A cat sees no good reason why it should obey another animal, even if it does stand on two legs. —Sarah Thompson
Cats are so independent that they don’t even care what we think about them. They know they don’t have to obey anyone. They don’t care if humans think they are the supreme beings on this planet. Cats can snub us and show us our correct place every time.
Cats are kindly masters, just so long as you remember your place. —Paul Gray
In my experience, cats are kind if you treat them with respect. If you are cruel to them, they will punish you with their claws and teeth. They know what is good treatment and what is bad treatment. We should listen to them.
It is to my extreme displeasure to announce that we have not had any charities to save up money for every month. I do know both Clarabelle and my girl have reached out to different charities to see if they were interested. One was able to get an initial response from their chosen charity. The other one heard nothing.
I myself was in contact with a charity briefly. Unfortunately, they wanted to tell the sad tales of dogs in need and my magazine is about cats. There also wasn’t enough information on the charity either. They don’t have a website. I don’t have a problem with any charity helping dogs. However, because it is a cat magazine, the charity does need to focus more on cats.
For the book Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army, the charity is Dingo Venezia. That particular organization has a history of helping more than just cats. In fact the first animal rescued was a dog named Dingo. So, of course we will focus more on the cats, but also acknowledge that they have helped dogs as well. I don’t know if they still do help anyone other than cats.
So, without charities, and no donations whatsoever, I see no point in keeping this paid website. We have our free back up site at sirsockslechat.video.blog It is better than nothing. Perhaps you the readers would prefer a book to take with you than to donate to this site. I don’t know what you’re actually thinking.
I just hope you don’t believe that writers should always work for free and don’t deserve to earn money from their work. If you do, then I don’t know what will happen to people like my girl who work as much as she does and gets seems so little in return. Perhaps you don’t value writing work or understand what it all entails? It’s sad when people expect to get creative work for free. It’s taking advantage of the creative people who could easily starve even though they work. Often times creative people have their creative endeavors and a regular job too. That’s a lot of work in case you didn’t know…
So, yes, I’m disappointed, but then again I do know that even though I am serializing my memoirs in my online magazine, that not the whole book will be online. There are some behind the scenes that can only be found in the ebook version. I don’t know if it will be in print someday. I don’t know what plans my girl will be making in that direction. When I know, then I will let the rest of you know too.
This is the second to last financial monthly report. As you can see, nothing has changed much as far as the finances go.
Summary for August:
no money in or out
over 1462 hits on the blog
about 677 people get the posts emailed to them
48 people follow via WordPress
66 copies sold; US$471.50 raised for Dingo Venezia from Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army
Disclaimer: the staff writers here are not vets nor are they qualified to give medical advice. This article’s purpose is strictly to share stories/information and should not be used for diagnostic purposes. Please take your cat to the vet if you suspect anything might be wrong with them. Your vet will know best what to do in your specific situation.
To eat, or not to eat? If your cat is anything like Julius, they might be inquisitive little foodies who want to discover the various tastes the world has to offer. They might want to graze in the garden, steal scraps off your plate, or partake in tantalizing human munchies. Sometimes, however, it might not be apparent that ingesting certain foods isn’t good for them — in some cases, ingesting certain plants or foods could result in serious harm to the curious feline involved. So what is safe for cats to eat, and what isn’t? (Note: cats really should not be eating food that isn’t meant for them, but we all know that sometimes they manage to obtain, ahem, supplementary nutrition from human kitchens and gardens, so it’s good to be prepared with knowledge of what is safe and what is toxic in such cases.)
Some foods and plants are extremely toxic to cats and should not be ingested even in small amounts. Doing so could cause the cat extreme illness or even organ failure. These foods and plants include: Chocolate, raisins, grapes, alcohol, caffeine, onions, garlic, crocuses, lilies, tulips, and daffodils.
If you suspect that your cat has ingested any of these substances, take them to a vet right away, especially if they show signs of distress or if their urine changes color.
Some foods are safe for cats to eat, although they should consume these in moderation. These foods include: cooked meat, cooked fish, oats, rice, eggs, bananas, apples, broccoli, peas, and more. You can check out a longer list here. Cats can also safely enjoy a number of plants and herbs as well, including: wheat grass, parsley, and mint.
Those new friends better stay hidden from Emperor Julius!
We have some new friends staying with us, my dear followers. I have been very excited about these friends because they are my favorite kind of friends: they are quiet, and pleasant, and above all, they are edible! I love these new friends!
My human brought them home one day and left them out on the table so I could greet them. I always like to greet new friends when they come to my empire. So I did my royal duty by jumping up on the table and giving these newcomers a friendly welcome. They were certainly unusual to me at first, because I don’t usually have plants as visitors. They were very tiny and green and they had a unique perfume. Usually plants smell sweet or grassy, but these smelled different. They smelled sharp and a little spicy, and although I didn’t like it at first, I wanted to be polite and entertain my new guests. I wanted to sit with them and start a conversation to learn more about them, and I was just starting to do that, but my human ran in and rudely interrupted, whisking the plants away before we could get properly acquainted — her accusation was that I was planning to eat them. Maybe, but not before a proper introduction!
For a while, the plants stayed in one of the guest rooms, locked away from me. I sat outside the door and tried to find opportunities to get inside and continue getting to know my guests, but I wouldn’t get to steal more than several extra seconds with them before my human would notice me and kick me back out. Now my new friends are sitting outside on the back porch, where they do not seem to notice me staring at them from the window. It’s sad, but I know one day I will get to know these new friends. I might even get to give them a loving nibble.
One is never sure, watching two cats washing each other, whether it’s affection, the taste or a trial run for the jugular. —Helen Thomson
Cats aren’t predictable. One minute they are getting along. The next they are fighting. And then the next they are cuddled up to each other fast asleep. The cats I’ve lived with have proved that to me time and time again. I remember that with Sir Socks and Spot. They would play together. They would bathe each other. They’d wrestle and then they’d sleep together quietly.
Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. —Anonymous
Why did we stop worshipping cats? They kill the rodents which could kill us with deadly diseases. They can be kind and loving to us. They can adopt us as honorary cats. Yet, too many want to claim cats are solely evil and don’t deserve such high esteem from us. There are cats who still take care of rodents around the world in different places. They deserve our respect, if not our worship.
This month’s cat vocabulary is a term known as the cat’s meow, which is an expression for something that is fabulous. A cat’s meow literally can be anything. Cats tend to be quiet, unless they are vocal ones. Then they sound might as if they are complaining all the time. People used to tell me Sir Socks was too whiny. But he was just stating what was wrong and he hoped I could take care of the problem.
But the cat’s meow is a good thing. For creatures who tend to be quiet and use stealth without much thought, their meow when it comes tends to be a good thing. They could just be saying hello to us or something else which can be a good thing to hear. Or it could be that something isn’t right with them and they want our help with it. I’m glad Sir Socks told all he needed to tell me. From him I learned how to take care of cats in general. Now when I deal with strange cats who need care, it’s easy to take care of them.
When we cats talk, all you humans hear is meow. But we do use actual words. I myself have learned lots of English over the years living among humans. I have tried to speak English, but sadly my vocal apparatus won’t let me form the sounds correctly.
So, I’ve learned to adapt my cat language so that humans would understand me. Too many have complained that I’m loud and whiny. I’m just assertive. I am particular as to how I like to be care for. It seems to me that too many humans are too distracted or just simply don’t care enough to even listen and try.
That is until I met my girl. She is the best caregiver and caretaker I could ever ask for. She listens to my complains and requests and does something about them all. She’s learned and become so good at taking care of me that I don’t need to talk as much as I used to.
She just knows what to do now. I’ve very lucky. I’ve known many humans in my time and she’s the best one for me in spite of how silly she gets at times. *Sigh.* I do love her dearly in spite of her silliness.
picture taken in Second Life by Ali Noel Vyain of her avatar
A picture my girl took while in Second Life as her alter ego and a giant me…
What did I do to deserve someone as silly as she is? She likes to tease and play. This is not my ideal companion. How did this happen? Oh, she drives me crazy when she’s acting so silly! *Sigh* At least she calms down and does her work for hours on end. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get enough sleep or meditation done.
Why does she laugh so much? Why does like to play so much? She is an adult. I thought adults didn’t play as much as she does. We’re more serious and we have work to do. But yet, she likes to play with me. I’d walk around our place and without any warning, she’d tug on my tail. I’d ask her why she did it and she replied, she couldn’t resist.
Sometimes she’s just as bad as a kitten. Kittens of course like to play a lot. They wrestle each other every chance they get. They will tug on each other’s tails. They even play with their mother. She might play with them. But a human doing the same exact thing? I had no idea one would do that to me as much as my girl does.
She was one who would get out stuffed animals and make them play with me! I didn’t understand at first. That is until she finally told me and showed me that those kinds of animals couldn’t move on their own. She held one that was very much like a black cat. She held it up in the air while we stood on the floor. Then she let go and the black cat fell straight down to the floor and just laid there. I watched the cat closely as it fell. This was the same cat that I had smacked on its forehead and there was no response from the cat.
So, that was it. My girl just likes to play with stuffed animals. They aren’t alive as I am. I’m glad she told me the truth. Otherwise, I’d would have freaked out too much and far too often…
My girl is just as bad as the fairies who keep visiting me. She has seen me running around crazily when they visited me. I don’t know if she saw the little fairies on my back. But I suppose that’s another story…
At least she is gentle. She likes it when I want to play the red paw game. It makes her laugh. There were times when she wanted to get up out of bed when I was laying on her. She’d ask me to get off of her, and I refused to move. She deserved it. She was my girl and at my service when I needed her. She should have known that by then.
Then when she didn’t stop, we played a game of red paws. Eventually, I let her get up. Sometimes she would complain that she would lose her head if it wasn’t attached. What silliness is that? She’d say it whenever she would leave our place to go out and run errands or whatever it is that she does when she’s out and then come right back inside because she had forgotten something.
There were times that she liked to move me around on the floor. I would try to extend my claws to keep me anchored, but there is flooring on which that doesn’t work. And that happens to be the kind of flooring she’d push me around on. I just never understood why she liked to do that to me. She never did it long, but it was still annoying.
Yes, she was and is this silly. I’m not making this up. She was too silly for me and my tastes. But I know she loves me and takes good care of me. So, I just have to look the other way when she’s acting too silly. It was as much as I could ever do with her.
Lucky for me, she doesn’t play with me for too long. If she had insisted on doing it for quite a while longer, I would have had to call it quits on our relationship. So, she knows not to take it too far.
Oh, and my name wasn’t originally Sir Socks. It was just Socks. My girl decided one day to knight me. I have no idea why. It was completely silly. She said she knighted me and touched me lightly on both shoulders, one at a time. She has called me Sir Socks ever since. She even has gone as far as to compliment me on how much braver I am since being knighted. Especially around stuffed animals.
They no longer bother me. In fact, I don’t mind loafing among them because they all smell like my girl. My silly girl who plays like the whirlwind that she is.
photo taken by Ali Noel Vyain
me, the only live animal in this picture
Another month is over and not much has changed. If nothing changes between now and October, then the last Financial Report I will do will be for September. Until then, this is how we’re doing.
Summary for July 2019:
no money in or out
over 1382 hits on the blog
about 672 people get the posts emailed to them
43 people follow via WordPress
66 copies sold; US$471.50 raised for Dingo Venezia from Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army
Sir Socks Le Chat 