Official rules

Whiskr Cat of the Month Contest

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Open only to legal residents of the United States who are 18 or older. Void outside the United States and where prohibited by law.

Sponsor

This contest is operated by Whiskr (whiskr.lol). Contact: contest@whiskr.lol. The grand-prize painting is hand-painted by Whiskr's partner artist, Cody Carlson (codycarlson.art).

Eligibility

• Open only to legal residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years of age or older at the time of entry, and who confirm this on the entry form.
• The prize is delivered only to a mailing address in the United States.
• You must own the submitted photo, or have the owner's permission to submit and license it, and confirm this via the entry form's consent checkbox.
• One entry per cat per contest round. Whiskr may remove duplicate entries at its discretion.
• Employees of Whiskr and their immediate household members are not eligible to enter.

How to enter

Submit one photo of your cat, your name, a valid email address, and a phone number through the entry form on the homepage. Your contact details are used only to reach you about your entry, such as if your cat wins. Entry is free — no purchase, payment, or donation is required or accepted as a condition of entry.

Contest period

Entries are open continuously. Each contest round runs for a calendar month and closes at 11:59 p.m. Central Time on the last day of that month; the next round opens immediately, so there is no gap where entry is unavailable. A round that would otherwise start with fewer than 7 days left in its month runs through the end of the following month instead. Votes must be cast before the round's closing time to count.

How voting works

• Anyone can vote for any entered cat, once per cat, for free, at whiskr.lol/vote.html.
• Vote totals are not displayed publicly while a round is open. This is deliberate — it keeps the count honest and prevents early leaders from snowballing purely because they're visible, not because they have more real support.
• One vote per person per cat is enforced by a combination of a browser identity and connection-level limits, including a cap of 3 votes for any one cat from a single internet connection per round (so people sharing a home connection can each vote). This is a good-faith technical control, not a perfect one — see Disqualification below for what happens when it's circumvented anyway.

How winners are determined

When a round closes, every non-disqualified entry is ranked by total vote count, highest to lowest. Ties are broken in favor of whichever entry was submitted earliest. The single highest vote-getter is "Cat of the Month" and wins the prize described below.

Every entrant — winner or not — is notified of their final placement (e.g., "placed #47 of 212") once the round closes.

Prize

Each round, the single highest vote-getter — "Cat of the Month" — wins one (1) physical, one-of-a-kind 11x16 acrylic painting of their own cat, hand-painted by artist Cody Carlson, at no cost to the winner. Whiskr will try to reach the winner by email and phone. The winner can also claim the prize at whiskr.lol/claim, using the email address and phone number they entered with, and give a mailing address there. The prize must be claimed within 30 days of the round closing. If it isn't, it passes to the next-highest eligible vote-getter in that round, who then has 30 days to claim it, and so on. The "Cat of the Month" title stays with the entry that received the most votes. The painting is delivered within approximately 6–8 weeks of receiving the mailing address. Approximate retail value: $425, which is Cody Carlson's published commission price for an original 11x16 acrylic of this kind. The total value of prizes awarded in any round is under $5,000. No cash prize is offered, and no cash-equivalent substitution is available. Any taxes on the prize are the winner's responsibility.

Winning does not obligate the winner, or anyone else, to purchase anything, and no purchase improves anyone's odds of winning.

Disqualification

Whiskr may disqualify any entry, at its sole discretion, for any of the following, without notice:

• Votes that appear to be purchased, bot-generated, or otherwise artificially inflated.
• A submitted photo the entrant doesn't own or hold a license to use.
• Offensive, inappropriate, or unrelated (non-cat) image content.
• Any attempt to manipulate the entry or voting system outside normal use.

A disqualified entry's existing votes are not deleted (in case a dispute needs to be reviewed) but no longer count toward ranking, and the entry can no longer receive votes.

Photo rights

You keep ownership of your photo. Entering doesn't transfer it to Whiskr, and it doesn't give Whiskr the right to sell products made from it.

By entering, you confirm you own the photo (or have the rights holder's permission), and you give Whiskr permission to:

• show it on whiskr.lol — on the voting page, in contest results, and in the share card we generate for you to collect votes with;
• show it on Whiskr's own social media accounts, and in advertising that promotes this contest;
• if your cat wins, use it as the reference for the hand-painted grand-prize portrait, and show the finished painting afterwards as a past winner.

That is the entire list. Whiskr will not print your photo on products for sale, license it to anyone else, or use it to promote anything other than this contest. Ordering a custom print of your own cat is a separate upload with its own, narrower permission — covering only printing the item you ordered and sending it to our printing partner to make and ship.

You can ask us to remove your photo at any time (see Questions below). The one thing we can't undo is a portrait already painted from it.

General conditions

Whiskr is not responsible for technical failures of any kind, including lost, delayed, or garbled entries or votes, or for any injury or damage to any device related to or resulting from participation. Whiskr reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the contest, or these rules, if fraud, technical failure, or any factor beyond its control impairs the integrity of the contest, with notice posted on this page.

Questions

Contact Whiskr at contest@whiskr.lol.