Why "Pinterest Could Not Fetch The Image"?..

It was one of biggest mysteries for me, but since Pinterest was launched and became popular, I was not able to get it working for my cooking website.

At some point I decided that it wasn't meant to be and gave up. And ever since then, I was answering something like "It doesn't work, and I don't know why :(" to every inquiry from my readers on how to pin my recipes.

How to Reproduce The Issue

This is how the issue looked to my readers. An interface to select image opens when I click on "pin" button:

There I can select an image and click "pin it" to receive an interface to describe a pin and select a board:

And then, after I click "Pin It", I am presented with "Whoops! Sorry we could not fetch the image." error:

Pinterest Uses Amazonaws.com for Fetching

I did a bit more digging and now I have an answer to the question which bothered me for couple of years: Pinterest can't fetch the image, despite the fact that it shows it to me, because I have access to my website closed to any host of amazonaws.com / Amazon Cloud origin, and Pinterest seems to use services hosted on amazonaws.com to fetch images (at least for some actions).

I did close access from amazonaws.com while back to prevent getting click bombed on my AdSense ads, tons of invalid clicks seemed to come from visits from amazonaws.com. I never understood what was causing them, but denying access for everything of amazonaws.com origin fixed the problem once and for all.

Or until I wanted to have my recipes pinnable by Pinterest...

How to Fix The Issue?

So if you have similar issue like me, I hope I can save you some time trying to figure out how to fix it, like I wish, someone did for me long ago.

Simpler solution is to allow amazonaws.com access your website (that is not a case for me, but it might still work for you).

More elegant solution is to allow only pinterest services to access your website from all the traffic coming from amazonaws.com. If you used the following .htaccess deny rule to restrict that access:

order allow,deny
deny from amazonaws.com
allow from all

Here is an example how you can correct it to allow pinterest traffic through while keeping the rest of amazonaws.com out:

SetEnvIfNoCase Remote_Host "amazonaws.com$" a_robot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^Pinterest.*" !a_robot
order allow,deny
deny from env=a_robot
allow from all

Conclusion

Listed solution will only fix the issue with pinning pages, if the cause of it, as I said earlier, is restriction of amazonaws.com traffic access to the website via .htaccess.

Even though mine case was a tricky one to figure out, it isn't the only one out there. There maybe some other reasons why pinterest doesn't do what it is supposed to. I will appreciate if you share yours findings.

How to Celebrate Your B-day, If You Are a Maine Coon

Coon are 7-mice old today. And they celebrated this important milestone of their life by reaching the unreachable, terra incognita of the house - kitchen counter.

Yesterday Shiva got to try some chicken juices mixed with butter and dill from dish, where Chicken Kiev were cooking before, on top of the oven (not that we let her, but she forgot to ask the permission)... Good that oven was turned off and managed to cool down till bearable temperatures before that happened. Shiva was very proud of her accomplishment and couldn't stop licking her lips for hours...

Today Yuriy woke up to disposable coffee cups on the kitchen floor and his sandwich, prepared by me before I left, disassembled (but not eaten) and evenly distributed all over the kitchen counter by the party yet remaining unknown. But I am pretty sure that fluffy tail and pointy ears with tips at the end are among other special marks to be accounted for, the investigation is ongoing...

The whole encounter left me with just one question: what these cheese and ham are made of these days, if even playful kittens didn't express a wish to eat them?..

Happy B-Day, my furry friends!

Did Royal Canin Change Their Kitten Dry Food Formula?

Other day, I was ordering usual dry food for my kittens, and the re-order link brought me to "Royal Canin Feline Health Nutrition Kitten Food" instead of usual "Royal Canin Feline Health Nutrition Kitten 36".

At first I thought, maybe RC just simply changed packaging or such, but that would be a reason to change name also, would it be?

So I started wondering if the content has been changed too, and I couldn't find any info about this change neither on pet store website nor on Royal Canin website itself.

So I ordered a small package of new food to be able to compare content with the old one I still have. And I am not sure how to react to it: new food first ingredient (and biggest one, I think ?) is brewers rice instead of chicken products as in old one...

The protein content and fat content has been reduced, and fiber content has been increased in new food comparing to old one. Chicken meal was replaced with chicken by-product meal. By the way, chicken isn't main ingredient any more, it was moved to second position by brewers rice (which replaced brown rice in old recipe). And a meaning of powdered cellulose in cat food evades me completely...

There were some additions such as lutein and I think some vitamins too, but I am not sure how essential these are for a growing kitten bodies...

Is it still the same good food for kittens as all vets say? Or is it better to move to some other choice?.. I don't know, but I suspect the answer to first question may be "No"... :(

The package says to introduce the new food to kittens gradually, since the formula slightly changed, but it doesn't seem to me like a "slight change" if I need to introduce it gradually...

I still have some of old Kitten 36 left in the package, but soon I will have to decide what to do, and kittens are far away from 15 months when it is time to switch them to Adult Maine Coon food...

On a Cat Walk

I am somewhat intimidated by the procedure of claws clipping: it looks so easy when vet does it, but when I need to do it myself I am always scared to cut something cat-essential along with a claw.

It was about time to cut the cat "nails" again and we didn't have any vet around to use for it, so I decided to take cats outside the house to clip claws while they are distracted by new surroundings... And we took them for a little walk on top patio after that.

The sun was shining (however it wasn't hot), and cats were investigating a bench, Shiva from the top, and Stalone on the bottom:

"I think I saw a chipmunk!":

"Hey, can I get up there too? Where is it?":

Shiva: Recovery Process, Accelerated

Could you tell she had 2 surgeries in last 3 weeks?

The stitches were removed last tuesday. Shiva was cleared to not wear e-collar on wednesday morning and since then she doesn't stop playing with her springs AKA Ethical Pet Wide Durable Heavy Gauge Plastic Colorful Springs Cat Toys

Not that she didn't play while wearing the e-collar and she was very inventive doing to, just that it was hard to look at her doing so without tears...

By the way she prefers red and yellow colored springs, but will play with any :), more than 2 at the time may cause a confusion and a bed is optional but nice to have:

Way to go, girl!

Shiva is Recovering from Second Surgery

Poor baby managed to lick her stitches after I relaxed enough and "undressed" her thinking she isn't going to do it (since she didn't before).

And in additional to it, the antibiotic they gave her while we were waiting for surgery in 2 days, didn't work on the infection she got. So they had to open the incision and clean up the infected tissue.

Good thing, we did not wait for a week to get an appointment with our doctor (even though the technician told us it would be perfectly fine) or the damage could be more.

Bad thing is that obviously, she had second full blown surgery in 3 weeks and now I am not taking any risks - she is ought to wear the collar, like so:

She isn't happy, but tolerating it moderate well. This time the collar is one size bigger (it is actually for dogs, but it seems that cat's biggest collar was too short for her, and she managed to lick the incision with it on).

Keeping fingers crossed for new antibiotic to kick in to get it all over with. Poor kitty...

Stalone and Shiva Favorite Cat Toys, Part 1

I suspect there will quite few parts to this story because our furry tails like to get new toys (or maybe we are just spoiling them rotten, it is very well possible).

Anyway, since they first joined our family, they got quite few favorites and I wanted to share these with you (if you care to ask for it :) )

Petstages Dental Health Chews pair

Roundish toy with a bunch of fabric tails on a side (right on the picture) was one of Stalone's favorite when he got home. He was carrying it around, sinking it in his water bowl and even attempted to feed it.

It was a love at first sigh for him, and it lasted for quite long time (we even got a replacement when first toy was lost in action).

Product description says it will help to clean teeth. He liked to chew on it a lot. It will be fair to say that the other toy of the pair (the three tailed one) was of no interest to either of cats.

Ethical Sponge Soccer Balls Cat Toy, 4-Pack

These "soccer balls" are favorites of Shiva, they are made of soft foamy material, which makes it very easy to pick it up with tiny kitten mouth and carry it around.

They don't produce any noise when are being played with, which makes them great toy for night kitten entertainment.

Just for Cats Midnight Crazies Cat Toy

Pretty inexpensive toy, cats play with them with joy, especially if they are put into a box or laundry basket where can make even more noise than usual. But due to noise not such a great toy for night.

Kittens played with these when they were little, some of first pics from breeder came with these on them.

Ethical Pet Wide Durable Heavy Gauge Plastic Colorful Springs Cat Toy, 10-Pack

This are toys which breeder packed into our kitten go home kit.

I was very skeptical about cats possible interest in springs, but I was wrong. They like these things a lot: springs are almost weightless, easy to push around on any kind of floors, they can be carried in the mouth, chewed on as well as juggled on with front and back paws.

Very often we wake up to one or two springs in our bed left there by our kittens who played while we were sleeping.

Mouseful Cat Toy

This little thing has a pocket to stuff dried catnip in. And it does wonders :)

It is first toy Stalone spent a week with when we bought it. More than once it was spotted in his dry food bowl, and even more often took diving lessons in a bowl with cat's water.

First edition of this toy rendered itself not worthy for pictures since it lost most of the fluff due to heavy usage (I hope, not in Stalone's stomach), so we got a second one!

RACCOON - Mini Skinneeez Stuffingless Dog Toys

This is one of new additions to the cat's toy family: plush raccoon with 2 squeaky things on both ends and nothing else inside. It is actually a dog toy, but we got it for our maine coons.

It is awesome in fact that it is long and lightweight. Long is is good because coon doesn't claws your hands when you play with it with him, and small weight lets coon juggle it with his paws while sitting on his back legs.

Petlinks System 3 Blind Mice

Set of nice mice.

There mice are made from good materials, lightweight, small size, not much to chew off. It is very nice toy to be stuffed into box with holes or into laundry backet.

Don't forget a fluffy tail, cats can't resist playing with it.