I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone that has been encouraging me by reading my blog. I have 100 Facebook followers and to celebrate I'd like to do a little giveaway!

Included in the giveaway is....

1. Orly Cat Woman Nail Polish Set
2. Pusheen USB Mug Warmer
3. Times Three Limited Edition Bath Bomb from Porcelain Wolf
4. Full Moon Bubble Bar from Nature's Whimsey
5. Freddy Sticker and "Baddest Witch in Town" Decal from Merch Massacre

All you have to do is...

1. Like the Fluffy the Vampire facebook page

2. Comment on the Giveaway post

3. Share the Fluffy the Vampire facebook page

Good luck! Winner will be picked Fri., Jan 5, 2018 and will be contacted via facebook.

I know I've been M.I.A. as of late. This holiday season at Cats Like Us, (the shop I own) is taking over my life ~ even more than normal! So I'm blogging when I can, and it's not very much. I plan to get back on track in January. BUT please enjoy this unboxing of the Winter 2017 Pusheen Box. (You can see the Fall unboxing here.) In this video I use a massager! (Get your mind out of the gutter!)

(My necklace in the video is from GoreJess Labatory from the Glamour Ghoul Luna Box.)

Here's the packing list...

1. Pusheen massager. Not sure if this works. I feel like it would just tangle my hair, but maybe I'll try it on my elbows like the box says.

2. Winter Pusheen Mug. This is a big ass mug. Perfect for my tea addiction.

3. Pusheen Vinyl Holiday Figure.

4. LED Charging Cable. This is really cute. It lights up just like Christmas lights AND THEY ARE LITTLE PUSHEENS!!!!

5. Set of 4 Holiday Pins featuring a yellow star, present, Stormy (the fluffy cat) and Pusheen. Yes the fluffy kitty is named Stormy and they have a little brother kitty that pops up every so often, his name is Pip.

Stormy, Pusheen & Pip.

6. Set of 4 Pusheen Holiday Sticky Notes.

7. USB Mug Warmer. This is a good idea, but I'm not sure if I'll ever use it. It's stinkin' adorable though.

8. Plush Winter Pusheen. Look at those little arms!

9. Pusheen Holiday Sweatshirt.

Pusheen Cat is the equivalent to Hello Kitty in the 1970s and 1980s. She was everywhere and on everything, especially stationary. Then they turned Hello Kitty into a pink design that I hated. I liked her red, white and blue outfit ~ probably because she wears stripes. Hello Kitty approves of this Pusheen Box, can't wait for the Spring one!

Halloween 2013, I was the original Hello Kitty ~ I'm the one in the first picture. ;)

While looking for a specific cat picture for my last movie blog, Movie: Hush (2016) I stumbled across a certain website and was completely intrigued. Andrew, my husband, and I always joke that our next career move will be to train cats for commercials and movies and I love that this website has a database for movie star cats! It's www.cinemacats.com. It includes a ton of genres, short films, television, animated cats, and more! But they aren't the only website dedicated to actor cats. There's The Horror Cats, Moviepaws, and Pet Cinematary (the last one includes all animal actors)! Who knew?!

Here's a small compliation from the Cinema Cats website of The Greatest Cats in Films, don't worry Burger Fiction (the people that made this video) are working on a part two! This one includes tons of Disney movies and animated cats, but it's still worth a watch. They are missing many ~ off the top of my head Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Keanu, Pywacket from Bell, Book and Candle, are missing for sure! (I blogged about Bell, Book and Candle for my shop website Cats Like Us. You can read it here.) If you want to talk about animated cats ~ what about Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp?! You can't leave those troublemakers out.

There's even a book dedicated to cats on film that came out this past September. It's simply called Cats on Film by Anne Billson. (I'm going to try to get my paws on it from the library.)

If you want to see a newer movie with real cats that aren't actors ~ I recommend Kedi. It's more of a documentary about the lives of stray cats in Istanbul. Trailer below...

Someday Andrew will be a cat trainer. Here he is teaching Ginger to be a parrot for his "pirate lifestyle." (a.k.a. drinking too much rum.) She sits on his shoulders while he walks around the house. It might be harder to do with a large cat, but Ginger is tiny and easy to carry. She purrs and loves being chauffeured from room to room. I'm off to go train Vicktor not to be a jerk and eat our fake Christmas tree!

Thanks for reading, my holidays have been very busy, hopefully things will calm down and I can get back on track to reading, writing, and watching more horror and cats!

I heard about a TV show called Lore, so I did a little research and found out there's a book called The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke and podcast too, and all are based around the same thing...folklore of unsolved mysteries. I think I'm the only person left anywhere that doesn't listen to podcasts, I swear I don't have time for them. I drive 5 minutes to work where I listen to rockabilly music, and when I'm at home I'm reading or watching a movie or trying to finish Supernatural because ~ I'm not afraid of commitment ~ and I'm in the home stretch in the middle of season 10. (You can read all about my Supernatural thoughts here, here, here and here.)

Being a book nerd I ordered the book The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures from the library. It touches on all the historical monster narratives from vampires, witch hunts, zombies, pygmies, ghosts, to things we still hear about today ~ the Warren's Annabelle doll and curses, Shirley Jackson's haunted house writings and poltergeists. Historical vampires and witch folklore are my forte, so I was already prepared to like this book. Vamps have a special place in my heart along with witches and it started for me in junior year of high school where I wrote a 25 page paper comparing Bram Stoker's Dracula book to the movie. (Side note: No comparison. The movie is very pretty with bad acting, the book is better although a little boring as it's written like a diary.) The witch curiosity started even earlier, sophomore year when I wrote about Cotton Mather's Salem Witchcraft Trials and their attack on women. Now I'm not going to claim I know about everything in the book. I did learn about Spring-Heeled Jack in England and lots more specifics on creature origin stories. It even includes the origins of words and why certain things are called what they are. You can see a lot of time and effort went into this book and I'm always excited to expand on my creepy knowledge especially if I don't have to do all the research. (Haha.)

Enough about me, Lore, the book, covers a lot of (burial) ground! It references 1980s pop culture movies and icons, i.e. The Serpent and the Rainbow, Teen Wolf, and even MacGyver. It includes horror anecdotes too which really hold my interest, but it goes deeper and explores folklore itself. There's always been a fear of the unknown everywhere. And how do you explain the unexplainable? With folklore! Perfecto example: A woman in Salem, MA back in the 1690s didn't conform to societal norms because she didn't attend church. The town decided to call her a witch and put her through the witch trials. (That way they can get rid of her since she's different.) Another example: A family claims to see a deceased family member, they dig up the body and find that it hasn't decomposed and there's blood by it's mouth. Well, obviously it's a vampire. These stories get told over and over, expanded on and spread throughout history creating the monster lore we know today.

One of the really fun things I enjoyed about the book is that the chapters don't end with conclusive evidence but often plot twists, suggestions of what happened, and speculations that make you come up with your own conclusions. It really makes you think. Could there be logical reasons people saw and documented what they did? Hmmm.

The Edward Gorey-esque pen and ink illustrations in the book are something you don't get from a podcast. The artist M.S.Corley is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer that draws for a variety of books. The artwork in Lore is very Edward Gorey compared to his other pieces. Gotta love a book with pictures!

Many of the creatures written about can be found in the TV show Supernatural (I'm not joking) ~ trickster, jinn, wendigo, changling, elves ~ and here I thought the writers were just making them all up! So I guess you can say Supernatural was my introduction to a wide array on monster folklore and it's a good preface. After reading this book though, I feel like anything is possible and real. Truth can be scarier than fiction. Yikes.

Look for Aaron Mahnke's next book, The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals coming out in May 2018.