Things to Avoid – My Dear Cat
04. Jun, 2007 
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I love my cat. She’s black. She’s precious. And she just loves sitting in my lap as I’m writing blog posts. She purrs. She’s cute. And you could probably care less.
Do You Care About My Cat?
You don’t care about my cat? Why not? I think I feel a tear coming on. She is the most precious jewel to all mankind. She’s there when others aren’t. She nags when nobody is around to nag.
But let’s face it. You could probably care less about my cat. My cat is mine and mine alone. You probably have your own pets you cherish, or perhaps a child that you love dearly. But do I care about your pets and child? Unless I am directly involved in the life of either, I doubt it.
Good Cat Topics
Don’t get me wrong. There are some good cat topics out there. There are even blogs devoted to cats for cat lovers. But on a personal site, cat topics should be the exception rather than the rule.
If you do blog about cats on your personal site, here are some topics suggestions:
- How to get a cat to shut up.
- How to train a cat.
- Your favorite cat recipe.
- Describe in detail what happened when your cat licked the 9-volt battery.
- Describe the time you came across your cat sleeping in the dryer.
- Describe what happens when you throw a cat into a full bath tub.
- Show a video of a cat chasing a laser around a room.
By the way, for the PETA folks out there, I’m not suggested being cruel to a cat. I’m suggesting that those topics might actually make a cat post entertaining.
Conclusion
I love my cat. She’s sleeping so peacefully right now on my window sill. And I have my spray bottle aimed right at her and she doesn’t yet know of the impending doom. Should I let her sleep?
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I would say you are lucky. My cat likes to jump on my back while I’m writing posts
I don’t know what happens when a cat licks a 9 Volt battery, but I’ll leave one on the table tonight. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a grrrreat post featuring my dear cat
Cats are interesting. One of the reasons people get bored seeing cat posts is because many times, and so far, such posts usually come from personal bloggers who have no topic to talk about, and therefore they talk about their cats. Simonne’s recent posts on cats is a contradiction to this, addressing specific things about cats as being a part of a highly focused “cat” topic or category.
Let’s forget PETA for a while; being cruel to any animal or a human being is sad in my view. But the more you think about it, the more confusing it gets; what about spiders, bugs and scorpions? What if we run into them and they are out, going about their business? It becomes a really tricky topic, and sometimes we realize that animal treatment or ethics can be relative. Those are some interesting cat topics that you mention. I have no idea what a 9-volt battery licking would do to a cat, though I am guessing a cat will swim if dropped, not thrown, in a full bath tub. I am also hoping that if one must drop the cat, it is done from a near distance and not from too high of a level, or else the cat might hit the bottom of the tub when dropped and get hut.
See, even the topic of the topic of cats becomes interesting once you get into it.
I love your cat, by the way. So yes, please let her sleep!
Simonne,
Jump on your back? Is your cat de-clawed? If not, ouch.
Bes,
If you eat hamburger meat or any meat product for that matter, you are being indirectly cruel to animals. I’ve never had a cat-burger, but sometimes my cat gets on my nerves so much I’m tempted to try one.
No, my cat is not de-clawed. I just cut the tips of her claws from time to time. Luckily she somehow shows respect for human skin (at least for my human skin – I cannot say the same about my boyfriend’s human skin
). And my back is just a milestone on her jumpy way to the window: she uses it as a support for continuing the leap. Too bad I cannot take a picture of her doing that. If I knew cats fly without wings, maybe I would have thought twice before falling in love with her.
That indirect cruelty to animals is very hard to be avoided. If I only look at my shoes and I think they used to be the skin of some animal, I realize that’s life. I can’t stand shoes made of artificial leather because they bite. And I cannot walk barefoot. It’s like crocodiles and tigers don’t like to eat grass. I saw a documentary movie about baby birds (vultures or something like this) and I was impressed by the cruelty of the chicks: the first born had the most chances to survive, because it had better abilities to catch the food fetched by the parents. The more food he got, the stronger he became, thus having even more chances to catch all the food. As it was not enough, the big chick hit his small brother in the head until he fall down from the nest.
how about writing posts on my love to tigers and all other wild cats?
There are several things I agree which should be avoided, one of them is distinctly and definitively telling other people what they should or should not write about on their personal weblog. It is, after all, their personal weblog.
I have recently started using Google Analytics to see where the popularity lies on my weblog and, to my surprise, discovered that the most popular entry last month – and continuing into this month – was a Photograph of the Day, a picture of a dog. Not my dog, but a dog nonetheless: probably one of those things that one shouldn’t write about but which interest everyone else or, at least, those not busy telling others what to do and what not to do.
The second most popular post was a joke about a study carried out by the UN. The concluding line of the joke was that the study had failed because, amongst others, Americans didn’t know what ‘rest of the world’ meant. Could it be that some do not know what ‘rest of the Blogosphere’ means?
Pi,
I just want to thank you for your comment and opinion.
I went through this already with the WLTC essay thing. You remember, the one you won first place in? It’s actually what helped inspire this series that Bes (2nd place winner) and Simonne so graciously decided to assist me on.
I hope you are not taking my “cat post” seriously as an attack on your post, as it seems you are attacking me personally (against our comment policy btw) by calling me short-sighted in your post and also in your comment.
If I am going to a site dedicated to cats, children, whatever… Awesome. However, there comes a point when someone blogs about something so personal that nobody but that person could relate to it. Does that person have a right to write whatever they want? Sure. Will they get an audience? Perhaps if cats could read.
Here’s the main point of my post:
“You don’t care about my cat? Why not? I think I feel a tear coming on. She is the most precious jewel to all mankind. She’s there when others aren’t. She nags when nobody is around to nag.”
A personal blogger is entitled to write whatever. But the audience will just narrow if a micro-view of life is being shared that only one person can understand. If I am at a blog, I am there as a reader and perhaps a commentator. Unless I personally know that blogger, I could probably care less about their cat. I’m not going to waste my time at a blog that just blogs about nasty hair balls and cats high on cat nip.
If your blog does revolve around such topic and such behavior (which it appears it doesn’t), then you have a special topic for your blog! Congrats! That means I can expect more pet posts in the future so I can avoid your blog, right?
My post is an opinion, and opinions are what define a big part of us. If you think my opinion isn’t valid, you can of course argue about it by focusing on the post. I have written one post about cats, yet it seems that you are making it a personal argument by calling me short-sighted, where one might say, “How dare you tell me what to do.” I looked and noticed that I never once said in my post, “Do not write about cats.” Furthermore, if I did happen to cross into the territory of telling you what to do or not to do, then you don’t have to listen to me and it is your choice whether to be offended or not. I personally hope you aren’t offended, as I find your comments valuable and contributions to the blogosphere admirable. My posts here are to improve Reader Appreciation, and not the other way round.
If some of your posts on dogs or jokes do well, then that’s fantastic. Keep writing them. If any of my posts in the future offend you, then go ahead and argue against the post, since that is one of the reasons comments are open here. I hope that shed more light on the topic; thanks again for letting me know directly how you felt.
Please don’t take the view that I am attacking you personally, that certainly isn’t the case and I am amending the wording so that no one else takes this view. I find the idea of saying that people shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that to be adverse to what the Blogosphere is about: a personal weblog is there for a person to represent themselves and, should they wish to write about their cat, then why not. There are literally thousands of people out there who, new to the idea of expressing themselves in writing, simply cannot come up with a topic everyone finds interesting.
I find suggestions on what to avoid in blogging short-sighted in that not everyone is angling for readers. The bulk of weblogs do not have anything like the readership one might imagine, and are never written with a mass readership in mind. Obviously, were one to write that posts of an adult nature should be avoided in a weblog which is predominantly aimed at children, or posts which border on the illegal in the jurisdiction where they are most likely to be read, then I would agree entirely.
I would also agree that advising people not to promote goods they are paid to promote without admitting it is a bad thing – going directly to my weblogs essay and with a view towards PayPerPost and ReviewMe.
However, I feel that the ‘avoid the cat’ post has been overstretched of late; regardless of how well it may be written, or how well intentioned, it proliferates and becomes lost amid the dross.
I wish I had video of my old cat, Neavitt, chasing the laser dot around the house. That cat would go full Matrix…running up the wall and doing backflips. It was an awesome display of acrobatics!