Friday Cat Blogging – 13 March 2009

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Today is Friday the 13th and Inkblot and Domino have decided they should lie low.  No point in taking chances, right?  My mother’s kittens, however, have no such superstitions and were delighted to romp around for the camera.  On the left, Ditto (because he’s a carbon copy of one of my mother’s other cats) is staring at a bug in the garden, waiting for a chance to pounce.  It came a few seconds after I took this picture.  On the right, Tillamook (because he looks like a piece of cheese) has scampered up a tree and is obviously delighted with the way the setting sun shows off his orange coat.

(And why was I over visiting mom?  Because Tillamook dived into her wall unit the other day, knocked the cable box down the back, and then bolted out of the room.  He was fine.  The TV, not so much.  So I went over to fish the thing out and get it reconnected.  Only time will tell if Tilly has learned his lesson.)

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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