Just Sayin'

So, I have a series on this blog called "Serious Thoughts," which I use to write about serious problems that I feel strongly about. I haven't written one of these posts in a while, but there's a topic that's been making me angry recently, so you're going to hear about it. Every time I see an outdoor cat, my blood starts to BOIL. Now, I'm not talking about stray cats or feral cats that have no homes to go to. I'm talking about cats that belong to an individual person or family that are allowed to wander around outside freely. It makes me SO ANGRY. Allowing your cat to roam around freely is a pretty irresponsible thing to do. It's bad for the cat, for other animals, and for the planet in general. Now, I know that in many communities around the world, having pets/animals indoors is a foreign concept. I don't expect them to change over night. However, there are a lot of people living in my neck of the woods (Pennsylvania) who ought to know ...

My Cat (She's very sassy) So, I've had a cat for a little more than a year now, and I'm having such a fun time being a cat parent, that I basically spend all my free time trying to convince all my friends and family to get cats too. Shockingly, some people have expressed some reservations about bringing a cat into their lives, so I've decided to assemble a list of all the best reasons to have a cat. You're welcome. 1) Supplemental Heat - When a cat crawls onto your lap, it's the heat equivalent of wrapping yourself in a fleece blanket. They're so WARM! I think it's a combination of all the fur and their generally fiery personalities. One cat on the lap makes you toasty warm, if you get more than two, you might break into a sweat (but that's unlikely to happen because I have never yet met a cat that will tolerate sharing a lap). Granted, cats are a marvelously inefficient way to produce heat. They require a lot of energy input (chicken and hairb...

A Very Professional Cat So, about ten months ago, I adopted a cat. Her name is Pepper Potts, and she is a very busy cat. She's always industriously getting herself stuck in the pantry or trying to crawl into the fireplace. Anyway, her vet office just announced that they're running a costume contest for Halloween. I was chatting to my friend about how I was planning to enter Pepper into the contest, and I jokingly said that I hoped she would win because then I could put it on her resume. We had a good chuckle about that, but then I thought "wait a minute, Pepper should have a resume!" I mean, Pepper has skills. She has experience! She's definitely employable. I mean, she doesn't have thumbs, but, other than that, there's nothing stopping her from getting any job she wants. Plus, today is her birthday, and she's going to be three-years-old, which means she should probably get out into the workforce (you know, so she can start a 401K and all that j...

A very detectival cat So, recently, I've been writing a series of detective stories about my friend's cat. The cat's name is Gato, but my friend and her boyfriend call him Detective Fuzzy Bottoms because he's such a detectival cat (I don't know if detectival is a real word, and spell check certainly thinks it isn't, but spellcheck also doesn't recognize a lot of terms from Game of Thrones, so spell check clearly doesn't know what's going on in the world today) and is always investigating something.  As someone once told me, cats don't know it's Christmas (which is pretty profound if you ask me ), but I wanted to write a holiday mystery for Detective Fuzzy Bottoms anyway because why not?  Anyway, this is Gato's holiday adventure. It's the third installment in the Detective Fuzzy Bottoms saga. I'll list the other two mysteries below. I don't think you really need to read them in order, but you may want to (in case...

Never Fear, Detective Fuzzy Bottoms is on the Case! About a week ago, I wrote a detective story about my friend's cat, Gato . Gato is a very inquisitive cat, and he likes to investigate things, so his nickname is Detective Fuzzy Bottoms. I get snap chats of him crawling into grocery bags and laundry hampers all the time with the caption "Detective Fuzzy Bottoms is on the Case!"  Anyway, people seemed to like Detective Fuzzy Bottoms' first adventure, so I decided to write a Halloween sequel. It's a bit long, but sometimes holiday stories about cats and pumpkins just need to be told, okay? *** Cats only celebrate one holiday. It's called All Cat's Eve. On All Cat's Eve, we eat catnip cookies, exchange gifts, and sing cat carols. My favorite cat carol is called "Merrily We Go to Eat Some Mice and Break Their Bones." It makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside (or maybe that's the catnip). I especially like the part of the son...

The Real Life Detective Fuzzy Bottoms So, one of my best friends has a cat named Gato. Gato is a very inquisitive cat and likes to crawl into things and investigate things, so my friend and her boyfriend have a long standing joke that he's a detective. They call him Detective Fuzzy Bottoms, which I think is absolutely adorable. Anyway, I'm constantly getting snaps of Gato sitting in suitcases and crawling into bags with the caption "Detective Fuzzy Bottoms is on the case." I don't know about you, but I sleep much better at night knowing that Fuzzy Bottoms is out there making sure that all the empty shopping bags in the world are safe. Gato is such a prolific and talented detective that I thought someone ought to write a detective story about him, and that someone might as well be me. I give you "The Adventures of Detective Fuzzy Bottoms: Gato and the Mysterious Box." *** I didn't want to be a detective. Ever since I was a young kitten, al...