Paperbacks & Beauty Facts: Pet Vlog!

This week we are introducing you to all our pets!!

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Paperbacks & Beauty Facts: Week#1 Introduce Yourself

Okay so here is my first video for Paperbacks & Beauty Facts!  I say 'umm' and sniff a lot so sorry about that haha I will hopefully get better with time!!  I'd love it if you checked it out, as well as the other 2 videos which are up at the moment, and subscribe if you want to see more :)

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Introducing My Cats: Rory

This is Rory, our newest addition to the family!  If you follow me on twitter you will know that sadly Hugo went missing a few months ago so we were back to 3 cats.  So we decided now would be a good time to get a kitten.

Years ago we had a ginger cat called Oscar who was a stray that had been caught in some sort of trap; we managed to lure him in and got him to the vet to get him all fixed up.  He was in such a bad way, missing toes and he had somehow lost the ability to purr which was really sad!  However he soon healed up and was such a lovely cat.  He happily spent the rest of his life with us!

Oscar!

Ever since my mum has really wanted a ginger cat.  We needed to get a kitten as an adult cat would be too difficult to integrate with the other 3 cats (like the troubles we had with Hugo!).  Last week my dad saw an advert in our local pet shop for a woman selling kittens - one of which was ginger!  That night we went up to see them, and then the following night we took him home!

Currently he is about 8 and a half weeks old, awwww!  Although we have had lots of kittens in the past, you forget what they are like.  We are all covered in bites and scratches; and he wasn't litter trained - so that caused some messes!  He sleeps in bed with us otherwise he gets lonely and cries, so we alternate, one night with me, then the next with my parents haha!

If you would be interested I could do a post on him every month or so to show him growing up :)

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Introducing My Cats: Hugo

Last but not least in this series introducing my cats is Hugo! The story behind him is slightly different... We've only had him about a year, if that! We had seen him wandering around the garden a few times but then one day our neighbour came round and said that this cat had been sitting looking in their back window for the past few days looking a bit pathetic, so referred him to us knowing that we were more experienced with cats! So I went round and picked him up and brought him in to our house and gave him something to eat, and he's stayed here ever since...  He is definitely a stray but we don't know where he came from, we went round some of our neighbours and showed a photo of him but nobody owned up!  We know he must have been someone's pet because his coat was well kept (feral cats tend to be quite unkempt and shaggy!) and he was familiar with the cat litter and cat flap.  So we think that someone has kicked him out because of his behaviour.

He is the most aggressive, psychopathic animal I have ever come across! He is crazy! He provokes all of the other cats and actively seeks them out for the sole reason of attacking them. He is actually a very clever cat because you can see him planning out before he does things which isn't something I've noticed cats doing before. He will sit and wait say behind the couch say, if he knows one of the other cats is coming that way then pounce on them! He is also very strong, we had to actually change the latch on my bedroom door to stop him coming in to attack Theo during the night because he would be able to push it open, even when I put my guitar and stand behind it, he still managed to open it!

One thing he did which was hilarious was that one night he was in the living room prowling around, and my black cardigan was lying in a heap on the couch. He snuck up and then attacked my cardi thinking it was Theo or Tia, it was so funny, he must have been so confused!!!

We have bought a Feliway plug-in which releases cat pheromones and it does seem to calm him down a bit, when it runs out he seems more aggressive and agitated. He doesn't attack us as much either - we all have scars from when we first got him - because he will get fixated on attacking Theo for example, if you get in his way he will just attack you as well. We know now to just leave him when he gets like that and remove any other cats in the vicinity!

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my cats!

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Edit: Hugo went missing at the end of the summer and we've not seen him since :(

Introducing My Cats: Tia

 
This is Tia!  She is the cutest wee thing ever!  We bought her from our local SSPCA animal home as a kitten (her mother had given birth in the home) and she is now 3 (we had to look this up... so bad at keeping track of our animals ages lol).

Although she is fully grown she is still a really small cat as you can see from the photo - that's her sitting on my slipper!  She also absolutely loves sitting in boxes, I used to do Avon so when the stuff arrived it was like heaven for her, she would just plonk herself down in a box on top of all the products while me and my mum were trying to sort it all out!

Despite her size she is quite a vicious wee thing and is partial to a bit of hunting (nightmare!), she also doesn't take any of Hugo's attitude which is hilarious when you compare her to Theo!  Hugo will run at her and she'll just growl and stare at him until he backs down.  But although I said she is vicious she has never scratched or bit any humans unlike other cats who will just attack anyone if they have been provoked or in an aggressive mood.  I really like this about her, Hugo will be squaring up to her and it's perfectly safe to lift her while she is growling whereas Theo will often try to get at me when I do this to him.  

Tia is such a cuddly cat, definitely the cuddliest out of our 4!  When you lift her up she just melts into your arms and makes herself cosy, it's adorable!

She isn't the brightest of cats though I have to say, she often forgets how to get out the catflap and tries to pull it open with her paw instead of just pushing through!  All you hear is BANG BANG BANG, yup, that's her forgot again, and you need to go and push out from behind...

Lastly is Hugo! :)

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Introducing My Cats: Theo

This is Theo and we got him when he was about 6 months old.  I bought him off my friend for £30 because she decided she was allergic to him (even though she already had a cat which she kept... I've no idea!) so my family said we would take him.  I'm not sure how old he is at the moment, I guess he is about 4?

When he was younger he was so playful and he actually did crazy back flips and could jump so high!  This seems insane now because he is huge!  Such a big lump of a cat, I'd like to weigh him and see how heavy he actually is!

Although he is big, the addition of our newest cat Hugo has really stressed him out.  You would think he would be able to handle himself, especially as he is bigger than Hugo, but he just runs when he sees him and so Hugo will chase him.  It's so sad, he gets himself into such a state, cats drool when they are stressed, there has been a lot of drooling!  He even had a wee bald tummy for a while because of all the fighting/stress it looked so pathetic, it seems to be growing back now thankfully!!

To avoid Hugo he has taken to hiding on top of the kitchen cupboards, like the ones really high up, no idea how he gets up there!  I also have to keep him in my room overnight (we had to change the latch on my door because Hugo was able to open it...) so most nights I need to lure him down from his cupboard with a piece of ham (boke), such fun!

We are hoping that eventually (preferably sooner rather than later!) Theo and Hugo will get along, it's actually chaos sometimes!

Next up is Tia :)

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Introducing My Cats: Kali

I've been thinking about doing this sort of post for a while but wasn't really sure how it would go down, but I know if someone else did it I would love to read it so here goes!

I have used a lot of photos of my cats throughout this blog so I thought I would do a post which introduces them all properly!  I am going to do them one at a time as I think I will probably get carried away and it'll end up super long if I don't!

This is our oldest cat, she will turn 20 this summer, only slightly younger than me!  We have had her all her life because her mum, Yoma, was our cat too.  Yoma was a stunning lilac torte Burmese and my parents wanted to try and breed her so they took her to where ever you go to breed your cat... however she obviously did not approve of the boy cat she had been put with a dug her way out of the enclosure!  Luckily they found her shortly after and took her home without putting her through that again.

However a wee while later she became pregnant with a tom cat (must've preferred the bad boys ;)) and Kali was the result of this!  She had 5 kittens but sadly for whatever reason only Kali survived, and she has deformed claws as a birth defect which means she can't retract them and some of them stick out at weird angles.  She was always quite anti-social and really quite vicious at times (probably because she is half feral!) until her mum died, when she started being more cuddly and less fierce.

Due to her age she is now a house cat out of choice and spends most of her time on my parents bed.  We bring her down to the living room in the evenings to give her some company and a change of scenery.  Certainly not a very exciting life but she is happy and comfortable so that's all that matters!  My dad took her out to the patio at the weekend when we had gorgeous weather, but she was not impressed, as soon as he laid her down she got up, walked back into the house and back up to her bed!  She can get up those stairs at some speed for a lady of her age!

Next up is Theo :)

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Animal Testing for Cosmetics

This is going to be a bit of a wordy one so please bear with me!  I will include some cute cat photos to add something fun to look at!

I'm sure it is quite obvious especially if you have followed me for a while that my blog is cruelty free.  I haven't really explained this too much - I touched on it in my About Me section if you have looked at that - so I thought I would kind of explain in a bit more about why exactly I choose to be very selective about what I buy and why it is important.

I can't be exactly sure about when I made the decision to go cruelty-free, or how I even find out that this testing was going on, I'd imagine I probably came across something on the internet!!  Obviously I was well aware of animals being used in medical research which I will not be going into, mainly because I don't know enough about it to have a fully-formed opinion (although I will say that I try my best to avoid charities which put funding into this sort of research), but it wasn't until later when I learned about their use in the cosmetics industry.

Without going into too much detail about what exactly happens (don't worry there won't be any pictures!) I am just going to outline what actually happens to the animals in laboratories, a lot of the time the products are not used for testing, it's more often the ingredients used.  This is why a lot of companies can get away with saying 'none of our finished products are tested on animals'.

Here are a few common processes the animals will be put through:

• Lethal Dosage testing to find out how much of a substance will kill a set ratio of animals.
• Substances dropped into animals eyes to see if any damage is caused.
• They are forced to ingest chemicals.
• Their fur is shaved and substances applied to skin.
• They are often killed after these tests and disected to find if there are any adverse effects to the body or bred to see if there are any birth defects.

On top of this these animals spend their entire lives in tiny cages, they receive no care or affection other than the bare minimum feeding and cleaning, never seeing the light of day.

I have made a page of these lists so you can easily find them but it occurred to me that quite a lot of people won't have visited these.  So here is a list of companies who I consider 'safe' to use, they do not test on animals, nor are their ingredients, or suppliers.  I urge you contact companies yourself to make up your own mind, and to get into the habit of doing it for any brands I haven't mentioned.  I do have a template email which you can find here or at the top of the page, this is what I use so please feel free to just copy and paste if you would like to contact a company about their stance.

Alberto Culver
Almay
Arbonne
Anastasia - Beverly Hills
Barry M
Benefit Cosmetics
BM Beauty
The Body Shop - owned by L'Oreal but none of their profit goes towards animal testing
Boots own brands eg No7, 17, natural collection etc.
Bourjois
Butter LONDON
Chanel
Color Club (Forsythe Cosmetics Group) 
Deborah Lippman
E.L.F.
Eyeko
Front Cover
GOSH
Inglot*
Jemma Kidd Make Up
Laura Geller
Liz Earle - partnered with Avon but remain independent
Lush
Marks & Spencer’s
Models Own
Naked
NARS Cosmetics - owned by Shiseido but are independent
Nubar
NYX
Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Pure Face Care
PZ Cussons
Revlon
Sainsbury’s
Soap and Glory
Stila
Sugarpill
Superdrug own brands**
Too Faced
Une
Urban Decay
Yaby
Zoya

*Inglot say “To the best of our knowledge, the ingredients used for our cosmetics are not tested on animals.”
**See my here for more info on Superdrug.

If you want to be 100% safe then the best way is to only use BUAV approved companies as they put the brands under the spotlight and really make sure they are cruelty-free, unlike PETA who just rely on the company being honest with them.

And here is a list of companies who are not cruelty free:

Avon (lied about not testing)
Clarins
Diptyque (they are cruelty free but cannot speak for suppliers)
Elizabeth Arden
Estée Lauder inc. MAC, Bobbi Brown, Origins, Smashbox Cosmetics
John Frieda
L’oreal inc. Garnier and Essie
Max Factor
Maybelline
Olay
O.P.I. (Owned by Coty)
Pantene
Rimmel
Shiseido
Superdrug (BUAV approved but raising money to donate to charities which test on animals)
Yves Saint Laurent
Laura Mercier

I hope that I have given an insight to some people about the truth behind cosmetics and make you think twice about buying certain brands!  If you have made it this far, well done and thank you!!

I would love to know your thoughts on this controversial subject so if you do have any then leave me a comment :)

Here are photos of my cats to cheer you up haha!

Kali

Theo

Tia

Hugo

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