Friday Cat Blogging – 22 September 2017

I have been gravely disappointed by the Irish cat situation. I figured cats would be roaming all over the place, and I’d be able to easily take enough photos to keep catblogging going for the entire vacation. But it’s been tough sledding. I saw a cat in Waterville, but it ran away. Our house is at the top of a hill, and there’s a sociable cat down at the bottom, but just as he came over to make friends a car rumbled by and he ran off. I haven’t seen him since.

Finally, though, Kenmare came through with perhaps the friendliest cat on the planet. This cat was so eager for attention that she came running out even though it was drizzling rain and her fur was wet. In fact, she was so friendly it was hard to take a picture of her. Every time I pointed the camera she came running up so close that all I got was out-of-focus fuzz.

That makes this picture appropriate. She’s about six inches away in this one. I think she had just finished rubbing her cheek on my camera bag and then came rushing over to get her head scratched. She was friendly with everyone else who walked by too. Truly a delightful cat, even if she wasn’t smart enough to come in out of the rain.

The future of catblogging is uncertain. Unless my luck changes, the next few weeks will be filled with either file photos of Hilbert and Hopper or pictures of other animals. I have quite a few of those. Feel free to put in a request for a specific (plausible) animal if you like. So far I have horses, cows, goats, sheep, butterflies, and birds.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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