Announcing Self Help for Cats Collector’s Postcard #1

I ordered the above free, priceless Self Help for Cats postcards from Vista Print recently. In the marketing world, this stuff is called collateral.

I have at least 15 of these original collector’s works (the postcards, that is) and each (signed and misnumbered by the author) could go to a good home for the price of merely surrendering your contact information and pledging non-binding interest in one day purchasing my book, Self Help for Cats. In other words, I’m holding these babies in collateral for your electronic vitals.

{Author’s note: I’m no spam engine here nor am I known as Can’d Spam Betty among my acquaintances.  I promise to be discrete and only spam email you at odd intervals about Self Help for Cats and my other brilliant world-changing projects.}

To get a postcard, send your:

name, email, postal address

to: selfhelpforcats (at) gmail (dot) com.

Have it say something like:

I, of sound mind and body, want Self Help for Cats or a book by a reasonably-similar title just as soon as you can publish it! I’m ready to take my cat(s) to the bank!

Cats Versus Windmills: This Spin Job Needs a Quixote

Cats are back in the headlines, this time taking fall-guy status in the Great Windmill-Bird Debate of ‘07.   It’s enough to make you want to pull a Quixote on whatever windmill executive came up with this latest spin of anti-cat PR. 

Okay, cats have a song bird problem, it’s true.  The problem is, there is something undeniably attractive about slaughtering little singers who can’t help but give themselves away with the essence of what makes them song birds, their lovely little voices. 

But the main problem is not the song, the bird, or the cat.  These three are but an innocent catastrophe waiting to happen, set into motion by nature herself, and diverted into a force 90 million housecats strong by none other than the species voted most likely to change the planet’s climate this century.

It’s hard enough we have to blame ourselves for how bad things have gotten around old Earth here, and it only makes it worse when we shift responsibility to the creatures we keep.  I’m telling you, cats are blameless — the blood they spill is all on us.

Personally, I don’t mind curbing my little killer’s freedom by keeping him inside so I don’t have to handle the guilt that comes along with the dead bodies on my doormat.  I keep my cats inside as well, you’ll be glad to know.

As for Mr. Windmill PR spin executive, shame on you for using cats to take the heat off your clean-energy industry.   That’s about as useful as Quixote busting a cap in some windmill’s backside, although not nearly as entertaining and literarily significant.

How to Win an Argument With Your Cat

Have you ever noticed how when you are in a particularly maddening argument with your significant other how nice it is to have a cat or dog or hamster to comfort you?  Fawning conspicuously over one’s companion animal can be an extremely effective dig at your dismayed lover, as long as you can stop yourself from going overboard. 

No, there’s nothing like excessive feline adoration that says, “I have the wonderfully-loving and decidedly non-argumentative cat, so who needs you?”

The thing is, how mad can you get at your cat versus how mad can you get at your man?  The two aren’t even in the same reality ball park.  The fact is, I can’t get mad at my cat at all.  Whether he secretly vomits on my pillow and I sleep on it, or when he tries to accidentally bite off my small toe, the cat is never culpable. 

Whereas my partner-boyfriend could be napping in another nation—hell, he could be in a coma—and I would still find a way to blame everything conveniently on him…