Snoopy, living the good life.

I love animals. I have all my life. I’ve had dogs, birds, rabbits, fish turtles, gerbils – you name it – but the animals that most speaks to my soul are cats. Yes, I’m one of those cat people that you’ve heard about. I am lucky to share my home with three of these precious creatures. I’m even luckier to share my home with a non-pet person who understands my passion. I think he may be coming around. He thinks he’d be happier if the cats limited themselves to one side of his bed and let him get a good night’s sleep. He’ll get over it.

Here are a few things that I think we can learn from our feline friends. They are very good at what they do, so it just makes sense to try to emulate them.

• Focus – Have you ever seen a cat try to attack a toy? They will strut and look at it from every angle. They will find the best place from which to leap. They will wait for the perfect moment, and then they will spring on their victim. That’s how you should attack all problems. Look at them from every angle, and then pounce on the most effective solution.
• Landing on your feet – Although this isn’t 100% accurate, it’s pretty close. Cats will take leaps that others are afraid to, and they make it out OK, most of the time. If there is something that you feel is a bit out of your grasp, make the leap. It will give you an opportunity to grow. Sometimes you may not land on your feet, but you’ll never grow without trying.
• Be independent – Cats are very much their own animals. You may think that you have some control over them, when they let you think that. Be your own person. Take control over your own life.
• Be curious - I know, that’s what they say kills them. I don’t think that I’ve actually ever heard of a real case where curiosity killed the cat. Cats are curious because they are always looking for something interesting. Whether it’s that little thing flitting around the house, or if they want to see what is in the very far back of the closet, they won’t stop until they get it. Have the desire to learn more about everything.
• Do what you want – Cats have no inhibitions. If they see something, it’s theirs. If they want to walk on the curtain rod, they will. They don’t care what anyone says. They live the life that they want to live. You should too.
• Stay clean – Cats spend countless hours a day cleaning themselves. They take time out to care about themselves. It’s important to care about yourself and your worth. Make sure to put your best paw forward.
• Take naps – Cats sleep 17 hours a day. I’m not sure what life lesson you can learn from this one, but it does seem like a good idea.

I’m sure that there’s a ton more that we can learn from our furry friends. Let me know if you have any more.

I straddle two worlds. I play with The Pet Wiki in my world of pet friends and play in the world of SEO and social media for my professional life. I think that I have a unique perspective on both sides of the coin.

I have been a follower of @sockington since the first #pawpawty (see post) that I went to. That was in the beginning of April. I had no idea that he was such an influential cat at the time. He was one of the lives of the pawty. If I would have guessed which cat would have become a celebrity of this magnitude, I would have gone with @RomeoTheCat. Romeo is a cat that was rescued from The Forgotten Persian Rescue and Friends, and has now devoted his life to help raise money for other rescue organizations.

I digress. The point is that I (probably like most of his followers) followed him to be part of a cool crowd. Sockington is cool. He is not a cat that follows back. That means, that I read his tweets, but he doesn’t read mine (except from TweetGrid during the #pawpawty). As a matter of fact, he is currently following fewer than 400 people (actually, pets) so I don’t really feel left out. He is a selective follower. So am I.

I have no idea how he got so many people to follow him. I’m not sure that he does either. I’ve read his blog, and he’s just as surprised as anyone to have this level of twitter fame.

Why does it bother TechCruch so much? Robin Wauters, of TechCruch recently wrote an article This Is Getting Ridiculous: Cat Amasses Half A Million Twitter Followers In 3 Months. It’s not ridiculous. People are enjoying what the kitty has to say so much, that they are buying t-shirts with his tweets. I think that people are just jealous.

Is there a magic formula for getting followers? If anything, I think that Sockington proves not. He’s just this cat, you know.

The animal community on twitter is a very tight knit group. There was a “paw pawty” on twitter yesterday to celebrate BrewskieButt’s (a cat) birthday and to collect money for FURPOWER. FURPOWER collects money and gives it to a needy pet charity so they can do great work. The mascot of the FURPOWER is RomeoTheCat, a resuced Persian. It’s amazing how powerful twitter is and all the great things that can be done with it.

I learned of a really cool site that helped me really enjoy the “paw pawty.” TwitterGrid allowed me to see every tweet made to the “paw pawty” in real time. This includes people that I am not following. As long as people had in their tweets #pawpawty, it showed up there.  It was a great way to find new people (or in this case animals) who might be interesting to follow on a regular basis. I’m now following over 140 people. I’m finding that I just can’t keep up with everyone, but I try to read as many tweets as possible. I think that twitter could become its own full time job.

I think that I’m at a twitter disadvantage. Since I live in Israel, I usually spend my time tweeting before or after work. That’s OK when I’m responding directly to others, but if I want to promote new pages on The Pet Wiki, I’ll need to figure something else out. There’s a service that I’ve subscribed to call TweetLater. It should allow me to set times for my tweets to  display. We’ll see if that helps.

I got my mom a book on cat breeds to help her out with some of the details. There are some new breeds in there that I’ve never heard of. Apparently neither has Wikipedia. I think that’s kind of cool, that The Pet Wiki has stuff that isn’t in Wikipedia yet. If you want to know more about Tiffany/Chantilly, one of the only places that you can find information is The Pet Wiki. Now, if we could only get a picture…

My mom found some new breeds of cats to write about, but we can’t find any pictures that are free to license. If anyone has any picture of a Cymric cat that they’d like to donate to a worth cause, please let me know. The pages of The Pet Wiki look so much better when we have images associated with them.

I’ll keep looking – wish me luck

I’ve been trying to add images of cats and dogs to my mom’s site. So far so good. I have been looking for images in the Creative Commons. A lot of the stuff I’ve uploaded is public domain. Dogs have been easier to find than cats. Perhaps it’s because you can tell a dog to sit but cats go all over the place .

I’m not happy with the image that I have for the American Bobtail, and I can’t find anything for the American Wirehair. I’ve emailed another site to see if they will let me use their images. We’ll see what happens. I love the image that I have for the American Curl. Can you tell that I’m still in the A’s?

My mom has really been at it. She has now finished writing information about cat breeds and has moved on to birds. From Abyssinians to Turkish Vans, if you are looking for a cat, The Pet Wiki is the place to go. Abyssinian has an image, but there is still a lot of work to add more images to the site.