Goodbye Caesar

Monica and I are very sad because we have lost several friends this year. Caesar is the most recent friend and fan club member to go on to the Rainbow Bridge. He will be missed by his family and all of us at the Pablo Fan Club.

Thankful Thirteen

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

Phoebe and I are working together on this special Thursday Thankful Thirteen. There are a lot of things to be thankful for this year.
1. It has been almost exactly one year since we met Pablo. We are very thankful that we met him. He has been a great inspiration to us and it was through Pablo that we learned about blogging.
2. We have blogging for just over a year now! We are very thankful for all the great friends that we have met on the blogosphere.
3. We are very thankful for our people, Tracy and Denis. They are good for giving scritches, playing with the laser light toy and doing litter box patrol.
4. We are very thankful that Phoebe is getting a bit back to her old self. She still feels a bit crabby, but she is hanging out with us all now instead of hiding all the time.
5. We reluctantly admit that we are thankful for Joey. He can be a real pest, but he sure is entertaining. We are especially thankful that he is not homeless and out in the cold right now.
6. We are very thankful that we learned about going Outside on our harnesses this year. We learned about that from our good friend and fan club member, Tara.
7. We are thankful that we have lots of food here at our house. My goodness, we have lots of different foods these days than we have ever had before.
8. We are very thankful for our Grandma who lives just next door. She comes to visit us and plays with us. She keeps us company when Tracy and Denis abandon us for a trip. Grandma has been gone for almost a month now on a vacation herself. She comes back next week and we will be glad to see her.
9. We are thankful for our nice wide windowsills where we can look out our windows at the birds.
10. We are thankful that the big red monster machine does not live next door to us anymore.
11. We are thankful for warm cozy blankets and soft pillows to sleep on.
12. We are thankful for each other. Phoebe and I have been together since as long as we can remember.
13. And finally, we are very thankful for all of our friends' good wishes and purrs for Phoebe as she has been sick. Thank you everycat!

Happy Thanksgiving from Phoebe and Monica!

Fashion Friday on Thursday

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

I have never done a fashion show friday post because I don't wear clothes. But I did find this fancy feather hat to wear a few weeks ago. (it is really the feather from our wand toy. Joey has managed to get most of the feathers off it by now). I would like to wear it to welcome all of our new friends to our blog. If you are a fan of Pablo's and would like to join his fan club, please let me know. Membership requirements are simply to be a fan of Pablo's and show and interest in the fan club by commenting on both blogs. The Fan Club pledge is found in the sidebar for all members to refer to. A big welcome to recently added members Adan and Michico, Lord Jaders, Frodo, Fiona and Ali, Skeezix, MoMo, Tybalt and the (Mostly) Black Cats!

I'm also wearing my hat in respectful memory of one of our favorite dog Fan Club members, Jake. Jake was sick with heart failure for several months and finally went to the Rainbow Bridge last evening. If you would like to send condolences to his family, their blog is here. Jake's blog was taken down a while ago.

Finally, I'm wearing the hat to try to cheer up Phoebe. She's still not back to her old self and I can tell that Tracy worries about her. Phoebe is taking her medicine and eating some, but she also tends to hide for a lot of the day. She got tired of her special new wet food and is only interested in Joey's food. However, she doesn't like to eat when me and Joey are eating. Please keep purring for her. Thanks.

Update

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

Phoebe and I have once again been prevented from blogging by the escapades of Tracy and Denis. They keep going out and leaving us for hours on end. They spend a LOT of time at That House (the one that smells like an unhygienic cat). Phoebe and I looked over the contracts quite thoroughly. We voiced our concerns about buying a house with another cat's scent in it, but they didn't listen to the voice of wisdom.
Here is Denis signing the contract. It is official, we are going through with the purchase.

Some of our friends have been a bit confused about this territory expansion. Just to clarify, we are not moving into That House. We are staying right here. We are buying this land so that we have more room to explore. We will own Grandma's house as well as That House. Phoebe and I don't think that we should have any people live there. People tend to make trouble. Here is a picture of what the layout is.
The yellow house is our house. The green one is Grandma's and the grey one way at the end is That House.

In other news, our new cat litter box is working out quite well. Tracy seems to be doing a better job of keeping it tidy.

We were very saddened to learn today upon our return to our blog that club member Anastasia went missing one week ago and seems to have gone on to the Bridge. Anastasia was a classy girl and very stylish. The Pablo Fan Club will be a bit lonelier without her.

We have had lots of new friends stop by the Pablo Fan Club in the last month. We are way behind in confirming them as official Fan Club members. I will see to it that I do that in the next few days.

Suzanne Sleeps

Sweet lady Suzanne fought a brave battle against kidney disease. She found great comfort in her Momma Toni's loving care this past weekend and went to the Rainbow Bridge today. She will be missed by all in the Pablo Fan Club. Rest in peace, Suz.

Membership Process

Dear Pablo, fan club members and friends,

I wanted to take this opportunity to show you all how very long my whiskers are. And also to explain the rigorous process that we here at the Pablo Fan Club Headquarters go through to determine the suitability of Fan Club members. It actually is very easy to qualify - you just have to demonstrate an interest in the Fan Club and an admiration for Pablo by posting a comment both on this blog and on Pablo's. Whenever anycat (or dog and recently even a human) expresses interest in joining, we just quickly check that they indeed have commented on Pablo's blog and we add them straightaway! Every once in a while, we also try to compare our comments with Pablo's to seek other admirers and add them. This is a challenging task, so if we missed you as a potential member, please let us know.

I know that a lot of cats have very long blogroll lists to include everycat in the blogosphere. I really appreciate that spirit and enjoy being an active member of the cat blogosphere. But the Fan Club Chairfeline Committee has decided to limit our blogroll to just club members to keep our sidebar streamlined and most useful for us, for Pablo and for the club members. We are considering adding a separate list for other friends, but have not reached a consensus yet. Our sidebar is getting kind of long.

A hearty welcome to our newest members The Crew (George, Max, Tipper and Misty), Marilyn MonREOW, Mickey Mantle, Caricature (our first human member), Ceasar and Prinnie, Diamond, Kassiel y Antonia (los Gárgolas), Marie, Mr Hendrix, Parker, Samantha and Tigger, Sultanfus and Guy and, finally, Suzanne, our lovely senior citizen lady-cat.

Testimonial

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

I would like to publicly thank club member and prominent physician Dr. Daisy for helping me out with my IBS problem. Daisy recently completed her Milton-Bradley medical training and is working on her surgery residency. When she witnessed the indignity of my daily pill-taking ritual, she vowed to study IBS and try to help me out. Well, on her excellent medical advice, Tracy bought me a harness and took me outside on regular walks. Since I have been going outside, I have only vomited twice and my pills have been reduced to every 2-3 days. I'm not sure if it is the exercise, the fresh air or the high quality grass munching that has done the trick. But Dr. Daisy, I am so grateful for your assistance. I recommend Dr. Daisy to any ailing kitty.

Spotlight on: Canines

Dear faithful fan club members,

Many of you may not know our canine members in the Pablo Fan Club. We met them when we first started this blog because their people are all friends of Tracy's. Our dog friends are at a disadvantage in trying to emulate the feline values promoted by Pablo and the fan club, but they do their best. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce them.Here is Sydney. She lives with Tracy's best friend from high school. You can see that she tries to be very helpful with chores in her house. She also lives with our cat friend, Gilbert, but they do not get along very well. I think their mutual membership in the Pablo Fan Club will help them to keep the peace in their house. I have smelled Sydney on Tracy's clothes when she came home from a road trip.
This is Sherman. He and his two cousins live in the state of New York. Sherman was the first of them to start blogging. His secretary is his human brother and they post lots of pictures and jokes. He seems a little insecure about his standing in his family, but as long as he is fed, he's happy.
This is Jasmine, but she also goes by Jazz or Jazzy. She is Sherman's cousin. She goes outside a lot because she lives in the country. You can see that she is emulating Pablo values of being vigilant of her property. She also lives with three cats, so she has some good examples of feline priorities right in her household.
And this is Jake, the third of the cousins. He lives with his mom, dad and two boys. There is a picture on his blog today of how he was tortured in the bathtub by his family. But he says that they are generally very nice to him. Here you can see that he is practicing sleeping in an excellent feline-like position.

It has been an interesting cross-cultural experience getting to know some dogs. But I hope they don't come over to our house for a visit.

Head Shots

Dear Pablo,

We had Tracy take some new pictures of us in case we decide to go into modeling or acting, we can give them to our agents. How do you like them?
Phoebe - red hair, green eyes. Looks great in green and black! Would be interested in being in an action movie.
Monica - blond hair, green eyes. Looks great in blue or pink. May be interested in spokesmodel career for cat grass or cat nip.

Also, we never gave the official welcome to new Fan Club members Daisy, Chairman Mao, Kimo and Sabi, Las 6 Cucarañas, Rocky and the Artsy Catsy gang, Sulftanus and Guy, and finally, Zippy, Sadie and Speedy. Welcome one and all. You will find the Pablo Fan Club pledge on the side bar for your handy reference.

Going Pink for Lilly Lu

Dear Pablo and fan club members,

As you probably know, Lilly Lu is very sick and everycat is praying and pulling for her. Monica and I do not know Lilly Lu personally, but she is a great friend to fan club members Daisy, Jeter Harris and Tara. Lilly Lu's favorite color is pink, so we changed our blog colors for a while to cheer her up and show our solidarity. Get well soon, Lilly Lu. From your new friends Phoebe and Monica. Here is where to find updates on how she is doing.

A New Look

Dear Pablo,

Monica, Tracy and I are very excited about some changes we just made to the blog layout. Thanks to Skeezix and his Cat Blog Helpcenter, we figured out how to use blogroller to organize our links. Now we will know when fan club members have a new post to read on their blogs. We used the same thing on the link to your blog as well - and we moved your link up to a more prominent location after new member O'Jeter Harris asked us where to find more information about you. We realized there was a big problem if somecat couldn't find your blog easily. Blogroller was a little tricky to figure out, but we think it will definitely be worth the trouble.

BTW, welcome to new members Faz the Cat, O'Jeter Harris and Madness. You will find the fan club pledge in the sidebar for your handy reference. Anycat (or dog**, we are an equal opportunity organization.) who is a friend of Pablo's and a friend of ours is welcome to join. Just leave a comment about your interest, and we will add you to the member list.

**We understand that dogs will not be able to emulate some of the finer feline skills practiced by the fan club. Allowances will be made based on friendship with Pablo.

Fan Club Expands

Dear Pablo,

Tracy explained to us the other day that a fan club is generally comprised of more than just two cats. So in the spirit of inclusiveness, we have enrolled our friends into the fan club member list (seen on our side panel as "Pablo admirers"). We weren't sure about including Beto. I'm not sure if he is really an admirer of yours so much as an apprentice. Plus, he, Possum and Luna do not live in the US, but oh well. Who cares about the details.

So, Daisymae, Luna, Gilbert, Possum, Jake, Jazz, Sydney, Sherman and Beto, welcome to the fan club!

Addendum: Sherman asked a very good question about what you do when you are a member. After consulting with Tracy again about fan clubs, I have decided that we need a fan club pledge. So please repeat the following oath in front of a witness ( everyone will have to provide their own witness. We will take your word for it):

I, (insert your name), do solemnly swear to remain faithful to the Pablo Fan Club purpose, which is to admire the exceptional qualities of the great feline leader, Pablo of West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. I will heed his wise counsel in feline social causes, defend his honor to any detractors and strive to follow his example in my daily life.**

** We understand that canine members will not be capable of some of the advanced feline skills, but membership will still be extended on the basis of friendship with Pablo.