bath

Yoga Cat is Stolen and possibly Hotlinked

Yowie hangs out here in the bathtub. If he can’t get me to give him a bath,then he diddles in the water while I take one myself.

UPDATE:  Yoga Cat Yowie has found his picture stolen and posted on another website that did not ask him if it was okay to do without any link back to him and his stories.  Therefore Yoga Cat Yowie found it necessary to have his photographer make sure his photos were labeled with the copyright notice that tells people it actually is.  Those would be the people that don’t read the notice on the actual page.

In addition, Yoga Cat Yowie believes this picture to be hotlinked to.  Which is considered to be tacky and not permissible unless permission is obtained.  AND in addition to all that Yoga Cat Yowie only found this out by sheer accident searching on the wide wide web.  He is sad and totally can’t believe people are that greedy.  Personally, his photographer isn’t too surprised.

WHAT IS HOTLINKING?   HERE’S SOME LINKS:

http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hotlink

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotlinking

http://support.hostgator.com/articles/what-is-hot-linking-how-do-i-enable-and-disable-hotlink-protection

What is Hotlinking and Why is it Bad When You Do It Without Permission?

COPYRIGHT LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice

Click to access circ03.pdf

https://www.copyrightwitness.com/copyright/p03_copyright_notices

http://reddotblog.com/debate-should-you-watermark-images-you-are-posting-online/

The Importance of Naming Digital Files.

http://www.photoattorney.com/2007/07/watermarks-can-be-music-to-your-ears.html

http://reddotblog.com/debate-should-you-watermark-images-you-are-posting-online/

Illustrator How-To: Creating Your own Chop

I’ll  post more on this subject, but right now that’s just the bare minimum.  Just to let you know, the website that did this was one I came upon quite accidentally, and I have sent them a take down notice.  They make a huge deal about all their photos being “public domain”, and I know mine are NOT public domain.  I own the copyright to each and every one of them.

This website is one of those duplicates that have no real subject matter, are full of pictures of furniture, and decorating, and everyone else’s photos so that they can generate loads of traffic on the backs of other peoples work.  If this keeps on I’ll probably out them on my blog, but right now I’m just waiting for them to fess up and take my picture of Yowie off their web page of “CATS IN BATHTUBS”  And they have several other websites and each one has the same page as this one.

Right now, I’ll see if they’re hotlinked since I changed the picture, it should show up on their website as the new one.

 

 

 

 

Yoga cat still Yoga-ing

Yowie is so laid back.  Here his recent Yoga poses

Yowie is so laid back

He is so laid back that you can decorate him like a Christmas tree

Yowie wears bananas sometimes

Go figure, he’s adopted, maybe that has something to do with it.

Cat Bath Curtain Tackle Attack number ONE & TWO

He will knock off all your shampoo, scare you out of your wits, and hang around for more action!

And then there is the second round . . .

If you got a cat that does that kind of stuff, let me know.

You can leave a comment at the bottom of the page.  

Natural Home Made Cat Food

THE FORBIDDEN WORLD OF  RAW MEAT

What did pets EAT before there was dry pet food?  I started reading about carnivorous cats several years ago.  It seems that cats are actually what is called “OBLIGATE CARNIVORES”.  Simply put, cats are animals that are designed by nature to eat prey meat only.  (Obligate, as in obligated to)

A Cats digestive system can process meat and animal carcasses, and it keeps them healthy because they are born able to digest it.  They do not digest vegetables, grain, and all those things that you might see them eat occasionally, such as grass.  But that’s another entire subject.

Dreaming of REAL prey . . .

Also, being a small feline, they are not designed to eat large prey, or large prey bones.  (in other words I would never give a cat a large chicken bone)  In their natural state out in the yard, they eat bugs, birds, small rodents, all with small flexible bones.  They normally consume the whole animal which gives them the internal organs, brain, bones, heart, etc.  So therefore they can’t live on just a chicken leg.  They have to have the bones, and the rest or they’ll be deficient in those nutrients and starve or be messed up.  You can’t give them just chopped meat if you want to feed them a meat diet.

So, your little house cat is no different than a lion, tiger, or any other wild cat in all these respects.

Now I know, you’re thinking that people have fed dried and canned cat food for all your life, and they seem to be completely healthy.  But think about that.  They get urinary problems, and dirty teeth and abscesses.  They get things like cancer, and other stuff, and when they get old they REALLY have problems.

Well, anyway, I thought so,until I remember all the cats that I had to get teeth cleaned, and my old cats that suffered, couldn’t eat, crap like that.  Regardless of whether all that is true or not, and me not being an expert cat dietitian, I was prompted by yet another set of event to investigate a home made cat food information.

They kept coming out with pet food recalls, and one day my cat Dicky just got sick and wouldn’t eat.  He hid upstairs, laid there for a week, and eventually got over it, but I found his cat food had a recall on it too late.  Something about MELAMINE powder in the food ingredients made in CHINA for gosh sake!  Well, now the Chinese are poisoning my cat from across the ocean, and me all dependent on manufactured cat food.  (I thought)

I noticed that aside from that.  My cats would eat, (but not chew up) dry cat food. They always crunched once and swallowed it half whole.   I looked on the label.  It had a lot of grain in it.  I found out that the reason dry cat food has grain in it (corn and such), is that to make a dried little pebble which will store in a bag and not break up, you have to use something like flour or corn meal to be able to bake it into a kibble consistency, otherwise it will be sticky and not dried.

In other words, it has nothing to do with it being a good diet item for cats or dogs.  It’s a filler that makes a dry thing not sticky that they can store and sell.  Remember?  Cats don’t digest grain and cornmeal.  They just pass it through in the form of extra poop.

Have you ever chewed a piece of cat or dog food?  Well, it’s not what I’d call poison, so I tried it.  And found that contrary to what they tell you, which is that is CLEANS THEIR TEETH.  When you chew up cat or dog food, the dried kind, it sticks to your teeth, the grains of corn get all up in the base of each tooth, and GOOD LUCK getting it out without an ice pick!

Try it sometime.  It not only doesn’t clean your teeth or theirs, it gums them up until you’ll never get it off without industrial strength cleaner.  And not only that, but it is slimy, more so than normal human food of any kind.  I wouldn’t want my food like that.  It’s worse than some crackers.  I had never eaten anything that clung to my teeth quite like it.  (don’t get sick)

Now, right in the middle of all this research, I run across an article that says that carnivores are made to digest what are called “long chain amino acids” which is what raw meat contains.  (?)  And when you cook meat, (which is what we eat), it changes the amino acid formation to “short chain amino acids”, making the meat hard for a carnivore to digest.

Hey, go figure.  The cat food companies don’t ever focus on the fact that no feline animal, large or small, in the outdoors, eats any kind of cooked food whatsoever.  In fact the small ones will hunt down and eat exactly the same form of prey that a lion will.  And be perfectly healthy on a exclusive diet of it and nothing else but water. Most of which they get from their prey anyway.

MOISTURE, OR LACK OF MOISTURE IN DRY FOOD

Wild Carnivores don’t eat dried food for the most part.  Prey is moist, and contains water.  They drink additional water too.  Now if your little house cat eats his dry food and doesn’t drink enough water, where do you suppose the water comes from to reconstitute his dried kibbles?  From his very own stomach and intestines, that’s where.

Now it just so happens that my cats don’t care for dried cat food with water on it pre-re-constituted.  They hate the taste.  So, if they don’t drink enought water to make up for it, then it gets sucked from their stomach and intestines.  How healthy is that?  Granted, they are used to eating dried food, and it smells fine to them when dry, but moistened and they turn up their noses at it.

How many kids have you seen that think fast food is great stuff?  If you grew up eating real vegetables and farm raised chickens, you would know the difference in taste.  But they didn’t, and so that’s what tastes right and delicious to them.  Cats are no different.  No choice, they’re hungry, that’s food, that’s it.

“Only the freshest, healthiest ingredients”, is the pet food companies refrain.  So, if they are using fresh ingredients, and then cooking the life out of it, then drying it, and then mixing it with a bunch of stuff that.  Heck they tell you not to overcook your own food.  They TELL you it’s not healthy to eat overly processed food.  What if you had to live on beef jerky and pemmican (Indian dried jerky with some fruit) all the time, how healthy do you think you would be?

The fact is that no matter how fresh a food is, when you process it, heat it, dry it, and mush it up with something a person or animal was never meant to assimilate or digest, then it just isn’t the best healthy food for your body.  You know yourself a piece of raw asparagus doesn’t even resemble a fresh steamed one, or pepper, or broccoli, or beans, or whatever.  Dried beef and chicken?  Who would even want that given the choice to have a fresh roasted one or a steak?

And there your cat is eating dried jerky food.  Hey, I’m no one to talk.  I fed my cats dry their whole lives, and not just one generation, but 5 cats in a row.  They all got inflamed gums and teeth that needed to be cleaned.  Every one of them.

FINDING THE COMPLETE DIET ADDITIVES

Because of that, I decided to experiment.  Now I know that most people know the danger of salmonella, and germs that contaminated, uncooked meat has.  But I’ve gone my whole life not getting sick from meat, and the only time I got food poisoning was from restaurants.  Simple as that.  I don’t buy old meat.  I don’t cook slimy smelly anything.  I learned to buy good meat, and don’t worry about it.  So, I don’t worry too much about the cats because I decided I’d get the same fresh chicken I would buy for myself for this experiment.

Now, I also knew that meat alone does not a cat diet make.  Cats require calcium, taurine (from hearts), and iron (liver), and I located in addition, a company (one of many), that manufacture a powder that you mix with meat, water, salmon oil capsules, and egg yolk to make a complete meat diet that you can feed EXCLUSIVELY to cats and nothing else  needed for them to be healthy.

This company tested a large group of cats on an all meat diet for years, and found many things.  The main thing was that they were all, with few exceptions, exceptionally healthy and remained so for all their lives.  They also said that it cured many behavioural problems and attitudes in all of them.  Happy, healthy, lively, and all that.

So, half convinced, and wondering if this might help my aggressive cat, I ordered some powder, got some salmon oil caps, eggs, boned chicken thighs, and a thing of chicken livers.  I chopped (not too small, about one inch size bits)  two pounds of chicken thighs, 1/4 that amount of livers, added the salmon oil, and egg yolk.  I couldn’t find any heart, but that was in the powder.  I added the recommended amount of powder and cold water to mix.

Then I put about 1/4 cup in a bowl and set it on the floor next to the cat.  He did something that I’ve never seen him do before.  He took one claw, and used it to hook one piece of meat, and then spent the next few long minutes RELISHING his food.

When normally given dried food he ate like a chow hound and was through eating in 3 minutes.  And asked for more of it because he didn’t think he was full.  And wouldn’t settle down afterward.  Feeding time was asked for no less than two hours after feeding him with dried meat.

He chewed his raw meat completely before swallowing it, and when he was finished, he went to his cat tower, crawled up on top, and napped out for 4 hours!  He didn’t ask for more food, he didn’t pace around the house.   He was satisfied and napped out.  Simple as that.

Laid up after a good raw meat meal.

CONTINUING THE FEEDING OF MEAT

I decided to carry this to extremes.  I wanted to know if they were right about being able to feed a raw diet and NO other store bought food to a cat.  So I fed my cat this two times a day (normally with dried it was three) for over a month.  At the end of that time he was calmer, and yet more energetic when he was awake.  He no longer gobbled his food, but took his time like you would with a good steak.  He didn’t have to drink as much water, and his stools were looser, but less smelly.  His cat pan didn’t stink every time he took a dump.

What a revelation.  However, being short on time, I eventually backslid into giving him some dry cat food on the side for when I was out of raw.  Right now I’m feeding raw once a day at night to both my cats.  But you have to have the powder to be sure it’s complete and not deficient.  And that can be expensive.  My vet was diplomatically horrified when he learned about it.  But I would dare anyone to take a blood test and tell me my cat is unhealthy.  My eyes just don’t decieve me.

Hey, my cats react completely different when offered either kind of food.  Dried is just begged for.  MEAT is a scramble of cat yells and “give it to me NOW!”  My first cat did not grow up on raw meat, he ate it first when he was all grown up, and he still prefers it to dried every time.

So doing it myself and seeing the results in my own cats convinced me totally.  It is more trouble, but not if you make a batch and freeze it in parcels one months worth at a time.  And for me it cost more because I hate boning chicken and am not good at it.   (I might cut myself too)

You’ll find pros and cons and people for and against it, but for me it’s worth whatever risk they say comes along with it.  I got some powerfully healthy cats now.

I’ve got some powerfully healthy cats.

Disclaimer:    I am not an expert cat dietitian.  The information in my post is only from my own experience in feeding this diet to my own animals.  I urge you to do the same as I did if you are considering this diet for your own animals.  Research, get on the net and explore and read many articles before trying it yourself.

Email me with any questions and I can send you links to sources for the powder which I mix with my cats food.

 

 

 

 

 

Cat Yoga For The Rest Of Us, or Yowie Cat Yoga

Cat Yoga is latest thing in cat exercise. And my cat is a Yoga cat-fool.  Yowie Cat Yoga is the way to go.

Here’s some photos of him in action on an average day.  Keep in mind,our routine to watch tv was that you had to kick the cat out of the chair each night before you could sit down to see the news. He was a SQUATTER of CHAIRS and a USURPER of THRONES.  But you gotta luv him, he’s kinda cute.

Shall We Begin?

SHORT POME
He even gloated when we passed.
He reveled in the smell of our ____________
He coated the chair with a sheen of white hair
in revenge for us moving him out of his lair.
He would scrunch, stretch, twist, and contort
Until I decided he had invented a sport.

Warm up gradually . . .

Reverse Extension of the spine . . .

Arms over your head, look cute, curve right . . .

Roll to right side, deep breath, and relax . . .

Back to left stretch paw, curl leg and tail . .

Look for Audience appreciation . . .

Stretch Paws To The Sky . . .

Stretch upper body and paws . . .

Retire to beach towel and wait for fan mail . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN ORPHAN IN THE BUSHES

My job was to trim shrubs behind a commercial building that day.  I arrived at daybreak, the sun was barely up and the night lights were still lit.  I took my first pictures of the day to record what the foliage looked like before I began to trim.

I got all my tools, the wheelbarrow, the bags, and started up the walk.  Soon I saw there was somebody keeping me company . . .

I soon saw there was somebody keeping me company

The streak of white color dissapeared behind one of the rose bushes up against the building and I realized that it was a kitten. I got down on my knees to peer under the bush he was hiding in and stretched out my hand and called him.

He was a wild baby kitty, but not totally.  (Somebody had been feeding him at lunchtime.)  I ran back to the car and got part of my sandwich (the meat part), and ran back to feed him.  He ate it all, even a french fry.

He watched with suspicious curiosity

I started walking around to see what needed to be done to the flower beds.  The kitten watched all this with suspicious curiosity. Getting food every few minutes had him soon following me around asking for more.

 

He soon started following me around

I wasn’t surprised.  He had no Mommy anywhere that I could see.  I found out later a mother cat had been seen carrying him across the parking lot and dropped him off there never to return.  He was an ORPHAN BABY KITTYKAT.

He was starving …

He was starving, and looked better than he was because he was a long haired kitten, and the fur disguised the ribbyness of his tiny little body.

I could tell he was a Purrson of importance

But his personality told me he was a purrson of importance, sooo. . .    He came home in a cardboard box when I left the job two days later.

My other cat was not so sure about this newcomer

My other cat was not so sure about this newcomer.  He hissed a lot, and spit a lot, and cussed a lot.  Then he just left the room disgusted.

I put him in a cage for his own safety

I put him in another room in a cage so that the big guy wouldn’t eat him.  A time out was needed before it was discovered that he was really a friend and not an intruder.

At first, curiosity at a distance

He was allowed out only under supervision and then recaged at night.  More and more freedom as he was accepted.  At first it was just curiosity from a safe distance.  But in the end, after a few weeks, they became more and more friends . . .

In the end they became friends

After a week of the big cat being pounced on, and the little cat getting smashed on, and a bunch of spats, there was a truce.  But in the end they got their act together and became companionable friends.