• Introduction to the webmaster, and history of CatStuff
• Image quality at CatStuff
• Software I use, and credits 
• What sets CatStuff apart from other cat graphics sites

Hi! My name is Glenda Moore, and this is "my place."  My home page was created sometime in 1995. In 1996, I added CatStuff and a counter (it didn't move much in those first few months, believe me!). In November 1996, I dedicated CatStuff to Skeesix.

CatStuff grew by leaps and bounds when we were nominated for the coveted Oscat and I started "collecting images from all around the Web." I learned a lot shortly after that, when various artists started emailing me about my poor netiquette of snagging images and not even giving them credit. After the third email, I decided to change the game plan around here, tried (usually unsuccessfully) to find and credit the artists of the few images I left in the "collection" pages, and went in search of public-domain lineart that I could enhance. (Having been a sysop of several BBS's, I had a couple of megs on my hard drive and knew where to find more).

CatStuff is actually one of several sections of my website: you'll find javascript scenes, Bob's funny "autobiography," the official Gene Barry Fan site, and much more if you go to our main page. If you want to see how big the site is now (hint: there are about 1,000 html pages to this entire site), here's the site map.  

Before

After

All but a very few of the images and animations at CatStuff have been (painstakingly) edited to display cleanly (without blurry edges) on all backgrounds, including solid colors. These two examples show the difference (the file size of the second is smaller, as well). This is done just prior to processing them through GIFWizard.

All GIF images, with the exceptions of the few that are noted throughout the site, have transparent backgrounds, and each are doublechecked to make sure that the background won't show through in any part of the image (see the dots in the first example above). Please note that a few of the images in CatStuff are shaded - they will look best on a very light or multi-colored background.

The average load time per page at CatStuff is about 30 seconds (28.8 modem connection, per Link Exchange's Site Inspector). My "secret" is simple: Many of the graphics on this site have been optimized by GIF Wizard, a commercial on-line utility that reduces the byte size of GIFs without degrading the quality.

I use Paint Shop Pro, versions 4 and 5, for all graphics editing, along with a variety of commercial filters, including the Alien Skin's Eye Candy, Flaming Pear's Blade Pro, and others. LViewPro is my default viewer.

I primarily use EditPad - a wonderful, postcard-ware replacement for Win95's NotePad text editor.

Images are animated using GIF Construction Set, or occasionally PSP's Animation Shop.

I have both Netscape (version 4.07) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 3.00) - I strongly prefer Netscape, and use MSIE only for doublechecking code.

Several people have commented on the background color changer - I modified it from a script written by J.D. Ruff. The script can be found at Java Goodies.

In addition to the huge number of graphics available at CatStuff, we originated several concepts in the "cat graphics community." 

We started the "care" button/banner idea several months ago (my idea was to keep the graphics small, the text "punchy," and to use colors appropriate for any Page scheme). I also went a little crazy creating navigation cats. We are the first (and possibly only) cat graphics site that offers cyberkitty accessories - but not adoptable cats.

The separate holiday cats category began here, as did the silhouette cats concept. We were the first to offer a separate graphics index in table format (and have recently revised that format), what's mew section, and the ability to preview background colors.

Last but not least, I have tried to "give credit where credit is due" on those images that remain from our original "collection" days; for example, even though the popular yellow/black striped cat and fluffy white cat animations appear on web Pages all around the world, PMan the Magician replied to our email that we were the first to ask permission to use them.