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Vanessa's View

Easter Eggs, The Birds, and Identity Theft

Part 1: Easter Eggs and The Birds

What a surprise it was when Mom checked her email on Sunday night and saw that there were 175 messages! Upon closer inspection, it appeared that Toffy and I had received multiple (must have been over 100) special gifts from a handsome black cat from New Zealand named Tyson (#476218 - I'd link to his page, but since it takes forever to load, you'll probably just get stuck there like I did, waiting and waiting and waiting, until you realize that you'd be better off if you just left.). The special gifts that Toffy and I received from Tyson were the beautiful Easter Eggs that you've most likely seen gracing many a Catster cat's page, including your own. Thank you, Tyson! We are infinitely grateful for your friendship and generosity! We'd have loved to send you our own special gift as a token of appreciation but as I mentioned before we got stuck on your page and couldn't do much except to eventually leave in frustration. (I'm sure that Tyson didn't intend to give us so many Easter Eggs and maybe Catster should find a way of preventing incidents like this from happening. These Easter Eggs may have been free but imagine the same thing happening with one of the expensive gifts!)

Anymeow, as Mom began checking her 175 messages, she thought it would be a good idea to watch TV at the same time and as she flipped through the channels there was a movie that caught her attention and she decided to watch it, as it was just starting. It was a well-known Alfred Hitchcock movie from the early 1960s. So, as she's watching this movie, all of a sudden she notices that Toffy is standing on the small stool beside the TV trying to get at the screen. Now, why on earth could that be? Well, I'll give you a hint: the movie was called "The Birds," and a bunch of birds were chirping madly, which piqued Toffy's curiosity, obviously. The movie, which I too was watching from atop my cat tree, turned out to be quite a scary one. The feathered creatures--there were lots of them--had invaded a small town and were attacking the people who lived there, trying to get into their homes. I witnessed a murder of crows swoop down on a group of innocent school children who were trying to run to safety. How frightening! By this time, Toffy had already retreated to his basket in the opposite corner of the room.

Meanwhile, Mom was having major problems trying to read her email messages, even after deleting all of the multiple messages from Catster announcing Tyson's many special gifts. It was futile and she eventually just logged out and decided to let us visit Catster. I think we were on my page admiring my special gift Easter Eggs when we clicked on Tyson's picture to get to his page. We weren't able to see much of his page except for row upon row of Easter Eggs in the special gifts given section. We were intrigued by Tyson's primary photo, which shows him being held by a funny-looking big bird with an extra long bill. What a coincidence to be watching the movie "The Birds" at the same time as finding out that we had been bombarded with all these emails from Catster announcing multiple gifts of Easter Eggs from a cat whose primary picture is of him posing with a giant bird!! Yet, stranger things have happened!

Part 2: Identity Theft

Mom may have been the victim of multiple messages clogging up her email program; the people in the movie were the intended victims of all those evil birds that had invaded the town (most of the people managed to get away in the end, or so it appeared); and I was recently the victim of… Identity Theft!! No kidding, cats! My lovely friend Sabrina alerted me to the situation several weeks ago. Well, I didn't find out until I finally logged onto Catster after a long hiatus. Some person had stolen one or more of my photos, my name and bio from my Catster page and used it on another website (Cat Channel) in order to enter contests and win prizes. Can you imagine that!? Unfortunately, there is a downside to being cute and photogenic… but seriously, this could happen to you too and unless you frequent other websites besides Catster, you won't even be aware of what's going on unless someone happens to notice and mention it to you, like my friend Sabrina did. I'm so thankful that Sabrina suspected that it wasn't really me on Cat Channel and took the time to question me about my supposed page there. Believe me, I did not create a profile on that website and have no intention of doing so! Mom wrote an email to the people in charge there explaining that this was a case of identity theft and asked them to remove the fake page. If any of you happened to see my page there and thought it was really me, I can assure you that it wasn't the real me but someone who was pretending to be me, or rather someone pretending that I was their cat. Don't some people have better things to do with their time?! All I can say is… hhhhhiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssss!!!!!!

Vanessa

P.S. To make it harder for someone to steal your Catster photos, follow these instructions:
1) Go to your Catster account.
2) In option #2 Account preferences, click on the link "Review and set all your custom preferences".
3) On the Account Preferences page, you'll see #4 Photo sharing preferences. Click on the words "Modify now".
4) Read what it says on the page titled "Photo Sharing and Security Preferences" and then select the first option at the bottom of the page beside the sentence "Please add extra security to my photos so people cannot easily use them."
5) Click on the "SUBMIT" button at the bottom of the page and you're done.

P.P.S. I saw the funniest breaded cat photos of my friends TT and Tasha (look for the photos on their pages, you can't miss them)! Aren't they pawsome?! Strangely, Mom recently caught me eating a hole out of a piece of multigrain bread. Yes, it sounds bizarre for a committed carnivore like myself to have a craving for grains, doesn't it? But should you ever happen upon a photo of my face sticking through a piece of bread, somewhere on the Internet, rest assured that it's not really me it's someone who has stolen my identity! MOL!

Health Update

Hi there, kits! I hope you're enjoying the holiday season! I haven't written in my diary in a while and some of you might be curious about how things are going with me. Remember the pee sample that never got to the vet clinic? You'll also recall that I was due for a teeth cleaning. Mom made a dental appointment for me a few weeks ago to coincide with her time off from work. It was recommended that I be allowed to stay overnight so that I could be observed and so that a pee sample could be obtained from me as well. The pee sample would be analyzed so that any abnormalities could serve as a clue as to what might be wrong with me. You see, Mom thinks I've been producing more pee than I used to, based on the size of the clumps in the litterbox. She claims I'm peeing more than Toffy and thinks it should be the other way around.

So, on Monday afternoon Mom dropped me off at the vet clinic. She had every intention of leaving the stroller there with me so that I could sleep in it but the vet tech told her that there just wasn't enough room for it in the back with all the borders that they had at this time of year. Okay. Fine. The empty stroller went home with Mom and I got to stay in the standard accommodation, which was probably better since I had a food dish, water bowl and litterbox too, items not available to me in the stroller, obviously.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon around 1:30 pm. Mom gets a phone call from the vet clinic. The dental cleaning went really well, apparently, but the vet wants to talk to Mom. Perhaps something was detected in the pee sample, she guesses. Mom arrives at the vet clinic shortly before the scheduled time of 5:00 pm with the empty stroller. She has to wait several minutes before we are reunited in one of the examination rooms. The vet tech tells her that I've been rather cranky all afternoon. The first thing Mom notices is that I have these awful eye boogers. I've been getting those a lot recently. Perhaps it's something to ask the vet about… She eventually gets a tissue from her purse and starts wiping the eye boogers. Just then the vet walks in the room. Mom mentions the eye boogers but the vet tells her that I was given some antibiotic ointment and that I'm in no mood to be poked. Okay. Fine.

At this point Mom is expecting to hear some not so good news about my lab results and perhaps even receive a lecture of some sort. But guess what? There's nothing wrong with me!! All the tests came back normal!!* Even the pee sample, which had to be taken from me because I did not pee while at the clinic, turned out to be perfectly normal. Not only that, but unlike Toffy I didn't even have to have any teeth extracted, something Mom feared might have to happen. I was sent home with some tablets to take for a week. They're supposed to help my gums or something. We'll see starting tomorrow morning how that goes. I'm supposed to eat the tablet with a little bit of food and then Mom is supposed to give me some water as well. Afterwards, I can eat my regular meal.

Oh, before I forget, there's some more good news! The store where Mom buys our cat food now sells Weruva! She brought home a few cans in addition to the usual brands she buys for us and promised that she'll include a few cans in our rotation every week. The price was pretty reasonable too. Tonight we had "Polynesian BBQ" for dinner. Yeah, I know it contains fish, but we're allowed fish once or twice a week. Mom even caught me eating out of Toffy's food bowl! That's how hungry I was! Ha! ha!

Purrs,
Vanessa

*Two of the values (albumin and cholesterol) were slightly elevated (above the maximum), but the vet hadn't mentioned anything so it's probably nothing to worry about.

News from last week

I'm kind of late posting this, but what a surprise it was to find out that I was one of the daily diary picks last Sunday! It's a bit embarrassing, actually, considering what I wrote about, MOL! Congrats to all the other cats whose diaries were featured too! My friend Alfie even made me a lovely keepsake photo. Check it out by clicking on the heart rosette that he gave me!

Writing about litter box issues is kind of addictive. I just wrote several more paragraphs but then decided to spare you all the details. A lot of it was probably a repetition of what I wrote already.

Mom made a video of me last week. No, not of me in the litter box! I didn't even use the litter box at all last Sunday. Unfortunately, she didn't focus the camera on me the whole time and missed a really good shot of me yawning. By the time she saw the yawn, it was too late. She ended up cutting the scenes without me. If only she hadn't moved the camera this would have been a pawsome video. You'll just have to imagine me sitting there and all of a sudden yawning.

Well, the video didn't seem to want to upload to Catster. The message said that "an error occurred while connecting to the server." We've heard other cats complain about the fleas on Catster but haven't experienced anything unusual until now. Oh well, all the video shows is me sitting down while some music is playing on the radio. Before long I stand up, shake my paw and then slink off. Remember that I yawned too but that part wasn't captured on video. I was going to ask if any cat recognized the song and group but obviously I can't do that now that there's no video. A certain cat bed of mine is in the video too. Mom has been trying to get me to use this bed for the longest time and has been moving it to various spots in the living room but it wasn't until today that I finally rediscovered this cat bed and chose to curl up in it again. Was Mom every happy about that!

Purrs,
Vanessa

P.S. Toffy and I will be announcing the grand prize winner of our series of games on Tuesday.