The cat's meow

"I had looked forward for weeks to the Carnival of the Cats," writes K T Cat (above) of The Scratching Post. "As a new blogger, it was a chance to generate traffic to my site and perhaps create a few returning customers to build my readership. I worked through a couple of candidate themes that I thought might be witty and finally decided to use my Feline Theocracy series as the foundation for the post."

"I have read about this in books and heard about it in seminars, but it is another thing entirely to watch it happen live," admits K T Cat of The Scratching Post, going for the jugular of the Carnival of the Cats fur-fluffle chronicled here yesterday:

The blogosphere allows you to see the precise mechanisms of customer dissatisfaction. A retailer may go a long time without ever knowing that some of his employees are driving customers away through bad behavior. Blogs make customer motivations transparent. I was immediately able to see how I had screwed up. I was also able to watch the progression of the bad press as it passed from one blogger and commenter to another.

"I was delighted with my prose," recalls the "middle-aged tuxedo cat who likes petting, tuna and ripping your ankles to shreds without warning when I feel like it."

"Who knows what the end result will be? Certainly not what I had intended":

In his book, A Touch of Wonder, Arthur Gordon has a superb essay entitled “The Far Side of Failure.” He describes his meeting with Thomas Watson of IBM where he was taught that success lies on the far side of failure. “You’ve got to put failure to work for you,” admonishes Mr. Watson. I’m trying to do just that with this experience with the Carnival of the Cats.

And so you have, sir. Lemonade out of lemons, or should we say tuna out of catfood cans?

Update: "Thanks to you, I'm submitting this post for this week's Carnival of the Capitalists," writes KT Cat in the comments. The blogosphere's like that. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon you're beating verbal swords into blogshares.

Update II: More good words from KT Cat in the comments:  "Reading your blog more thoroughly, it looks like you and I have pretty similar world views. I'm almost glad I screwed up! If I hadn't, I never would have found you. :-)" We second the emotion.

Comments

[K T Cat]

What a very kind post! Thank you so much! I would also like to put in a good word for Mother Superior, Kukka-Maria. She was just being a friend. Check out her blog. She's a riot!

http://felinesovereign.blogspot.com/

Thanks to you, I'm submitting this post for this week's Carnival of the Capitalists.

All the best,
KT

[Sissy Willis]

And they shall beat their swords into blogshares? :)

[Barry]

Great googly-moogly! I put in a long week at work and get behind on my blog-reading, and look what happens.

Glad that y'all got everything sorted out. There's nothing uglier than a catfight. :-)

[Sissy Willis]

Fortunately, cats are always in control. ;)

[Gayle Miller]

K.T. and Sissy: I posted a hymn to the magnificence of my two boys - the impressive Sam and the hilarious Tim - on my blog recently. K.T., the head shot of you reveals a most handsome fellow. Sissy, you know how I feel about Baby and Tiny!

[goomp]

All is well that ends well.

[pb]

So I can't hate them forever?

[K T Cat]

Sissy,

I gave you a little extra love as I did some edits to my Carnival of the Capitalists post today. I realized that it ended abruptly and I had missed one of the primary lessons of the whole affair.

I've also got my Wednesday World of Good post up. Check it out!

http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2006/04/world-of-good-blogburst-boy-scout.html

Reading your blog more thoroughly, it looks like you and I have pretty similar world views. I'm almost glad I screwed up! If I hadn't, I never would have found you. :-)

[Laurence Simon]

Re update: I found the Grill Maestro when I took over COTV last week, and KT found you in all this kerfuffle.

Carnivals still have the power to connect.

[Sissy Willis]

It's a good thing. :)