Friday, March 29, 2024
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Creative Cats, Put On Your Creative Hats!

five cats in studio
All my Creative Cats are on hand to supervise my work.

Okay, all you Creative Cats, my faithful students and readers alike, our feline friends need your talent! You need to put on your creative hats now and make a post card featuring your pet for The Pet Postcard Project! Shelter cats and dogs will benefit, and so will you, but we heard from a trusted source that cats are only featured on about 25% of all postcards sent in for this campaign! We have to get our feline numbers up!

There are treats for you as well—send me an image of your feline postcard and you are entered in a drawing for a portrait certificate that you can use for yourself or donate to your favorite shelter or animal charity! And beyond the initial 2,500 postcard goal, Jackson Galaxy gets involved!

th epet postcard project
The Pet Postcard Project

WHAT IS THE PET POSTCARD PROJECT?

The Pet Postcard Project is a non-profit “food-raising” project for shelter pets. Each homemade/handmade post card sent in to The Pet Postcard Project earns food for cats and dogs in shelters. You can participate just by creating a post card featuring your own pets and sending it in to the Project because a generous sponsor has pledged to donate pet food for that campaign (read more about how “food-raising” works).

RIGHT NOW THE STAKES ARE EVEN HIGHER—PET FOOD, FLEA PROTECTION AND JACKSON GALAXY! (huh? read on!)

free kibble logo
FreeKibble.com

The May/June Campaign goal of 2,500 post cards not only donates 10,000 meals of Halo Spot’s Stew for Cats to The Stray Cat Alliance in Los Angeles, CA through Freekibble.com (Freekibblekat.com) and Halo Purely for Pets , but also the makers of Pet Armor, a generic version of Frontline Top Spot, are donating $1,500 of their cat flea and tick prevention product to The Stray Cat Alliance when the 2,500 card goal is reached.

All you have to do is send in your handmade, homemade postcards of your own pets, and once 2,500 postcards are received the donation is sent. The website instructs to “include a PHOTO of the animal on each card, or else we won’t know who’s ‘talking!’ The words are not just captions, they are creative confessions, wishes, advice, excuses, and ‘you know you love your dog/cat when’ ideas. Snail mail your entry to The Pet Postcard Project, 676A Ninth Ave., #321, New York, NY 10036.  Please read this page before beginning for lots more information on how to make post cards and send them, and about the program itself!

halo pet food logo
Halo Pet Food

Freekibble.com and Halo have offered to donate an ADDITIONAL 1,000 meals for every 1,000 postcards that come in over the 2,500 postcard goal up to 15,000 meals. Wow! And these postcards can be of ANY kind of pet!

Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love and Coming Clean by Jackson Galaxy
Cat Daddy...by Jackson Galaxy

Jackson Galaxy, star of Animal Planet’s show My Cat From Hell, is spearheading this campaign to raise the food and flea/tick protection for Stray Cat Alliance, his favorite cat charity. To celebrate Jackson’s new book, Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love and Coming Clean and this campaign, Jackson is giving away two signed copies of the book to two people who send in the most heartwarming handmade postcard of their own cat or dog during this campaign! And just for feline postcards…the lucky person who sends in the best homemade postcard of a cat during this campaign will win a phone call with Jackson Galaxy!

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Now, my Creative Kitties, I want to encourage you even more…

Make your postcard featuring your cat! Not that we don’t like dogs, but when I went to visit The Pet Postcard site I noticed that most of the samples were of dogs…and in the cloud list of categories, “Dog Cards Only” is the biggest category…I asked Nikki Moustaki, founder of The Pet Postcard Project, and she said, “I get about 25% cat cards and 74% dog cards — the other 1% is horses, birds, hamsters, rats, etc. ”

How can that be? More cats live with humans than dogs! We have to show them who’s the leader here!

Sample Commissioned Portrait Certificate

HERE’S WHAT SOMEONE WILL WIN FROM ME: A CUSTOM PORTRAIT CERTIFICATE FOR YOURSELF—OR TO DONATE!

Before you send your masterpiece(s) to The Pet Postcard Project, photograph or scan it and e-mail the image to me. I’ll post it on this post so everyone can see how many we are donating, and we can inspire even more people to make post cards. On July 1, I will do a drawing from all the people who sent images to me to win a custom portrait certificate for me to create a custom commissioned portrait of any or all of your pets! You can keep it for yourself or donate it to your favorite animal rescue or charity to auction or sell—the certificates are worth $125, but often auction at shelter benefits for $500 or more so your donation gives even more to your favorite animal rescue.

Now my Creative Cats, get to work! Don’t be scared you aren’t talented enough or creative enough or any of that silly litterbox filler! There is no good or bad here, just work from your heart and it will be the best postcard ever because regardless of its value as art, it will help a homeless pet. That’s why I’m not doing a judged contest, I just want you to go out there and do your best without worrying about competing because the point is to help homeless animals—and the reputation of cats!

Your postcard can be as simple as a photo with your cat’s confession written on it in magic marker, or you can make a collage of images and memories. Use a photo, create a collage, get your markers, paints, papers, fabrics, scrapbooking stuff or use your graphic design software, as long as it’s original and handmade/homemade, it qualifies. Read this page for more information.

Where is my postcard? As a teacher I’ve learned it’s best to let others break the ice with a new project. I never presume my work will be better than anyone else’s, but others do, so I’ll let a few other entrants send cards first. And as a hint to you, I’ll be doing post cards from each of the Fantastic Four and from Mimi, and Kelly of course, and also Cookie and Namir and Peaches and all the others I have time to find photos and create with!

GUIDELINES, RULES AND OTHER STUFF

No individual humans benefit financially from any part of The Pet Postcard Project, but lots of cats and dogs will.

The Pet Postcard Project has its own rules and regulations as a contest—you can find them here.

As for my own little contest…

I have no connection to or influence over The Pet Postcard Project or any related opportunities or contests related therein. Sending your image to me only enters you in my own contest and in no way increases your chances of winning one of Jackson Galaxy’s books or a conversation with him.

Rights to your images:

  • You retain the rights to your images, you are only transferring the right to me to display them on this post and share them on social networking for the purpose of encouraging others to create postcards.
  • Your image(s) will remain on this post for as long as this post exists.
  • If in the future I’d like to use one of your images for any other reason such as promoting this project again next year, I will contact you and ask permission before using your image.

Entering the drawing for the portrait certificate:

  • Enter as many postcards as you like, each one will count as an entry.
  • Receipt of your design(s) as an image in e-mail up to midnight PST June 30, 2012 (just to make sure we catch all the US time zones) qualifies you for the drawing. Images received after that time will not be part of the drawing.
  • My true goal is to have postcards sent to The Pet Postcard Project so I will presume your postcard was also mailed to and received at: The Pet Postcard Project, 676A Ninth Ave., #321, New York, NY 10036.
  • I will choose the winner by printing out each entry and placing them all in a box to shuffle them, then having a human reach in and choose one. The last time I tried to have one of my cats choose a winning entry I tossed the entries in the air and we all watched them fall, then they turned to see what my next trick would be. So much for feline involvement.
pet armor logo
Pet Armor

And also—help Pet Armor help the ASPCA’s Disaster Relief Efforts or the shelter of your choice

Check out their PetArmor Protection Promise page on Facebook where with one click you can trigger a donation to the ASPCA’s Diaster Relief Efforts or the shelter of your choice.

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All logos and Jackson Galaxy’s book cover were copied from their respective websites.

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.

Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

2 thoughts on “Creative Cats, Put On Your Creative Hats!

  • I love the photo of your cats Bernadette!! Makes me feel like I am at home! We will be doing a card – leopard inspired, naturally!! This is such a great project and I hope a lot of people will participate. On another note, congratulations again on your Nose-to-Nose nomination!!

    Reply
    • Deb, there are actually six cats in the room, but I couldn’t get them all in there for the sake of the walls. I have to let them have their way when I first go into my studio, then they get bored with me and go off to sleep, well, most of them. Can’t wait to see you postcard! And congratulations to you too–we are “competing” but I’m the least competitive person you’ll meet.

      Reply

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