Titulo Blá Blá Blá

Body Body Body Body Body

In my first stab at a Youtube Video, my 20 year old cat Muffy reviews Whiskas Meaty Pockets dry cat food. I thought the result was funny enough to share with the world, but the story behind this was not humorous in the least and will be an article unto itself.

The basic story is that after following the advice of a vet and an “expert” at a local pet store and giving her certain high priced brand of food exclusively for many years, she became unable to digest it properly and nearly died of malnutrition.

Only because I considered this possibility and decided to start experimenting with other foods did she recover and survive to be a healthy, happy 20 year old kitty with lots of energy and attitude as you can see for yourself. As dry foods go, the Whiskas Meaty Pockets quickly became her favourite and caused the least intestinal distress (although the gas she got was more distress for me than her) and this review is the result.

That story should and will be shared at length very soon but for now check out the video to see the happy ending for yourself J

TwistedlyCanadian

Primeste CADOU pachetul de ingrijire pentru puiul tau de pisica!

Whiskas iti ofera acum un pachet complet, cu sfaturi utile si mostre de produs Whiskas Junior.

Daca pisicuta ta e mai mica de 6 luni, completeaza chestionarul pentru a primi gratuit pachetul pentru ingrijirea pisicutei tale! Se va trimite un singur pachet cadou pentru o familie, indiferent de numarul de pisici inscrise in program si o singura data in decursul unui an.

Brosura Whiskas a fost scrisa in parteneriat cu Waltham, autoritate mondiala in ingrijirea animalelor de companie si in nutritia animalelor.

Fiecare CADOU contine o brosura pentru ingrijirea pisicutei, doua plicuri hrana umeda si un pachet de 300g hrana uscata Whiskas Junior.

Cand pisica ta implineste 6 luni, vei primi automat de la Whiskas Pachetul cadou care contine brosura pentru ingrijirea pisicii adulte, doua plicuri de hrana umeda de 100g si un pachet de 300g hrana uscata Whiskas Adult.

Am primit o leapşă de la Sakura. 2 întrebări drăguţe despre mâncare.

1. Care e madlena mea? Cel mai poftă mi-e de sărăţelele pe care le face de Crăciun (şi nu numai, din fericire) mama lui Alex.

2. Care este bau-baul din farfurie? Deşi mi s-a oferit de câteva ori, am refuzat de fiecare dată mâncarea de vânat de la whiskas.

Cam astea ar fi.

Aseara,in timp ce dadeam de mancare la pisica ma gandeam cam ce gust ar avea aceasta mancare odata ce pisica o mananca cu atata pofta.Si tot gandindu-ma, mi-am dat seama ca de fapt exista astfel de persoane care testeaza mancarea de pisici inainte de a o trimite la “impachetat”.Cum o fi sa iti faci un sandwich “”whiskas”, sau un Kitekat BigMac?

Asta cred ca ar fi una din cele mai nasoale joburi.Si intrebarea de baraj este : Dupa 3-4 luni de mancat asa ceva, incepi sa miauni si sa zgarii?Sau iti creste coada?

Things happen for a reason – sometimes it’s good, sometimes not.

Don't anyone go 'aaaw'. He's a cat, he belongs outside.

Take yesterday. We’d just had the most wonderful weekend with my sister and her boyfriend who were staying in Playa de la Arena. They’d come across to Puerto de la Cruz on Saturday and the weather had been glorious. Sunday was the same. In fact the weather only deteriorated when we headed through the crater towards the south coast where it was quite moody and overcast. Ironic to think we were leaving the sun and the heat in the north.

Andy and I returned to Puerto on Monday morning where it was still clear blues skies… and then the world ended.

The first signs were that the sky darkened.

“Hmmm, I think we’re in for a bit of rain,” Andy made what must be the understatement of the year so far.

An hour later and it was full blown monsoon and the thunderous skies were booming. The deluge was spectacular.

At that point Whiskas decided that our house was his favourite after all and appeared at the window like a drowned rat. It might seem harsh, but setting a precedent with that cat is a dangerous business, so he was refused entry to the ‘ark’. There are plenty of places where he can stay dry.

All afternoon we watched the rain come down in sheets unaware of the devastation it was causing outside.

At around seven Andy decided to make some soup and tabouleh for lunch for the next couple of days, but a couple of phone calls from the UK delayed her. Funnily enough, both started with ‘It’s horrible here, windy and raining…’ - Guess what?

So it was later than planned when we started preparing Mediterranean chickpea stew for dinner. It’s a one pot wonder and I’d barely added all the ingredients to the pan when the gas jet went off.

Now we operate a two canister system for this very reason. However, it ain’t much use when both bottles are empty. Andy had been telling me that we needed to replace the gas for days, so she was a bit tight lipped as we threw on our coats and headed out into the rainy night.

As we passed the golf course gate, Glen, who works at the course, was huddled in the darkness. He’d been waiting for his wife for two hours and had been having trouble getting through on the phone.

We offered to give him a lift, but he assured us that his wife was due any moment.

Apart from a few rivers of boulders on the main road to Puerto, there didn’t seem to be much of a problem. We collected the gas and headed back home. As we were returning through the banana road we noticed a sodden looking figure wrapped in refuse bags; it was Glen.

This was as close to the rain as I wanted to get - through the front window!

It turned out his wife couldn’t leave their house in Los Realejos, boulders were blocking the road and he was resigned to having to walk home in the shocking weather. Los Realejos is quite a few kilometres away on the opposite side of town. We could hardly let the poor man walk, so we told him to jump in and headed back into town, this time towards the motorway… and it was at that point we realised that the rains had cause much more havoc than we realised.

There were flashing lights everywhere as police and firemen tried to make some sense out of the chaos. The motorway was gridlocked and the approach roads the same. Luckily we had opted for a back road to Los Realejos and although the roads were a mess we managed to avoid the queues. In the dreadful conditions it still took us an hour to get Glen within a couple of hundred yards of his house and then get back home via the centre of Puerto where traffic was quieter.

Amazingly we crossed the barranco (ravine) where later we saw on TV a rushing torrent of water washing away cars. Funnily a couple of years ago one of us commented ‘I wonder if there’s ever any water in there’ – now we know the answer. At the time we crossed it, about 20.45, we didn’t even notice that there was any water in it. I think all of the action had taken place by then.

We ended up finally sitting down to dinner at about 22.00 having done our good deed for the day.

Had Andy not decided to make soup and tabouleh before we cooked dinner (she doesn’t usually prepare lunches at that time), or our friends phone from the UK and had I not left replacing the gas until it was too late, we wouldn’t have ever left the house last night and Glen would probably have had to walk home in the awful weather. It was one of those little series of events which worked out well for him.

We were especially glad that they did – it was his birthday and having to brave monsoon conditions is no sort of birthday present for anyone.

121109 // La verdad es ésta: para mi Whiskas es la comida chatarra de las mascotas. Y yo no quiero que mi gatita se alimente de comida chatarra toda su vida, por eso ella solo come Royal Canin. Ahora bien, ningun ser humano puede pasar toda su vida comiendo cosas naurales, solo verduras y frutas, de vez en cuando una buena hamburguesa con papas fritas no le viene mal a nadie. Asi que hoy en el super le compré lo más chatarroso que vi, un alimento húmedo de Whiskas, que tiene un olor nauseabundo, pero que Hester amo apenas lo probó.

No lo recomiendo para todos los días. Pero hoy está permitido, como están permitidas las papas fritas que me voy a mandar hoy.

Paddy’s stash!

where’s my favourite flavour?

yumz!

oh hai! you wan sum?

Whiskas is the most popular cat food brand in Poland.  It has a very consistent and coherent history of advertising in Poland since the early 1990s. Surely, the pet food brands are nice subject of advertising. It’s quite easy to evoke positive emotions in people by just showing a cute puppy or a pair of small kitten.  But Whiskas often employs non-standard media solutions to achieve it. For example, using two adjacent billboards to show the natural mobility of cats… to reach their favourite food.

A subtle sense of humour is also one of the ingredients that make many Whiskas’ adverts more appealing – just like in the below magazine lay-out with cats contemplating pop-art paintings

Headline: Cats know fine arts

A simple magazine advertising can attract much more attention if it’s intelligently spread out over two pages.

Headline page #1: It will stimulate your cat's senses / Headline page#2: Whiskas with delicious pies

A cat can be depicted in advertising in so many different and surprising ways.  A close-up of cat’s muzzle may hint at the type of Whiskas food which the cat has just eaten – like in a series of below cute ads.

Whiskas: in souce

Whiskas: jelly

Whiskas: cream

A package of Whiskas food can also inspire interesting advertising solutions – like this billboard with the outstanding 3D element that certainly draws more attention than a standard flat billboard.

New Whiskas Supreme with whole pieces of fish

The most recent outdoor campaign of Whiskas again employs non-standard 2-dimension billboards with the figure of the cat sitting upon the billboard and reaching for the new Whiskas’ liver pies…

Whiskas with liver pies

… as well as innovative citylight posters at bus shelters where the cat is made to look as if it broke the glass to reach the Whiskas delicacy.

Whiskas with liver pies

Advertising agency:  TBWA\ Warsaw, Poland

Aşa, de curiozitate: Voi ce primiţi de mâncare? Poate mai schimb şi eu meniul: plicuri cu mâncare umedă Whiskas şi mâncare uscată Whiskas la discreţie. O fi bine, o fi rău?

Sri Lanka's wildlife takes some beating

A couple of nights ago Jack and I were watching a video of our last trip to Sri Lanka (sad I know, but until you’ve lived with Spanish TV for 6 years, don’t knock it) and we were reminded of the incredible variety of birds and animals that you find on that island paradise. Kingfishers, cormorants, weaver birds, parakeets, fireflies, monitor lizards, elephants – and that was just in the space of one trip down the Mahweli River in Kandy.

By comparison, the island of Tenerife is rather thin on the ground when it comes to wildlife – Whiskas being the exception of course.
We once had a bizarre conversation with a Brit ‘swallow’ on his last winter sojourn when he casually informed us that wild deer roamed the pine forests around the edge of Teide National Park. When pressed, he had to admit that his information was based solely on the existence of several traffic warning signs which clearly showed the outline of a deer within the red triangular framework. We assured him that there had undoubtedly been a cheap job lot of deer warning signs for sale and the Tinerfeños were using them to advise drivers to watch out for ‘mouflon’, in their typically mas o menos way (which incidentally is the reason why bends only ever occur at 3 kilometre intervals on Tenerife…there was a sale of ‘bends for 3 kilometres’ signs – okay that’s completely unsubstantiated, but I reckon it’s true).

Mouflon are in fact wild sheep with incredibly impressive long, curled horns like some sort of mythological creature. Which is quite appropriate really as we’ve never, ever seen one. Jack thought he saw some on a ridge in the Anaga Mountains once but they were too far away to be sure and to be honest, I thought they looked more like goats. The mouflon allegedly inhabit parts of the Teide National Park and graze on rare species of plant life so they’re considered pests and apparently are killed if spotted by rangers.
Still, the point is that in six years of travelling the island and never having seen one, it seems highly unlikely that they should warrant the use of warning signs to alert drivers to their presence.

He may not be monitor sized, but he's a handsome chap neverthless - Lagarto Tizon, native to Tenerife

Other than the illusive mouflon, we’re pretty much restricted to lizards or run-of-the-mill rabbits, rats, bats and assorted domestic animals. Even the birds, although some are clearly spectacular, pale into insignificance alongside Sri Lanka’s 400 plus species.

But then yesterday afternoon, just as I was leaving the car park to drive to a meeting in the south west of the island, I had to brake hard to avoid hitting a kestrel which swooped down right in front of the car, grabbed a large lizard in both claws and then struggled to achieve height with the weight, flying low in front of the bonnet until it adjusted its carrion and finally flew over the banana plantation wall.

The wildlife might not come up to Sri Lanka standards, but it can still put on a show for you when you least expect it.

At the moment relationships between ourselves and Whiskas are a bit like the relationship between Pakistan and India – fractious to say the least.

As always, Whiskas is the instigator of the deterioration of the fragile peace which exists between us. Not that he would see it this way; we, of course, are the clear guilty party in a series of events which have led to Whiskas muttering away like Mutley in the Wacky Races every time he comes near us.
The root of the problem is the ‘irregular’ feeding patterns of the neighbour’s cats. One of whom has taken to spending most of their time on our terrace hoping to feed on any scraps left by the ‘Great White One’.

Personally I think, not unfairly I feel, that the cat world is Whiskas territory. He should be the one who decides whether another cat can spend time here or not. But no, even in terms of feline matters, Whiskas thinks we should be the ones who should keep his territory cat free.

This situation has been the cause of Whiskas being unsettled for the past couple of weeks, but the situation dive-bombed over the weekend after a couple of unfortunate incidents which were hilariously funny, but which ripped Whiskas’ credibility to shreds.

The cat which has ‘moved in’ sits, strategically, on the part of the wall beside our front gate that Whiskas uses to get in and out of the garden. I have actually built a cat’s entrance on the opposite side of the gate which every other cat in the neighbourhood uses… except Whiskas. So Whiskas usually simply sits and glares at the cat blocking his entrance.
On Saturday he made the mistake of trying to bypass the rogue cat by using a rather complicated method of getting over the gate – climbing up the mesh like a commando.
Whiskas was never very good at this and normally he’d make a run at it, but for some reason (maybe he thought it looked cooler) he simply started to climb.
Unfortunately he’s put on a bit of weight since he last attempted it and his front paws obviously couldn’t support his big belly. He climbed a couple of rungs of the mesh and got stuck, front legs and back legs fully extended, like a prisoner caught in the spotlight trying to escape from a POW camp.

Andy ran out as fast as she could to help him down before a claw was pulled out, but this meant opening the gate inwards with the cat stuck to it. It was a ridiculous sight and we both creased up which didn’t go down well especially as it all took place under the smirking gaze of the feline interloper. Whiskas bitched like hell as Andy lifted him from the wire whilst trying to avoid his lunging jaws. Once again we were to blame for his predicament.

The situation went from bad to worse later in the day when Whiskas tried to sneak into the house whilst we were working. We have a beaded curtain across the front door to keep flies, dragonflies, butterflies and big scary looking wasp things out. Sometimes a couple of the lines of beads become entangled and the route Whiskas chose took him through two beaded strands where this had happened. We heard a commotion at the door and turned to see Whiskas caught in the doorway with a silver glittery necklace restraining him from moving forward. I should have gone to help him right away, but instead we laughed which annoyed the cat. He turned and tried to go back the way he had came, tangling the beads further and creating a straightjacket effect – he was comletely trapped. By the time I reached him he wasn’t a happy bunny. In his head we’d obviously set up an ingenious trap to stop him coming in the house.

I managed to unwrap him with no injury to myself (no mean feat as it was like trying to get a great white shark out of a fishing net) and he ran off into the undergrowth chuntering all the way. I could still hear him long after he’d disappeared from sight.

So that was Whiskas’ disastrous weekend. If he had digits instead of claws I’m sure he would have phoned the Canarian version of the RSPCA by now.

Another cat has taken to hanging around finishing off Whiskas’ meals; not a state of affairs that he’s comfortable with. He’s such a precious creature that he’d reached the point where he wouldn’t eat at all if there was another cat in the vicinity (obviously not that hungry then). The result of this was that his bowl was moved back into the kitchen so that he could eat undisturbed (thank goodness we’ve never had children; they would be right spoiled brats).

Recently he’s been treating us as little more than a fast food joint. Whiskas turns up at food times, Whiskas eats and then Whiskas disappears to who knows where until it’s feeding time again. Cats – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – are such mercenary little bastards.

However, we’ve been out all day quite a bit of late so haven’t always been ‘en casa’ when Whiskas turns up for his chow. This is good for Whiskas as it makes him reassess his ‘taking things for granted’ attitude, so when we got home on Saturday night Whiskas obviously felt the need to rebuild some bridges.

At around 23.00, as we sat with a glass of wine on the candlelit back porch the still night was broken by a rustling in the bushes before Whiskas emerged triumphantly with some poor creature fixed firmly in his gob – a present.

“Aw, he’s brought us a gecko,” Andy announced.

But as he trotted closer, we saw that it was too big for a gecko, it was a mouse and this is where things went pear shaped.

Whiskas completely ignored us and, before I could stop him, trotted straight past me and into the house heading for the kitchen with the intention to drop the mouse there in exchange for some brekkies (why he thinks this is a good deal for us, god only knows). This would have been disaster. Had the mouse managed to get under the washing machine, fridge, or tumble dryer we would probably never have seen it again… not until a little mouse family emerged anyway.

I managed to cut him off at the front door, still with mouse in gob, and opened the door to shoo him out. But this didn’t go down well. In Whiskas’ eyes he was being punished for bringing us a present and that was simply unfair. Unfortunately he felt the need to protest this point by opening his mouth at which the mouse fell to the ground and immediately shot into the bedroom and under the bed with Whiskas in hot pursuit followed by me cursing the cat for being such an eejit.

The space under our bed is used for storage for all sorts of rubbish and is the perfect place for a mouse to go to ground. Whiskas must have spent all of 30 seconds trying to track it down before he got bored and sauntered off with an ‘I’ve delivered the present, it’s up to you what you do with it now’ expression on his face, leaving us to sort out the problem he had created.

For the best part of an hour we pushed and prodded boxes with a plastic Carnaval sword before we eventually manoeuvred the mouse behind a corner cupboard. Then we built an elaborate tunnel out of games and shoe boxes which connected the cupboard with the back door (Andy’s inspirational idea) and, with some gentle prodding with the sword, we finally persuaded the mouse to try out its new mouse-sized walkway and it  scurried happily along it back to the garden and freedom.

We were relieved the mouse was out of the house and the mouse was presumably overjoyed that his Saturday night hadn’t been ruined by being eaten by a cat. The only dissatisfied party was Whiskas who had not only not received a reward for his present, didn’t even get to eat the animal as compensation.

No doubt we will pay the price for this outcome at some point.

One of the delights of living in the north of Tenerife is that, although we’re now into our fifth month of proper summer (glossing swiftly over September’s propensity to cloud over in the afternoons at the moment) and looking forward to another six weeks or so of it, we do still have seasons.

With November comes the rain, usually tremendous monsoon showers which swell the summer’s parched earth. Then the nights grow cooler signalling time to put the quilt back on the bed. By late December or early January we’re ready for the winter’s first fire, when the logs are brought in to sit by the wood burning stove, the kindling is laid and the ritual first flames fill the living room with their flickering glow.

Of course, having a wood burning stove means you have to have wood, and lots of it. Stoves are hungry and can eat their way through a wood pile in no time. Last winter was the longest and coolest we’ve experienced since moving here and left our wood supply seriously depleted. So when a couple of weeks ago our neighbour gave us 18 small pine logs, the remains of trees that had been pruned to death last year, it was very good news indeed.
The logs were gratefully received and ‘temporarily’ dumped onto the back terrace where they made a great deal of mess of sawdust, pine resin and dirt.

Our new rustic feature...

A couple of days later we offered to host a meeting of our friends and colleagues John (Sorted Sites), Julie (Tenerife Tattle) and Colin (Colin Kirby). The weather was extremely hot and the shady terrace was the perfect venue so something had to be done – fast.
Laying the logs diagonally in front of the kindling store at the bottom of the path was the ingenious solution. We created an instant rustic feature that hid the messy kindling pile and provided a rather elegant staircase for Whiskas to use at the same time. Purr-fect (ouch).

...and Whiskas' new staircase

Hands up, who saw anything? To paraphrase Jim Royle of The Royle Family:

‘Perseids meteor shower my arse.’

At around half past midnight last night, Andy and I lay on our backs on the front terrace and stared up into a slightly cloudy sky. As we waited the cloud cover broke and the sparkling stars began to shine through… but no meteors.

It was quite calming lying there staring at the stars, well it was until Whiskas spotted us from wherever it is he lurks at night and decided Andy’s hair was worth eating in the absence of anything in his bowl.

It would have been a beautifully quiet night apart from the fact that I could hear Jesús somewhere in his garden spouting hippy drippy nonsense to somebody on his mobile. Further along the garden, his sister was on her mobile taking orders for clothes, booze and fags from friends back in the Basque country (everything is much cheaper here than where they come from).

We lay there for about half an hour without seeing zilch, before we gave up and left Hippy Harry and Shopaholic Sharon to their various conversations.

We’ve seen plenty of shooting stars from our terrace, just never when the news websites tell us they’re going to happen.

   Revin cu “topul” celor mai bune reclame internationale. Vizionare placuta!

   Sa incepem cu bauturile alcoolice, in special berea. Batalia se da intre Carlsberg, Heineken, Budweiser, Perroni si Stella Artois. Daca Stella Artois si Perroni abordeaza un stil clasic, rafinat, celelalte 3 aduc un suflu nou ce-ti starneste pofta de bere la orice ora.

Stella Artois

Budweiser

Un alt sector plin de reclame de calitate este cel al autoturismelor. Despre urmatoarea reclama se spune ca a fost filmata ‘live’, fara computer graphics. Au filmat de 605 ori si de fiecare data ceva minor mergea gresit si totul trebuia pozitionat din nou si luat de la inceput.  A 606-a oara totul a mers perfect.  Filmarile au durat 3 luni si in final costurile s-au adunat la 6 milioane de dolari. Totul era amplasat cu atata grija ca toti mergeau pe varfuri ca nu cumva sa deranjeze ceva si sa cauzeze probleme nepravazute. Detalii cat de mici afectau precizia intregului ansamblu.  Spre exemplu, in cursul zilei studioul se incalzea si parchetul se umfla putin cauzand o piulita sau teava de esapament sa se invarta mai repede.

Ford si Toyota – reclame inteligente

Trecem la bauturile racoritoare: Coca Cola vs Pepsi – grea competitie. Prima sta bine cu grafica, cea de-a doua apeleaza la cantareti sau sportivi pentru promovare.

La sfarsit reclame din diverse domenii.

Orange – intotdeauna au avut reclame exceptionale

Str8 – melodia este geniala

Whiskas – defect profesional: imi plac pisicile

   Cred ca reclamele de mai sus sunt suficiente pentru a demonstra profesionalismul “internationalilor”. Poate ca la capitolul reclame stam si noi destul de bine, dar si aici se observa diferenta dintre noi si ei. Oare ii vom ajunge vreodata?

PS: Pe cine ati medalia cu aur?

There was a moment on Saturday night when I re-evaluated my belief that having children is more of a burden than having a cat… or, more accurately, a cat having you.

We were at a barbeque at our neighbour’s house. It was a sort of united nations affair where we were the only Brits amidst a small gathering of French, Spanish and someone who could have been Canadian French, or Canarian French – I didn’t quite catch that part. Shortly after we arrived, a noise on the roof of the alcove above the barbeque attracted everyone’s attention and we looked up to see a leering cat perched above the sizzling beef and lamb steaks.

Nicole, our neighbour, tried to shoo the cat away, but it simply jumped to the ground and legged it behind a hedge before emerging a few seconds later on the opposite side of the barbeque, ready for another attempt on its glistening prizes.

“I don’t know whose cat this is?” Nicole said, “But it is always coming around trying to steal food.”

“He’s ours,” I mumbled. “That’s Whiskas.”

I took a sip of wine and buried my head in my hands in embarrassment.

To be fair to Whiskas his eating pattern had been noisily disturbed. Our other neighbour had hired out her house for a christening and a huge bouncy castle had been erected in the garden. This freaked Whiskas who must have viewed it as some multi coloured monster which ate children.
From the position of his bowl on the front terrace he had a partial view of the monster so when it came to time for me to give him his ‘dinner’ before we went to Nicole’s, he was distracted by the orange and yellow beast to such an extent that he couldn’t eat. His untouched food was taken back inside the house for safe keeping – away from other cats in the area that weren’t quite as precious about needing a tranquil environment when dining.

By ten o’clock, the bouncy castle must have been taken down and Whiskas clearly had discovered his appetite again which meant tracking down the source of the nearest foodie smells and embarrassing us in the process.

After a few ninja attempts on the barbeque, it was obvious that Whiskas wasn’t leaving the area of his own accord. I apologized to everyone and with a deft manoeuvre, grabbed the cat and without further ado escorted him from the premises. Surprisingly, despite an initial bit of bitching, he didn’t make too much of a fuss.
I carried him back to the house, noticing that his purring was getting louder with each step. By the time we reached the house and I plonked his bowl of cat food in front of him his purr-o-meter was in overdrive and he lapped it up. I realised that this was what the disruption at the BBQ had all been about. As usual Whiskas had got the result he wanted.

I left him with his dinner and went back to the BBQ where Andy and I were finally able to relax and enjoy ourselves for an hour or so until Jerome, a Parisian student, tapped me on the arm.

“Jack, Jack, look.”

Sneaking across the roof again was an unmistakeable white shape with half a tail.

At least kids don’t scramble across the rooftops to follow you when you go out for the evening.

Het moeten toch creatieve geesten zijn, de mensen die de reclamecampagnes uit hun duim zuigen.

Wat dacht je van een krachtige batterij …

Of een superabsorberende spons …

Misschien ben je meer iemand voor een Hard Rock Café …

Of ben je op zoek naar voer voor je kleine kittens …

le colporteur présente: Whiskas

c’est tellement vrai: le colporteur “aime ça”!

bien @ vous,

nicogé

PS: le “rue grenelle”, c’est par ici.

Rações específicas para cada raça ganham o mercado.
Entre os brinquedos, há até uma cadelinha de borracha.

(Notícia do G1)

Nova geração de tintura para pets é novidade em feira; fabricante fará demonstração de como aplicar e até fazer tatuagens temporárias (Foto: Divulgação)

O mercado de produtos voltados para animais de estimação está prestes a receber uma enxurrada de novidades. Muitas delas serão apresentadas a partir desta quarta-feira (22) na oitava edição da Pet South America, feira internacional de produtos veterinários que acontece em São Paulo.
Entre as novidades curiosas está o lançamento da nova geração de tintura cosmética e temporária. Segundo a Pet Society, fabricante do produto, a tintura é composta por pigmentos orgânicos e pode ser usada para fazer desenhos e “tatuagens” temporárias na pelagem dos cães.
Quando estiver disponível em pet shops, os donos de pets devem ser cautelosos ao resolverem aplicar a tintura nos seus animais. Segundo o veterinário Ronaldo Lucas, professor de medicina veterinária da Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, a tintura pode provocar alergia nos pets.
“Seguramente, não é um produto indicado para ser usado sempre. Não é para manter o animal tingido”, orienta o veterinário, que é especialista em dermatologia.
Mas é uma cachorrinha de borracha que promete sacudir o mercado pet. Batizada de DoggieLoverDoll (vide nosso post anterior), a cadela de brinquedo tem um canal vaginal de silicone e um reservatório de fácil higienização. Ela funciona como uma boneca inflável e promete fazer com que os cachorros que não são castrados deixem almofadas em paz.

Alimentos

A feira adianta que, em breve, os donos de cães e gatos terão mais opções de rações nas prateleiras. Os alimentos criados de acordo com a característica de cada raça são as principais novidades no segmento. A ração batizada de Pug 25, da Royal Canin, por exemplo, é especifica para os pugs.
Segundo o fabricante, os animais da raça têm dificuldade em apanhar o alimento e uma grande tendência a engolir a ração sem mastigá-la por terem a mandíbula um pouco maior que o maxilar e o focinho quadrado e curto. Por isso, a ração tem formato diferenciado, parecida com um trevo de três folhas. Uma ração direcionada para a raça pode ser vantajosa para a saúde do animal, segundo o veterinário Ronaldo Lucas.
Animais da raça west highland white terrier e o buldogue francês também terão lançamentos de rações específicas, que prometem manter o pêlo sempre brilhoso ou o sistema digestivo funcionando adequadamente.
Mas é a saúde dos gatos que tem feito os veterinários da indústria alimentícia se desdobrarem para lançar novidades. Tanto que a Mars lançará no Brasil a nova Whiskas com o sistema triplo controle, para prevenir doenças nos rins, e a Royal Canin irá apresentar a Renal Feline Special, entre outros produtos, voltado para a saúde do trato urinário dos felinos.
De acordo com o veterinário Ronaldo Lucas, os donos não devem pensar duas vezes na hora de escolher a ração certa. “Existe ciência por trás dessas rações. Elas mudam o pH da urina dos gatos”, esclarece o veterinário.

Bem-estar

Os produtos naturais voltados para o controle da ansiedade, da irritabilidade e da hiperatividade dos cães e dos gatos encabeçam a lista das novidades voltadas para o bem-estar dos animais. Maracujá, camomila, capim-limão e lavanda são algumas das matérias-primas usadas.
Um xampu hipoalergênico é um dos lançamentos da Pet Society. Segundo o fabricante, o produto pode ser usado em cães e gatos com pele sensível e até em filhotes. No ramo de cosméticos, outra novidade é uma linha de produtos da Empório Vinhapet com inspiração na vinhoterapia.
Mas antes de correrem até a pet shop mais próxima à procura das novidades, os donos de cães e gatos precisam tomar alguns cuidados antes de comprar qualquer lançamento, pois todos os produtos precisam ter registro no Ministério da Agricultura.
A veterinária Tatiana Pelucio, do Conselho Regional de Medicina Veterinária do estado de São Paulo, recomenda ainda procurar o nome e o registro do veterinário responsável. A informação deve constar na embalagem.
A feira Pet South América terminou hoje (24) e foi realizada no Transamérica Expo Center, na Zona Sul de São Paulo.

Whiskas has been well behaved for some time now. Well apart from some disgraceful behaviour during dinner last night. When Whiskas stands on his back legs he can just about see on to the dining table. Every so often he tries to reach out a paw to swipe at something he takes a fancy to (a sort of casting out a fishing hook principle). Usually it’s more in hope than anything else, but last night he got lucky, sort of. He connected with the lid to the chilli sauce bottle and it hit the deck. Now I should have let the little bugger have a lick of the chilli sauce – that would have been a lesson for him, but instead I grabbed the bottle top before he got anywhere near it.

The trouble was that he’d been successful once and that was motivation enough for Whiskas. Within seconds he was back at full stretch, the white paw lashing out to try to grab at anything. For some reason he took a particular liking to my lime green glass cover with little bobbly bits on it and tried to hook it a couple of times – at one point both his legs left the ground and he hung suspended Lara Croft-like from the edge of the table by his front paws. It was quite the funniest sight I’d seen in a long time (I must try and get a picture), but he was in danger of getting overly excited and had to be reminded that a place actually hadn’t been set for him at the dinner table i.e. he was removed by the scruff of his neck.

Anyway that’s another story. As I was saying he’s been well behaved ever since his ‘bed’ on the bench outside our bedroom was rolled up as punishment for NIN (noise in the night). Ironically it wasn’t the punishment which caused him to rethink his bad behaviour, it was the fact that when I rolled up his cushion inside the bench cover, I unwittingly created a bed which was far more comfortable than his previous. A bit of readjustment and fluffing here and there by Whiskas and he’d created the luxury pad. Now when he crawls on to it he crashes out big time – dead to the world – and we don’t hear a squeak from him till morning.

Awww, butter wouldn't melt...that's cos it would be straight down his throat!

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I was just playing with my cat Bruce Willis, and the languid shots leant themselves to this, so I took a few minutes to cut this together. He’s a natural actor, and does all his own stunts.

I hate condescending pet food adverts with talking animals and the like – why can’t they just be pretty and nice?

The music is Sean Lennon’s ‘Into the Sun’ from his album Into the Sun. It’s a very good record, you should definitely buy it.