An Interview With SparkleCat

All Sparklecat images copyright ©2008 Janiss Garza & used w/permission

Today I am pleased to share with you an interview with one of my favorite twitter ladies, Sparkle aka Sparklecat. If you don’t know Sparkle yet, I encourage you to follow her as well as check out her website and advice column here.

Sparkle, I noticed you've been blogging since late 2002. What inspired you to start your blog?
I actually had no say in the matter. I was forced into service by my human, who had planned on starting a blog with her next kitten, who happened to be me. You know those hideous stage moms who force their kids into celebrity? My human was the cat version of that. Fortunately I took to the internet and proved to be a more popular draw online than anything she's done herself. Can you say burn?

What inspired you to start an Advice Column? What is your favorite thing about that column?

It was sort of done on a whim. People are always asking my human dumb questions about cats, since they think she knows something about them. She doesn't, really, we just tell her what's up. So she figured since I was "so smart" (although I'm not so sure about the ironic tone in her voice every time she says this), that I should do an advice column to explain the cat's point of view in these situations. Once again, it proved to be overwhelmingly popular, showing that I am, in fact, "so smart."

And that column also got you a book deal, didn't it? What your favorite thing about writing a book?

What actually happened was that, after I'd been doing the advice column for three years, my human decided to put them together in a book herself, add photographs and have me write an introduction. She designed the cover and layout herself, and since she works in the publishing industry, she didn't do a half-bad job. The book wound up winning a couple of awards (winner of the Wild Card category at the Hollywood Book Festival and honorable mention at the New York Book Festival, both in 2007).

My favorite part about writing this book? That my human did all the grunt work.

Can you tell us anything about your next book?

My next book is tentatively titled Dear Sparkle: More Advice From One Cat to Another, so it's pretty much volume 2. Except this time, I have a literary agent in New York who is shopping the book proposal around to big publishers. Can I just say that I am having much more success with my literary career than my human is with hers?


You started using twitter in 2008. Why do you think you are the only critter in your household with a twitter account?

Because I'm the only one who's both smart and articulate. My tortie roommate, Binga, is fairly bright but not terribly articulate. She came from the meanest animal shelter in Los Angeles and you can tell she's from some alleyway in the barrio - she speaks in a combination of Cat, Spanish, and the occasional French bon mot (I have no idea where she picked up the French), and every other word is a curse word. She apparently thinks my name is puta, and it gets worse from there. If she posted on Twitter, your ears would burn. Boodie, the foster-who-never-found-a-home, is neither smart nor articulate. My human calls her "the dumbest cat I've ever met," and I have to agree. She makes the LOL cats look like geniuses. She's not even smart enough to lie on a keyboard, much less type on one.

I've only been on twitter a few months and it seems to be a whole different animal than when I first started. Do you feel that twitter has changed that much since you joined?

There seem to be a lot more cats now than when I first signed up, which was not quite a year ago, and we have a great community going on! I'm not sure what happened in the past few months, but it seems like everyone is on Twitter now. But a lot of humans aren't as good at it as we cats are. I think we have the Twitter thing nailed.

One thing I notice in your tweets is that your humans' boyfriend doesn't spoil you in the manner your accustomed. Can you tell us a little more about that situation? Is he just jealous of your relationship with @janissgarza or is there more to it than that?

He's not jealous (if anyone's jealous around here, it's Binga). It's just that he's a dog person, not really a cat person - although he claims to love all animals, and Binga treats him like he's something special (she even likes his big, smelly dog). My human on the other hand, is more of a cat person, so she understands us (even though she doesn't always behave like it). She's kind of clueless with the dog, and her boyfriend is pretty much clueless with us cats. He's also sort of neglectful, like he'll put out dinner and forget to make sure the other cats don't eat my food. But I hear a lot of male humans are sort of absent-minded like that.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers today?

Just that if my human gets off her lazy butt anytime soon, my website, http://www.sparklecat.com , will be getting an upgrade and an rss feed, plus lots more fun stuff - but when/if that happens you'll hear about it on Twitter. And that I'd like to see more upside down kitty submissions to my blog, http://upsidedownkitties.blogspot.com - I'd update it more often if I had more pictures to put up, and more comments!

I would like to take this time to say a special THANK YOU to Sparkle and again, encourage you to visit her sites AND do submit your upside down photos to her. Henry was featured there once and wouldn’t stop meowing about it for over a week.

Thanks for stopping by!

Purrs and Nosetaps,

OscarTheCat