Catster's changed hands!

Catster.com and Dogster.com have changed ownership!  They have been acquired by an advertising company:  Say:Media.  According to Say:Media's own website, under their "About" section, "advertising is content".

Now, we have no problem with advertising being the focus if you're trying to promote your own brand on a site.  It is also acceptable if you are writing a review and advertising the product that you're reviewing.  But does Say:Media do this?  No, it doesn't.  It sells banner ads and other ad placements to a variety of companies.

According to the Catster/Dogster TOS, at least at this date, they were supposed to inform the community of a potential acquisition or merger beforehand, not write a blog about it after it happened.  If you have set Catster's community page as your launch page, you wouldn't even see the blog telling you about the change unless you scroll all the way down to the very last entry on the right column!  Being sneaky about such an important decision so soon after the other uproar is NOT a smart business plan.

Any pictures, video, etc., that members upload to Catster and Dogster are (and has been, for as long as it's been around) licensed without fee to Catster/Dogster.  This means that Catster/Dogster can use your pictures/video/etc. for any purpose, except to sell them.  They can (and have, with a lot of pictures) use them in slideshows promoting Catster/Dogster; in advertising campaigns; and in additional sites owned by them, such as Snuzzy and Mrowr.  The acquisition means that now Say:Media can also do the same with your pictures.

Catster/Dogster has now changed to business principles that we do not condone, so our furmily will be leaving Catster/Dogster in a few weeks.  We will, of course, keep this blog up and running as usual.  In addition, we have created accounts on another cat community site, called Cathugger, that a fellow Catster has just started up.  We will be re-creating Chef Skylar's Open Restaurant on Cathugger, as well.

We hope that you will continue to drop by our blog here and visit us on Cathugger.  We love all our friends and don't want to lose track of anyone!  We'll continue to post everything here, and keep up diaries & photos.

Oops, we ate it! A meme.

We got this meme from Milo & Alfie, who wrote the instructions down for us:

If yoo take part in the The Oops I Ate It meme, it means you hafta blog about food you have stolen when your humans weren’t watching. Don’t try to pretend yoo’ve never done that ‘cos we don’t believe yoo! If you want to join in yoo add the logo of this award to your blog (optional), then yoo nominate at least 5 other furry blogs and let them know by leaving them a message on their blogs.

Anyone who has read our Catster pages knows we run a restaurant group there, so we have to make sure our food is the best, don't we? ;)

Here's a couple of our stories:

Little Bit wrote here about taking a tater tot off Mommy's plate, complete with a picture of her with it!

We all mob Mommy when she makes her rice dish for dinner.

Skylar once ran away with his Mommy Erin's food and took it under the bed!

We like peach yogurt (real or soy), soy milk from cereal, Wheat Thins (Little Bit only), anything potato (fosters only), hotdogs, cereal (Carbon and the fosters), oatmeal (Skylar and Tabby), hamburger, ham, tuna, cheese (real or soy), taco meat, fish, chicken, rice, and strawberry ice cream (real or soy).

We tag the first five cats who read this who haven't written this meme, and invite any foodie cats (or dogs) to join our restaurant. You don't need a Catster account; you can use your e-mail.

Foodie Friday: Kitty Tuna Pop Recipe

This Foodie Friday recipe is for kitty treats. My cats love them! We found this recipe in an e-book we purchased. You want to make sure to only give this as an occasional treat, because tuna has higher levels of mercury in it than other fish. Be sure to get only the tuna packed in water, as oil is bad for the cats.

Tuna Pops

Drain liquid from tuna packed in spring water. Freeze
liquid in small ice cube trays (cocktail ice cube trays
work nicely, as well as little square pill boxes available
at most drug stores - only fill these half full). Give no
more than 2 cubes at 1 time as a treat. Reuse your can
of drained tuna by placing in it an airtight container
and covering with filtered water overnight for a second
batch of tuna-pop water.

For more Foodie Friday posts (mainly human food), click here.

For our cat friends, Skylar is hosting a sit-down roleplay "dinner" every Saturday at his Catster restaurant. You don't need to be a Catster member to participate; just join with your e-mail address. It's from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm Pacific time.