Comment-a-thon totals

Staff at AWS with the donation from Chewy.com
for some reason they sent 'senior' food  *shrug*

There has also been exactly 400 comments from the start of my blogoversary until now!! LOL  of course I'm sure quite a few of them are mine, but that is OK.  I was hoping to donate ~$100 and poof, that is the total we actually got.

While I didn't get there the way I originally wanted to, I'm still tickled pink that I got there, so thank you to all of you for coming back to my blog again and again and spending a small part of your day with me, The Crew, and the influx of fosters I get.

I have another bit of interesting news... while watching my comments, I also watched my web stats.  Blogger/Google started tracking visitors for me back in May of 2008. They haven't been the most reliable I'm sure, but they are still interesting and fun to watch.  Well just very very recently I hit 100,000 page views :)  At the time of the composition of this post it actually reads 102,112  Yup, I'm more than a little chuffed about that one.

Blogoversary comment-a-thon update

Well it has been two weeks since I started my little comment-a-thon for my blogoversary, and as of right now I've gotten 53 comments on the original post and a total of 260 comments for a total donation of $65! (come on, we can do better than that!!)

So for one more week I'll keep adding up comments and sometime on the 9th I'll make another announcement about the final total.

There has been another wonderful development.

Javi from Chewy.com reached out to me regarding my website and he mentioned that they have a great program for animal shelters and rescues.  I thanked him for his kind words about my blog and mentioned the less than impressive response I got from Chewy.com when I contacted them about my comment-a-thon.  It wasn't that they weren't happy to have me buy food from them, but they just didn't seem all that excited nor overly interested in helping.  Well Javi was surprised by this and offered to make a contribution on my behalf to the shelter and contacted them yesterday about sending them some canned food directly to them!!  isn't that awesome!?!

I've asked the shelter to send me pictures when it arrives..

I can tell you the food is going to be really appreciated, and I personally thank them, and Javi,  for doing this.

Toesday with Ella

I've decided to open up my commentathon to all posts from the blogoversary post till I close it next month.  So I hope you all get a commenting!  Remember, I am going to donate twenty five cents for each comment and you can comment more than once.  I just ask you not commentbomb a post :)

Ella does have the cutest toes going, she's just not a fan of being on her back so this might be the last you see of them.

2002 - 2012 and beyond

10 years ago VCRs were still cool, cameras were still using film, US planned to invade Iraq, the Washington Sniper hadn't been caught, Martha Stewart was about to be sent to jail, Run-DMC was killed.  Anticipation for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was building and Avril Lavigne was "Complicated"

and one slightly off center woman decided her personal blog was getting overrun with stories of kittens and so she created "Tails from the Foster Kittens"

Yup.  I am celebrating my 10 year blogoversary (blogiversary?  blogaversary?) with this blog.. I was actually blogging for quite some time before I started fostering in May 2002, so I've been blogging way longer than that, but this little corner of the internet is now 10 years old.

It is also that time of year when I generally like to make a donation of canned cat food to the shelter as well.  Things really drop off once the summer ends, but kitties still go into heat and kittens are still coming in.  Fall kittens also seem to have it worse than the first batch of spring kittens because mom is nutritionally depleted and people are looking for kittens in the spring so those 'free to a good home" kittens are snapped up right quick but the fall kittens languish and people decide to bring them to the shelter instead.

This year I thought I would tie my donation in with a fundraising / promotion of my blog.  I figure I would make a donation for each comment made and use that to buy food with.  I thought about partnering with Mr. Chewy, but while they were completely happy to let me buy food from them, they were all "meh" about the promotional side of it.  Then I got to thinking.  It would be cool if I could offer you guys a way to chip in, but again Mr. Chewy was "meh" about the whole thing, and they don't offer gift certificates.  But Amazon does.

update 10/31/12 : Javi over at TeamChewy heard about my blog and my impressions when dealing with them regarding this comment-a-thon and offered to send the shelter some cat food on my behalf!  Wasn't that nice of them!

But then I got to thinking I'm not a big fan of asking others to help out financially as there are a lot of groups out there who are in need.  I think this would be much more fun if there were no outside money involved at all.  Then HollyAnne posted on facebook and reminded me of Swagbucks!  Swagbucks is pretty interesting in that they randomly reward you with .. swagbucks.. for searching with them. You can also earn swagbucks with games, promotional sign ups, watching videos, and watching their twitter and facebook feeds for free codes.  When you get enough bucks you can turn them in for prizes including paypal payments and gift certificates to Amazon.com.  I've actually been with them for quite some time and gotten quite a few $5.00 certificates to Amazon.  By signing up through my referral link I get reward when you do.. and if you happen to earn enough for a gift certificate to Amazon and want to donate it to help buy food it is so easy to do... not that you have to nor am I even asking you do that.. but the referrals will help me earn more and I can donate more..

So anyway.. here is the fun part of the fundraiser I wanted to do.  I figure I will donate a quarter for every comment on this post for the first 400 comments then a dime for every comment after that.  All you have to do is comment away... I only ask that you try not to comment more then one comment in a row.  I plan on running this post for a month so there is time to get the donation to the shelter in time for Thanksgiving.

So share away.. tell your friends, tell your fellow cat lovers, tell really chatty people you know.

Have fun

Blogging fun

Seeing as this is my blog I have the right to change my mind :) I am going to postpone the photos of the carnival until tomorrow (it was cute but not OVERLY exciting) because on my way home I stopped at the local flea market and found some goodies.

Before I get to that, lets take care of business.. If you could vote for Fleurp, I'd really appreciate it (no need to register, simply click there then on the vote button.  If you are so inclined you can vote every 12 hours.  Only one vote per IP address)

OK, now for the goodies.

The flea market isn't huge, but it is good sized for the town.  They run as much of the year as they can.  Sometimes I stop in and find things, sometimes not.  Since I am coming up on my ten year blogoversary I thought it might be fun to hold some giveaways.  I didn't really know what to give away.  Heaven knows we all probably have enough stuff with cats on them, so I didn't really want to do cat figurines or purses with cats on them, etc.  But since this is a cat blog, I can't image what else would be a big draw.

But I've been keeping my eye out where ever I have been lately.  One stand had some cute jewelry. Some tiger eye earrings and necklaces.. I saw a really interesting broach that was also a locket too.  As I wandered on I came across a table with a "If I were a Cat" children's book.  It was cute, but not overly cute.  The really nice man who was running it with his wife shared with me another book which I did really like.  Then he gave me a second which I also liked and a third.  (good thing his wife was starting to pack up or I might have gone home with a library of books!!)

And these were the books

I intend to read them and post reviews then give them away too, but that is for another date.

Then I looked up and saw the following picture.

I was just at my co-worker's house and they have a very beautiful painting of a house in a winter scene.  They enjoyed telling the story of the painting, how it was created by a quadriplegic who painted it in about four hours using a paintbrush in his mouth (it was very realistic.  not exactly photo quality realistic but awful close)  My co-worker's husband said the guy never painted before the accident that caused his paralysis, and the artist was enjoying that he could make over a thousand dollars and hour (because now he is charging quite a bit for his paintings)  Anyway, with this story fresh in my mind I asked if there was a story behind the drawing, and they said, it was drawn by the artist (it is signed by Helen Coffman)  Opening up the wooden frame I found that the picture is a trimmed blank card with "Fats" Graphic Pencil by Helen Coffman on the back of it)  It looks like a hand drawing but it could be a print.

Want to win "Fats"  Just post a comment.  If you could tell me what you'd love to see on a giveaway that would be cool... as I do want to do something really fun in October on my blogoversary..  Feel free to be a little crazy but somewhat realistic.  I mean I don't have a million dollars to give away..   Costume jewelery, books? or cat related paraphernalia like cat toys or cat beds?

Comments will be open for a week when I'll choose a winner by random next Sunday.