Influenster: Purina ONE Siamese Cat Inspired Nails

Hello everyone, I'd like you to meet my kitty, Styx. Or as I insist on calling him, Mr Stickers. I recently received the Purina ONE VoxBox from Influenster to review and since I haven't had a taste for cat food since I was a toddler I've enlisted the help of my fur child. This picture pretty much sums up our feelings about Purina ONE, but more on that in a minute. 

First I must somehow bring this back to nails so that I have an excuse to post about it on my nail blog.

Two seconds away from being seriously bitten.

I painted some nails inspired by my kitty. He's a beautiful, gigantic Siamese that we rescued three years ago. He went from about 2 lb to 14 lb over the years so he knows a thing or two about eating cat food.

I wanted to do a gradient to show the transition from dark to light fur that's characteristic of Siamese cats and I threw in a blue nail to match his bright eyes. The blue is two coats of Love & Beauty in Light Blue. For the other nails I started with three coats of Revlon's Sheer Cotton. This polish is pretty sheer as the name suggests so it did take a few coats to be opaque. For the gradient I sponged on Sinful Colors- Black on Black, Spoiled- Pumping Gas, LA Colors- Whipped and Sinful Colors- Snow Me White. Overall it was a pretty good match to Mr Sticker's fur. He was not particularly pleased with the photo shoot though.

And now, on to the cat food. The Purina ONE VoxBox came with a small bag of cat food, a coupon for a full sized bag of cat food and a pamphlet which talks about the benefits of Purina ONE. Here's a small excerpt: "The purposeful nutrition of Purina ONE dry cat foods provides all the nutrition your cat needs and nothing she doesn't."

For the most part that's true. It's actually very similar to the cat food we already feed Styx. I've taken pictures of the ingredient list so you can compare.

Purina ONE cat food ingredients

Iams cat food ingredients

 I took this whole cat thing pretty seriously before we adopted Styx and did a ton of research on what cats are supposed to eat. I even considered buying him whole frozen rabbits, but then couldn't afford the heavy duty meat grinder it takes to grind up rabbit bones, so store bought food it was. We also tried several kinds of wet cat food which are supposed to be slightly more healthy than dry, but Styx is a weird kitty and prefers dry food much of the time. I took a lot of care in reading all the labels to pick a food with as many real ingredients and as little filler as possible. Back then Iams was one of the only semi-affordable decent cat foods on the market. A lot of the other cheaper cat food brands have a ton of fillers. Here's the ingredient list from a slightly lower priced competitor:

Ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, chicken by-product meal, meat and bone meal, soybean meal, beef tallow preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), turkey by-product meal, powdered cellulose, animal liver flavor, soybean hulls, malt extract, phosphoric acid, calcium carbonate, salt, choline chloride, potassium chloride, dried cheese powder, parsley flakes, added color, taurine, zinc sulfate, Vitamin E supplement, ferrous sulfate, Yellow 6, manganese sulfate, niacin, Yellow 5, Red 40, Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, Blue 2, copper sulfate, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), sodium selenite. E-6002

Notice how the Iams and Purina both have chicken listed as the first ingredient while this other brand only uses chicken by-product and it's the third ingredient?

It's nice that Purina now offers a second healthy option for cat food, but for now we'll be sticking with Iams. I do think that Iams has ever so slightly better ingredients, but the issue is bigger than that. You see, Mr Stickers has had some health issues this past year. He somehow got giardia which is a super not fun parasite that causes diarrhea like lava flows. We took him to the vet countless times and had lots of expensive tests and medications before they determined that the giardia had turned into a rare form of botulism in his intestines and finally prescribed a medicine that worked. Somewhat. It's still a little touch and go these days. 

My husband really didn't want me to feed Styx this new food because of the trouble we've been having with his bowels. But the husband was out of town camping this weekend so I thought, what could it hurt? Styx did enjoy the food and ate it all up. I put one scoop of his regular food and one scoop of the Purina and as recommended since it's pretty common for a cat to have digestion troubles when switching foods. Our kitty is extra sensitive and the results were not pretty. For his sake (and mine) I think we have to stick with his regular food for the foreseeable future. I don't think my husband reads my blog so hopefully my secret is safe with you guys. 

 My overall impressions: Purina ONE is a good option when it comes to feeding your cat a healthier diet. It's not the only brand out there and I'd also recommend Iams or some of the other "gourmet" brands like Blue Buffalo if you're feeling rich. Do your own research so you can feel good about what you're feeding your pets.

Mr Stickers has mastered the glare of death

Meme Week: Cats (In Spaaaaace)

Of all the challenge days I think I'm the most excited for this one. There are just so many cat memes and each one is better than the last (at least in my opinion). I wanted to paint All The Cats, but I only have five fingers so I had to pick some of my favorites. From thumb to pinkie we have: Nyan Cat, Cheezburger Cat, Grumpy Cat, Hipster Space Cat, and I had to sneak in my own cat, but he doesn't have his own website... yet.

 

The internet is such an awesome place for cats. One minute they can be innocently napping in the hallway and the next they're flying through space.

 

This is my cat Styx 



Space borrowed from this site

I love cats, and cats in space are even better so I started out by painting some galaxy nails. For the cats I tried out the paper decal technique. I re-sized the cats to about 100x100 pixels (this includes some dead space where the background was before I trimmed it off) and printed them out on regular white paper. I cut around the faces and then curled each piece of paper to help it lay closer to the nail. I painted a coat of clear polish one nail at a time and used an orange stick to help press the decal down for several minutes until the polish had hardened. I topped that off with two coats of top coat to seal it all in.

 

A couple technical notes about the paper decals: I think my printer is low on some ink colors so the images weren't that sharp to begin with, but putting the white paper on a dark background also doesn't help. The black started to show through some of the lighter areas once the paper absorbed some of the topcoat. A white background would make this much less noticeable. I wore these about four days before the top coat started wearing thin and the paper got a bit wet when I washed my hands. I think they'd last even longer with reapplication of top coat which I didn't do.

Now that the pesky nails are out of the way let's get to the good stuff: cat videos. These are my top three cat videos of all time. If you haven't seen number one please, please watch it. I promise your entire life will suddenly become complete.

 

1. Oh Long Johnson

2. Boots & Cats

 

 

1. Can't Hug Every Cat