Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Today we are gonna be focusing on cats as works of art. So I would like to welcome Kristina Hughes and Brian Vermeire with Frame Your Feline. How are y'all doing?

We're doing great. Thank you. Doing good.

I am super excited to talk about this. Because I did not know that this existed. And Kristina, when you reached out to me, I went and looked it up and I'm obsessed now. So before we dive into frame your feline, can y'all share a little bit about your background and what led you here?

Oh boy. I'll be the first to say that I never grew up with a cat. I had no idea about anything about cats. And it wasn't until Kristina came along in my life that I've learned the way of the cat and I was a dog guy. My entire life, I am now the cat man. I love

the cat butler.

I love cats. Like cats are the most amazing creatures. It's amazing. I came with no background in cats. Kristina, you grew up with a cat, right?

Yes. My parents when they were in college together my mom was the go-to person. Everyone would say, and I've only just learned this recently actually, they'd be like, oh, Linda we have a cat. We can't keep it. Can you find a home for it? Rumor has it, they had eight cats in a one bedroom apartment, and my mom was rehoming cats, and so I always had cats growing up, but actually I only really had one cat. From basically first grade until I moved to California. That was Misty. She was a Siamese kitty, and she was the runt of the litter. She was actually all black, and she was this teeny tiny little kitty. But she was my best friend growing up, and I could always tell her what was going on in my world and what I was happy about, what I was sad about. I was an only child, so I either had my stuffed animal wookie or my living cat mis ty to lean on. But when I moved to LA I left Misty behind 'cause she was 20 years old and I felt like that was too old to bring a cat across country. So I let her live out her life with my parents in Massachusetts and I knew someday in LA I would get a cat, but I just didn't really know when. And Brian and I moved in together and the neighbor's cat who was being abused, started taking a liking to us. And that's where we took over. And Brian became a cat daddy.

I did. And then I quickly realized that cats are like tattoos. Mysteriously, you end up getting more and

you

can't stop.

You can't stop. And next thing you got a tattoo covering your face. And it's the same way with cats.

And if you know us, Dixie, or you don't, those people who are listening, Brian and I do not have any tattoos on our faces. No. We're actually really anywhere else, but

I don't have tattoos, but I do have cats that take that place and and so yeah, we loved our cats when we were living in our apartment. We wanted to, build a cat wall. We wanted to do certain stuff. But we never got around to it. But then we moved out of the apartment and we bought our first house. And we have all of a sudden, like when you go from an apartment to a house, like life changes, you're like, wow, and we were like, okay, we wanna do a cat wall, but now that we have a house, we don't want it to be tacky. Like we don't

we don't want just a bunch of shelves and some, and

right. We wanted something elegant and then that was how we just started having a conversation about how do we do that?

Cliffhanger.

Yeah, I love that though, because I have cat shelves in my house, just things that we put together and i've got cat trees everywhere. And I will say it's looks like a catastrophe for cats, there's no other way to say it because it's cat trees. I think we've got let me see, I've got 1, 2, 3, we probably have about six cat trees, and then we also have the shelves. And then of course they don't always use the shelves. They like to, either sit in front of the TV or sit in front of the computer or go in places where they're not supposed to go. Yeah. But yeah, the idea that the frame your feline, it is such a unique concept and it is so like aesthetic too, and Yeah, like from the photos that I'm seeing, like when the cats are actually like in the frames it's just amazing. So for people that don't know, just give us a brief overview of what the frame your feline is.

Okay, then this dovetails into how the idea of the concept came to be. So when we were hanging artwork on the walls and we were then thinking about the shelves, and then that's when,

My, my dad, yeah, my dad is an avid art collector and he has a lot of. Artwork from Ronnie Wood, from the Rolling Stones, John Lennon and Jerry Garcia. And he at his house, he has museum walls, right of artwork everywhere. And he had gifted us a Ronnie Wood of Rod Stewart, and it's beautifully framed and matted. And I was saying to Brian like, how can we hang up Rod Stewart, but how can we have our cats hang out around with him? And the concept of just plain shelves, I was like, oh, it's just not really the look I'm I wanna go for, right? And so I was like, what if we could like somehow have a frame and like a shelf? And he's do you mean frame your cat? And I said, that is exactly what I mean. And he was like. This is really interesting. I don't know about this. So we went online and we did tons of research. We are entrepreneurs, we own other businesses, and we wanted to make sure that nobody out there was doing anything, like what we were thinking about because we we can't just go, oh, wouldn't it be fun to just DIY something? We're like, Hey, if we need this, other people need this. If we're tired of what we had in our old apartment was gifted from our hairdresser was an ugly powder, blue carpeted cat tree. The cat sat in, they threw up on it. We would cart it down the stairs, we'd go rinse it off outside. We'd let it dry, we'd cart it back up the stairs. We'd put it in our living room and go, God, that just smells. Why does it smell so bad? Because it has formaldehyde in it. And a lot of people don't know that's what's mostly in their cat trees. We were just like. Let's see if this is something, and Brian's dad is an engineer.

Yep.

And when you have a problem, who do you call? You call your parents and we're adults. We're like, Hey, we wanna bounce this idea off of you. And he is I don't know. And we went back for a visit and his dad brought it up at the dinner table Brian's parents do not know about cats. When we go visit them on Cape Cod, brian and I always go visit this little local animal shelter and we go see the cats and we come back and we tell them about these cats that are available for adoption. And they're like, yeah, we're not cat people. But his dad was like, so you really think that this could be something? And I'm like, yes, of course. Do you know how many people own cats and do you know how many people own multiple cats? And so we went back to California and a few weeks later he said, Hey guys, I've got something coming for you in the mail. Don't open it up. Call me when you get it and you have a chance to, open it up with me. And so we did. And that was when Bill, Brian's dad had sent us. Like the first version of Frame Your Feline.

So from concept and then he said he took our concept and then made it a reality. And that, and so for the people at home listening, explain what it is. Yes. Alright, so finally, what is it? So Frame Your Feline is the best. Cat shelf perch. You can imagine there's a, we

call it the cat shelf reimagined.

There are two shelves, so think of a shelf on the wall, and then directly above that about two feet above that is another shelf directly above it.

An upper shelf and a lower

shelf,

an upper shelf. And a lower shelf. Lower shelf is carpeted. Okay.

Yay.

And then imagine an actual beautiful art frame that connects to those two shelves and the artwork panels slide in and. As backdrops. Okay. And so they slide in and out, so you can always change the artwork in your frame. Your feline, the cat jumps into the frame and they just sit there looking out at you and they look like a framed work of art on your wall. They are a living work of art on your wall. And it's just it. And you see your cat in a whole new way and it's absolutely a stunner. When cats love being in frame of your feline, you do not have to train your cat to be in it. You don't have to hope they use it. They naturally, instinctively will absolutely go in it and they'll hang out in the frame for

hours,

for long periods of time. And the magic. It's something that we didn't expect. When we installed it in our home for the first time after we did several beta tests, did

it in our garage,

we did several tests in the garage and we had to figure, modify, modifications, higher, bigger, wider, like all of this, all that stuff we had to figure out. Then when we finally installed it in our home, we didn't know how the cats were gonna react to it. We walked away and

didn't, we didn't pick them up and put it in it, we just walked away and then we like looked around the corner and within, I don't know, two or three minutes they were investigating

And then it became a territory. It became a place where all the cats wanted to be in because here's what we figured out was cats in frame your feline, they instinctively feel safe. Cats love to be, they love to be high. They get, they love getting that vertical space, but because of the ceiling, the upper shelf and the lower shelf, and then having that frame around it, they feel like they're in a box. Even though it's open on all sides, they feel safe. So I'm looking at our cat.

Yeah, I'm looking at pop. So we have a cat named Poppy. She's a rescue from the Palmdale Animal Care Center. We got her in 2019. It's a very high kill shelter and we just put a new piece of artwork in today, which is of the poppy fields that we live nearby here in Southern California. So we've got Poppy. In a frame. It's the warm walnut, right? Yeah. That's the new frame with the new frame style with poppies behind it, and she's giving herself the cat bath right now. So she's just having a great high poppy, and that is installed in our kitchen actually. People say like. Where do you put these frames? And we say anywhere you hang art is where you can have, frame your feline. So you know, you can have it in your even kitchen. You can have it in your home office. We have 'em in our bedroom, our living room. We're putting one up in our dining room 'cause we're about to do a big install video.

We have one in the home office.

Yeah.

Yeah, as Kristina said, anywhere you hang out, you can have your cat hang out and frame your feline. And

we and the cool thing is. While we've been growing the product, we get feedback from people on different types of art. They want. Some people want photography, so we've been supporting some smaller photographers, some fine artists, some watercolor artists. We got access last year to the Master's art. So you can have Monet in your home. You can have Rembrandt in your home. So we have some really cool art that people can feel like they're in a museum and then. The growth of the product is we're adding new art, we're adding new frame styles, and then what we have new for this year is we have a museum plaque that goes next to the frame. So it starts to look like you're curating your own art gallery in your home,

and you're curating cats with it, huh?

Yes. We're we have our own resident cats. And then we're Hey, how are kittens in the frame? Hey, how are being coons in the frame? How are Bengals in the frame? Some of our first beta testers were a main coon and a Bengal. Paired in Indiana, right? That's where Maria, the Cadi, and Clia, the Bengal, they were some of our first beta testers. And Clia has lots of energy 'cause she's a Bengal. And we are like, give this thing a pounding, and then Maria, the Cadis, she's this big fluffy man, coon, and we're like, let's see, how do you look when you stretch out and that sort of thing. So here in our home. We, like I said, we live in an area, we have two very high kill shelters within 10 minutes each direction of us. And so we started fostering cats and kittens of all shapes and sizes. We've tried to get cats before they get dumped at the shelter. We've worked with a couple of groups who do TNR. And we've personally fostered. And then we have some fosters who have frames. And what we all do collectively is we've elevated the adoption photos and videos and when Petfinder is working, 'cause it hasn't been working very well, there's a bug in their system right now. But when Petfinder is working and when we post on Facebook and Instagram, they'll rescue that. We are involved with. It's called DS Kitty Rescue now on Instagram and we adopt out of a Petco in Santa Clarita, California. Called Petco Bouquet Canyon, and we have so many people that come to the adoption events or that message us during the week and say, I'm interested in this cat. I wanna meet this cat because they saw these amazing photos and videos of the cat. It's not just like a kitten bolting through your living room that you tried to snap a photo of or a cat that's just not happy if you put the cat. In the frame that has never been in the frame and you give 'em a couple of pets they feel so comfortable and we're able to get really great pictures and videos of them.

I think that's great and I think that's really what appeals to me about it. Not just that my personal cats would like it, but because I have a rescue too. I struggle so much with trying to take photos of cats and kittens that are. Nice, decent looking photos. And so to me, having something like that it just makes it so much easier. It takes it to another level. It looks like you have a professional photographer come in, but you could do it in your living room.

Yes. There is a cat cafe and rescue in Wisconsin called the Barista Cat Cafe. I think this is, it's super cool. You can see them on Instagram and TikTok. They installed a frame your feline into a 100 and 50-year-old stone wall, and they have it a little lower so that when people come to the cat cafe and they sit down in a chair, the cat is like right next to them at like shoulder, head height. They can have a coffee, an amazing picture. They can have a coffee with a cat a Milo Sanctuary which is a big rescue out here. They have a lot of cats, the cats who are actually like blind cats who can't walk. And they actually purchased from us and we went and installed it for them so we could meet up with them last year. And it was amazing to see. A blind adoptable cat

in the frame

in your feline. It's just like super comfortable and happy. And,

and what's really great, so the rescues are starting to see that taking pictures of cats in the frames actually ups the rate of adoption way faster. And and also we have a great vet. Animal Hospital in Maine.

In Scarborough, Maine.

Yeah. They've installed two. They purchased two.

Yeah. They bought one and then they bought

another. They bought another, and they're gonna buy more. They tell me and I'm like, okay. And they have their patient cats and they put them in the frame and take pictures of the cats and the people love it it's just,

and it's a great, it's a great branding moment for them because we offer. Customized artwork panels. So they've ordered actually art that we have existing on the website, but then they've asked us to create Scarborough Animal Hospital. So when a person takes a picture of it and then they post it online, then people start to see it. So it's really cool advertising for them. Really love that. And I have to say, when we started with Frame your feline. And this has been a learning experience for us. We were like, oh, we want it made out of wood and we want it handcrafted. And we were having Brian's dad who is over 80, make them one at a time by hand, out of wood in his shop. It was time consuming. It was costly because wood warps. And then when we went to an event in San Diego where there are cat rescues there, but there are also purebred cats there. It's through the Cat Fanciers Association. We went to their West Coast event and a lot of people who were breeders, they're like, oh, I love this idea, but your products may not have wood and my cat's not fixed. And he's gonna spray on it and I'm never gonna be able to clean it. And we were like, aha. Actually that weekend we had already been doing research for a few months. We had received our sample of what is now frame your feline 2.0, which is non-porous. Non-toxic recyclable. It's super easy to clean. So if your cat, throws up on the frame or the shelves there is no problem with cleaning it and sanitizing it. And that's a big thing with the cat rescues and the cat cafes. So they need to have, something that can be easily cleaned.

Yep. And we were so happy with this material because it's what woodworkers use when they don't have wood. And so it's more durable than wood. It's sturdier than wood. But it's lighter and it's just fabulous. And everything is made in the USA. All manufactured in the USA. No, my dad is out of a job. Thank goodness.

Happily

happily. The good news is that it's better materials and just. Way better for cat cafes to use and

durable. And that's a big thing with us, as cat parents. How many times Dixie you're shopping at Aldi and you're like, oh, look at this cute little cardboard house, and you buy it for your cat, you put it together and within 20 minutes you're like, oh, this is going in the landfill. I'm tired of buying things that either my cats are gonna destroy or they're not gonna use, or,

yeah. We got a we have an exercise wheel, Dixie I'm telling you for the

cat.

These cats. They it's repellent. I say it's cat repellent. They do not want anything to do with it. We've tried training them to do it. They don't want,

we have one cat that will sit at the bottom of the cat wheel, but we bought it during COVID. We thought it was gonna be a fun thing. And we're like, wow, it takes up a huge footprint in our home. And nobody wants to

use it and nobody wants to use it. And cat trees are gross. They're disgusting. I'm out to deforest the world from cat trees. They're an abomination. And it's so great to have this on your wall. And I'm telling you, it, when you see your cat in it, it'll give you goosebumps because it is crazy when you look directly at the cat in the framed, it's just such a neat experience because they do look like framed art on the wall. I can't tell you how great it is to have a product that cats actually wanna be in and use. And it's great when they're not in it too. It doesn't look like an eyesore. It looks pretty cool.

That's true. Because some people online will be like, oh, do you guys just pick the art and send it to us? And we're like, no. We have over 2000 images you can poke through. What do you like? Do you. Watercolor. Do you like oil? Do you like the masters? Do you wanna support a local artist? Do you have your own logo or images that you wanna use? Do you wanna change it up every season or every holiday so you can have fun? With the cat too, even like for Cinco de Mayo, we have a sombrero that the cat is perfectly poised in the frame that looks like they're wearing sore, a sombrero and they got Moroccans around 'em and stuff. Fun. We have a sense of humor. Brian and I we were out in California because we started this journey as performers and we've been known to do some standup comedy, so that's why some of the images like the cat who looks like a damsel in distress, laying on the train tracks in one of the panels.

We have a train tracks. We've got we have a whole bar section with, funny things like whisker whiskey. The

meowtini time.

meowtini time. Yeah. It's just fun. Why not have a product that's fun, but also functional and just looks fabulous on the wall? And when you have guests come over, they're gonna go, what is this? What is

it?

Yeah. We, when we first, when we installed it in our living room. We had a Halloween,

we were hosting a black and orange party. Yeah. For our son and all his little

friends,

3-year-old friends.

One of the dads of one of his friends was walking through the living room and he, all of a sudden he stops his tracks, he sees the cat in the frame and he goes, what the am I looking at? His brain was like, what is this? It's moving and then he was walking closer to him. He's this is nuts. And he took out his phone and was like, I gotta take a picture of this. And I said no. It's

nothing in development.

We're in development. You can't share this, you can't share it. Don't take any pictures, please. Yeah, it's just crazy when you have it and you put it on your wall, it really is a cool experience. Yep.

So I understand that y'all were on Shark Tank as well.

Oh, that little show?

Yes.

Shark Tank season 16 episode, I think they're calling it 17. It was 18, but 17. So 16, 17. If you go on Instagram through Shark Tanks profile, you can scroll down our video. Brian's wearing a hot pink suit. I'm wearing a bright yellow dress with like over 400,000 views. It was a journey. It was fun. The show aired last April 18th. We've had a rerun and people are discovering us quite often from Shark Tank.

Yeah, it's a process.

How do y'all balance being entrepreneurs and still doing your, creative career?

That's a great question.

That's a good question.

And we're also parents to a 9-year-old who we homeschool, but we juggle, we focus and we. Really try to time manage ourselves. We own a company called One Bike Creative, where we do logos and websites and commercial production. And that kind of came out of being a performer because when you're an actor and you're not making, $50 million a year, you've gotta be really savvy and start to do things for yourself. So we had to learn how to build our own websites. And then once we were building our own websites, we were like, oh, we could do this for other people. And Brian is a Squarespace specialist. He's certified and is doing really great websites. So we do that. We, our focus right now is not on standup comedy. It's really on what we're doing with One by Creative and how we're growing. Frame your feline, that's like our big focus. Doing things on social media, going to in-person events, engaging people through media experiences, and really listening to feedback. What do people love about Frame Your Feline? What do they want more of? And what they want more of is. Some of them want to experience the modularness of frame your feline. They wanna put multiple frames on the wall. And so we've had people reach out to us, how do I do this? And how do we create a little schematic about maybe you're gonna install it here, you're gonna put it over here. So it's really cool to see that. Expanding into rescues and cat cafes. When we did Shark Tank, we we had tons of paperwork, Dixie, it was like going to business school and was like carrying a baby for nine months. And we had so much paperwork we had to fill out and one of it was like, what's like a wild thing that you wanna do with your business? And we said, we actually have two wild things that we wanna do. One, we wanna have a frame your feline at the National Zoo for a big cat, and we haven't given up on that. We'd love to see, a lion, tiger, serval, a panther, or a Jaguar. Frame your feline and we think that'd be cool. And the other thing we wanna do, because we're so involved in fostering and rescue and Brian and I also sit on the board of Mission Meow, where we fund big grants for small feline centric nonprofits. And through that we really wanna have either. A cat cafe or a cat rescue, or an actual museum that wants to install a series of frames in their space, and we wanna have a fundraiser and a big adoption event. So we wanna see lots of cats and frames. People drinking and donating and celebrating cats and celebrating art. So that's something we are really excited to do. We can't have everybody here at our house where we practically have a museum now, but, we're really excited about that outreach, really getting out there for the rescues and supporting the fosters. People love fostering, but there's a point where they're like, I really wanna get this cat adopted so I can go on vacation or, so I can foster another litter. So we want, people not to feel like when they're fostering, they're gonna be stuck with a cat. Because sometimes they're quote stuck because nobody's doing the social media, the networking, the marketing, having events for, these cats that these people are fostering in their homes.

I think that's why it appeals to me so much because I have been in that position, if I don't have a physical location to go to, to bring my cats to, I rely on a really good photo and I suck at really good photos with the cats. Not anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I could see how they could just go in it and just be in there, enjoy it. Because for one thing, something that I notice is my cats, they like to be the center of attention. That's a cat thing. So it's if I'm watching TV or if I'm on the computer, they're sitting right in front of it, so you can't see anything. So I think, like with the art, it's almost like the same thing. Like to them it's oh, I'm the center of attention. If I'm here she's gotta look directly at me. So I could see how it really elevates your photos to like that next level. Because they're so calm and they're so relaxed. But in addition to that, you've got the pretty aesthetics and it looks like they're like living works of art. It's really cool. Yep.

Yeah,

and it's funny you do say that because when we eat in our living room, we will have a cat that wants to sit on the table in front of us and look at the TV and it's itty bitty. She's one of our foster fails. She's my first ringworm kitten, and all I do is I pick her up and I put her behind us in a frame, because we have two frames. If you see, when we do our lives, we have two frames and five shelves. As a super wall. And so she'll sit behind us and then she gets to watch tv

Yeah.

As well. And she's not right in front of us anymore, so it's funny, when they're elevated, they can look out. When our son was little and he had really noisy toys, this was a way for the cats to get the vertical space that they need. So the cats would jump up and sit in the frame and watch Jackson. Crawl around on the floor, roll around on the floor, play with his noisy trains. They were still around him, but they weren't, on the floor running away from the boys. They could

observe Yes. In a safe distance away. Yeah.

What is the feedback that you get from most cat owners once they get one?

Oh, it's tremendous. The constant feedback is, they say it's always occupied. It's always Occupy.

And right before Christmas we had it's, she, her handle's something Chantilly. She posted like an unboxing video and then she had installed it, and then Lunabelle, she's in Georgia. She installed it. She was like, oh my gosh, it was so easy to install and we are like, yes. You know what happens is like it's not just shelves and it's not just a frame. Everything is pre-drilled and it's all accurate. We supply you with the tool, like with the drill bit, we supply you with the screws that you need, the brackets, because this isn't just a frame that you buy at Michael's, these frames are reinforced because they're made to take a pounding from your cats, jumping on them all the time. And so we have a poster that we provide. We explain how to install it if you want, at eye level so that you can partake in some of the illusions. Other places like the Cat Cafe may wanna have it down lower. That's fine. But we give people the poster, we give them the tools, and on our YouTube channel, you can see like our 1.0 video install. It's pretty much the same, and it's easy. I did the install video because it was during COVID and I had never used a drill before, and Brian's guess what? You're doing it. And we're about to reshoot that in our dining room because we're going to install another frame and a shelf configuration because we actually have our 1.0 version. Still on our walls in our living room, and then in our office and in our kitchen, we've installed the 2.0 version. But I said, we need to do an install video because people don't believe how easy it is. And it's four screws that mount into the studs in your wall.

We've made it bulletproof because Kristina,

apartment

friendly

Kristina has called the, talked about the installation poster that it comes with, which you simply tape it onto the wall. You make sure you use a level to make sure that it's level and we show you exactly where to put hole number one, hole number two, hole number three, hole number four. You tap a little pilot hole into that with a nail we provide you with, and then you take the poster down guy, you know where to drill and it's super, super easy. Like you'll always have, it's straight and looking amazing. We've had people go, I wish hanging art was this easy.

How high do people normally put 'em? Because you said some of the cat cafes do 'em lower. So like in your house, are they like eye level or where do y'all usually put

em? I am five foot five and Brian is six foot two and so we split the difference and so it's just a tiny bit high for me and a tiny bit low for him. And when I shoot the foster cat videos, I'm often just on a little step stool, so I get myself a tiny bit elevated so that I can get that perfect illusion of the cat in the frame, and the art is all seamless. So if you hang it up too high and you go to shoot it, you'll see the illusion is revealed so people say, how did the cat get into the frame? They can get into the frame three different ways. They can get in from the right side, from the left side, or from the middle. Because it's two shelves. Cats can sit within the frame on the carpeting. But if you have some wild cats like we do, like Sawyer, who's one of our, we'll call him not quite socialized cat, 'cause we're trying not to use the word feral all the time, but he will jump from the shelf to the top of the frame while our cat Bodie will be hanging out on the carpeting. So you can have two cats. On each shelf, you can have two cats on one shelf because like we said earlier, it's really strong and it's made to support a lot of weight.

And do the cats ever have difficulty jumping into the frames?

No. So we sell shelves that look just like the upper shelf and the lower shelf, and then other people will have a cat tree or furniture, like a desk, a credenza, a table that they'll have underneath it, and they might want the cat to access it that way, so they're not jumping from the floor. Into the frame unless the frame is low. Like our son Jackson, who's nine, he helps us foster a lot and we've toyed with the idea of putting a frame very low on the floor, like not on the floor, but a foot up off the floor so that when he has kittens in his room, they can start jumping up in there. And then we can easily take their adoption photos when we take adoption photos and videos of the kittens in our home. And the frames are five feet up, in the air five to six feet. Brian and I are underneath making sure that the cats are safe, that they don't, wander off the edge 'cause they're tiny kittens. The smallest kitten we've ever had in a frame was a week old and was really adorable. And we just make sure, we're right underneath it.

Yeah. Kittens are like, they'll go back and forth. They go back

and forth. A one week old just help, what am I doing? I'm just sitting here.

But then other cats, you just put it in there and they just look at you like, okay,

We love it when like they plop their tail off the side so that when. Shoot the the photos for the adoptions. The cat's tail will be dangling or their paws will be dangling we actually make beautiful flyers with the adoption photos. And then on the flyer we have a QR code. That people can scan to see the cat live in action. Because Dixie, if you're at an adoption event, a lot of the cats are just sitting in a kennel, petrified of everybody sticking their fingers in or talking to them, or sticking treats in at them. So I'll say, oh, I know Andy looks really shy, but she has a really outgoing personality. Let's scan this QR code and look at her video on YouTube and make it of her.

Of her. Of her in the fridge.

Yeah, in the fridge, right? Yeah. So that's a cool thing too, to have the, using it for marketing materials. Using it for the adoption flyers.

We've even made the artwork panels that you have not seen yet, but we're gonna, have a rescue section. For artwork panels because we have ones that say, adopt me.

Those are on Instagram

and adopted!

They, so they say Adopt me. And so what we'll do is when we have a cat that we're photographing for an adoption event or that we're fostering. We'll have them in the frame and we'll shoot the Adopt Me and it looks like a little cartoon bubble you call it. And then at the same time we're shooting that, we'll switch out the art panel and put the adopted. So I just ha hang them in my phone. And then when the cat gets adopted, I'll go, yay, Marley got adopted. And there's the backdrop that says Adopted. Adopted.

Oh yeah, that, that's really cool now. I like your i the idea of the funny ones. 'cause I have a sense of humor, so

Yeah.

I would love to see a cat with a sombrero hat, but what are your most popular prints and then like, when you're doing them for say the adoption photos, aside from the ones that might say Adopt me, which prints seem to I guess get the most views or the most attention?

Great questions. We have two artists. That are very popular on our website. One is Michael Powell, he's a photographer, and the other one is Janine Carini. She's a watercolor artist and a lot of people love their images. Because we have access to fine art, the masters, a lot of people, they want. Their cat hanging out with Vincent Van Gogh or Whistler's Mother

or the Mona?

Lisa. Lisa.

Yeah.

Those are fun. And for the Cats for Adoption. We started noticing, something interesting, like a lot of people will say. Oh, nobody wants a black cat. Don't bring them to the adoption event. We have too many black cats. The black cats aren't moving. And I go, oh, contrare mon frere because. In September to October, we fostered eight black cats and they got adopted. And the cool thing was we experimented with gradients and solid colors that we sell on the website. So the hot pink magenta, like the Barbie, we had whole bunch of little black kitties with that and yellow, bright green,

so contrasting color to the black cat and it just it's wow, they really pop. And

Orange kitties. If you follow Abram Engle on Instagram he has an orange kitty named Kurt and he had one artwork panel that he picked up that was just like a bright blue backdrop with his orange kitty, and it he popped it looked amazing. So that's fun. We experiment, with what looks great behind this color cat, or what girl looks great behind that one. So I try, when we're fostering, we try to shoot. The Adopt Me and then the adopted, and then we'll try to get one other artwork panel that's just a regular artwork panel. So we print everything on demand. So we're not sitting on, 10,000 images of art. So when we're running the orders for the people who have purchased from us, we're slowly adding to our own personal collection. So like last week we did this one image I'm looking at right now at the Poppy fields. I forget what the other one was last week, but, it's neat to get the new artwork and change it out. And that's the fun thing is like you're never bored. Because sometimes people are like. Yeah, I've had this painting on my wall for a while and I feel like I shouldn't. I really love to change it up, but I don't wanna take it down. I don't know what to do. And we're like that's what we do. We swap our artwork out.

You can swap it, you

know, daily, weekly, quarterly,

And it can't go any faster. Literally in under two seconds you can swap it out. Do you have another one? And what's great too, Dixie, is if you get bored of the frame style, let's say. So let's say you got the gallery gold, and then a month later you are like I really want the silver. All you need to do is go to our site. You don't have to buy the whole feline frame gallery set. All you need to do is go to our accessories and just buy the frame. And the all frames are interchangeable, just like the art. So you could take off the gold frame and then you could just put the silver frame up. So that we've really made it so that, you're not stuck at any point in time with art or with the frame style. You can always change it out.

Now since you do print on demand, what is the lead time then? If somebody orders it? I guess from the time, they order to the time it ships.

Typical turnaround time is about two weeks. Two weeks?

So if you order on a Monday, then, not that Friday, but the following Friday it'll be going out and sometimes people will reach out to us like, oh, I need this for a birthday, or I need this tomorrow. We're like, if you need it tomorrow, it's not gonna get there. But we have little like gift certificate kind of things you can present people with that says you have a, like at Christmas time, people were ordering the day before Christmas or two days before and we're like. You're not gonna get it in time. But we're happy to accommodate and give you something that you can print off. And then, if sometimes if someone's I really need this, but I need it in 10 days if you communicate with us, then it's possible

we can make that, we can make it work, right? So we just need to hear okay, how fast do you need it? And we could probably get it really quick. But typical turnaround time is you put your order in, you get it within two weeks. Yeah, it's a matter of what print run you get into when your order's placed

We live in the Antelope Valley, so we're an hour north of the Hollywood sign. And our printer is actually here in the Antelope Valley and our manufacturer. So we moved from Brian's data on Cape Cod, and then we had a manufacturer in Nevada and they weren't working for us the way we wanted to be worked with. And so we left them and we. Secured a great manufacturer in our own town. On the east side, we're on the west side. And so that's really great because now you know, when things come up at the last minute, we're able to accommodate. 'cause as the business grows, now we have inventory and we're not relying on Brian's dad to make the product. So that's a nice growth in our business that we're proud of.

As far as the artwork, 'cause this was something that I guess maybe other cat people might be thinking about. Yeah. So you said that you don't use the porous wood, so that way you can clean it. What about the actual art?

Yeah, so the material that we used for the art work panels is non-porous. Non-toxic Scratch and fade resistant and there's a Cat family, they also own some cat products called the Meow Mob. And they have a cat named Buddy. They actually wrote a book about fostering two books about fostering, and they have a video of Buddy. His little kink is that he loves to scratch at the artwork panel and he can scratch all he wants because it's never going to have any issues.

And if a cat throws a hairball up on it, you can just pull it out and wipe it down with a white cloth, the colors will not run. You

can have it near a window. It's not going to fade.

Nope. And it's a thick material. It's really sturdy. It's a semi rigid material, so it's got a nice little weight to it. It's really great. Yeah, we do everything high quality, like it really is top notch for sure.

I love it and I love too, that you give back through mission Meow and that y'all are on the board of Mission Meow and you help with the fostering and getting kittens adopted. So before we end the call, I do have another question. Yeah. If you could frame one iconic cat, real or fiction, who would it be and why?

I would love to go back in time, and it's just because we just watched this movie the other night on Amazon Prime.

Okay.

I would love to go back and frame Freddie Mercury's cats.

Oh,

see, did you see That's a good

one.

Yeah. Did you see the Freddie Mercury movie?

I did. Yeah.

When that movie came out, we had, I think just moved here and, and it was pouring rain and I dropped off Brian and my dad at a regular movie theater. Because we work in entertainment, we usually go to really great, amazing movie theaters that are very private in Hollywood. And I was like, I want you guys to see this movie. 'cause my dad loves rock and roll. And I dropped 'em off and I was like, have a great time. And afterwards Brian's you really gonna wanna see the movie? You're really, and I'm so busy being a mom, like I. Never had time. And the other day he's oh, look at the Freddie Mercury movie is on tv. So we sat and watched it and you had said when you first saw it, oh, there's something you're gonna really love about it, and then the film opens with him and these little cats eating out of their little dishes. And I was like, oh, I would love to frame all those little cats. I know if Freddie Mercury was alive. He would have so many frames in his house for all his cats. Brian still thinking of a famous

cat? No. No, because this, now this brings me up to who else was a lover of cats and it was, who invented the cat door? The original cat door. It's a famous, it's like Michelangelo. It's like what? It's a big inventor.

Really?

Yes. Oh, who is it? I

can't help you on that one.

This is gonna drive me mad, but like a major historical, this is I Albert

Einstein.

No. This is way old. And I remember reading, where's your

phone?

I got, I have to Dixie come up with another question.

I, I will say it's really fun, like when people send us pictures and then we've had these moments happen. In our home where people who have multiple frames and the shelves, it'll be like the Brady Bunch. So they'll have one cat in a frame, or one cat on top of the frame, one cat on the shelf, the other cat in another frame, the other cat on the shelf. That looks really cool. You don't remember the Brady Bunch with the Squares?

Yes. I was just thinking about that. Like you could set up the whole Brady Bunch theme in your living room.

What's the artwork piece? Is it by Rembrandt where it's creation and one person is touching? It's like God is and man are touching almost. Yes.

I know. I know which

one you are

talking about. I can't think of the name of it. Okay.

Yeah, I think we're carrying that now, but we had a Abram Engle and then freezy Kershaw on Instagram. They had the same moment where the cat is on the frame hanging its paw down and the other cat is on the shelf trying to reach the other cat, the creation artwork. Oh no, that's awesome. It's funny. It's funny to see these little trends with cats and prince.

Okay, Dixie, I got it.

You got it?

Okay. All right. All right. Alright, here we go.

I'm not gonna say it.

Here we go. According to well-documented antidotes. From his time at the University of Cambridge, sir Isaac Newton.

Newton Uhhuh really

was frequently, yes, Newton was frequently interrupted while working because his cats wanted in and out to avoid getting up constantly. He cut a hole in the door so the cats could come and go freely. Legend ads that he even made two holes, one for the mother cat. The smaller one for the kittens, which hilariously would, was unnecessary 'cause there was a bigger hole, right? While there's no patent or formal product launch that he ever did, the story has been repeated in academic histories and Newton's biography for centuries. So I would love to have, go back in time and install a Frame Your Feline for Sir Isaac Newton. His mind would be blown. He would be like, whoa. What?

Thank y'all for joining me. It has been fun. I enjoyed our conversation and learning about Frame Your Feline

thank you.

Thank you.

That's it for today's episode. I wanna thank everybody for listening and supporting us. If you wanna take that an extra step, consider becoming a member. We just added this to our website, animalposse.com, scroll down, look for the support tab. Our membership program is going to help us directly support animals in need, whether that be through vaccinations, food or spay neuter efforts.