Pierre Archives - Page 105 of 131

St. Catrick’s Day and the Licking of the Icing

For St. Catrick’s Day, we always participate in the traditional licking of the icing.

What, you don’t have this tradition at your house? We’ll be happy to tell you about it. First, you get a cupcake.

Newton: It’s really St. Catrick’s Day again?

Newton: Yesss!

Pierre: I’m getting my share of St. Catrick’s Day icing, too.

Ashton: Do you MIND, Newton? It’s traditional to lick the icing without having a cat staring at you.

As you can see, the key to licking the icing is not to eat it all, but to just have a taste.

Newton: I want more!

Pierre: No, the rest is for the head peep. Let her have her licks, too.

Ashton: If the head peep wanted some icing, I’m pretty sure she would have gone first.

Are you going to lick the traditional icing at your house for St. Catrick’s Day, too?

The “I’d Rather Be With My Cat” t-shirt giveaway is still in progress. Don’t forget to enter for a chance to win!

I’d Rather Be With My Cat T-Shirt Giveaway

Newton: Hey, everybody!

I inspected the bags of swag from Global Pet Expo, like I said I would.

And guess what? The head peep took all of the treats and food samples and hid them from me. She must have heard about our plans to throw a big pawty and serve them as appetizers.

Pierre: Mouses! How did she find out? Ashton, did you tell her?

Ashton: I… umm… excuse me, I think I left the light on in the closet.

Pierre: Now what do we do?

Newton: I have an idea. Check this out! The head peep got it at Global Pet Expo from a musician named Doug Ratner who raises money for The Gray Muzzle Organization to benefit senior dogs. Except this shirt is about cats!

Pierre: That’s the artificial fur that the humans wear.

Newton: She called it a t-shirt. The tag has an L on it. What do you think that means?

Pierre: Loud?

Newton: Are you calling me loud?

Pierre: I’ve heard you when you’re waiting for Ashton to finish her dinner. But no, I think the L on the shirt means loud.

Newton: Oh, you’re probably right.

Pierre: So you’re going to wear the artificial fur — I mean shirt? Because I don’t think it’s going to fit you.

Newton: No! We are going to offer it to our friends in a giveaway, because we don’t have appetizers for a pawty. And since the shirt came from Global Pet Expo, anyone can enter from anywhere in the world. We just have one shirt, size Loud, so there aren’t any size choices. You can enter with the Rafflecopter widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you have trouble with the Rafflecopter widget, let us know, and we’ll manually enter you. The giveaway ends Friday night, March 21st.

Caturday Global Pet Expo Wrapup

Pierre: The head peep is back from Global Pet Expo. She keeps saying her feet hurt. We don’t understand. Didn’t she just sit around and do this all day?

Head Peep: Actually, I didn’t. While you guys were sleeping it off all day, I was walking around the huge pet expo. It was pretty amazing. They said that if you walked the perimeter of the show, it was a mile, and if you walked all of the aisles, it was four miles full of companies with products for all kinds of animals.

Trends I noticed:

There are a dizzying number of foods marketing themselves as natural. it’s great that there are so many options, but it has to be confusing to consumers to know which is the best to pick for their cats.
Aesthetics matter! My favorite beautiful design from the show was the Astoria scratcher from Architect Pets, but there are brands I who used to make nothing but molded plastic bowls a few years ago who are now making products from higher quality materials in noticeably higher end looks.

Technology is everywhere. From ways to see and interact with your cats while you are away to doors and even bowls that recognize your cat’s microchip, companies are using technology to help us with our cats in really interesting ways.
There are lots and lots of calming products hitting the market now. Mostly supplements, but also coats or wraps. I imagine that a lot of this is due to the huge success of the Thundershirt, and it’s interesting to see that even though that success came primarily for a dog product, there are new things showing up for cats in that market, too.

Other things I noticed:

There is still an ongoing inequality between the number of dog products vs. cat products. Yes, I know that there are more dollars spent on dog products vs cat products, but of there were nearly 5 new dog products for every new cat product. That was a little disappointing. Come on, manufacturers! Spoiled kitties are out counting on you!
I met some wonderful small companies selling wonderful cat products who were totally clueless about cats. Some of them admitted the didn’t even own cats! I’m so glad they’re making products for the cat market anyhow, but that surprised me.

Totally awesome stuff:

I met several other cat bloggers for the first time: Tamar from I Have Cat, Deb from Chronicles of Zee and Zoey, Ingrid from The Conscious Cat, and Jodi from Holistic and Healthy Cats by Jodi Z. The opportunity to spend time with other cat bloggers (and some dog bloggers, too!) was fantastic.
I discovered really innovative products from small companies I never would have heard of on my own. Some of them are tiny companies with great ideas I really hope will succeed because I think they’ll make our kitties lives a little better.
Several booths had adoptable dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens, and social media at the end of the show was abuzz with stories of how they were adopted by expo attendees and headed to new forever in various parts of the US… and in at least one instance, outside the country!