May 8, 2009

Friday Cat Blogging – 8 May 2009

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Exciting news today!  It’s Inkblot’s tenth birthday!

Sort of.  We don’t really know when he was born, of course, but we brought him home from the Mission Viejo Animal Shelter on July 10, 1999.  He was about two months old at the time, so I figure he was born on May 10.  However, just as federal holidays all fall on a Monday, around here cat birthdays are observed on Friday.  So today we celebrate!

But how?  Good question.  I could buy him a trout or something, but Inkblot is such a doofus he’d just ignore it.  If it doesn’t come out of a can or a bag, he’s not interested.  I could dress him up, but that’s a nonstarter too.  So instead, he gets Friday Catblogging all to himself this week.  His official portrait is below.  Marian says it makes him look fat.  I say: magnificent and visionary, gazing toward a prosperous future with a chicken in every pot and preheated blankets for all.

Bonus trivia: Inkblot shares his birthday with absurdly successful science fiction writer/blogger John Scalzi.  In fact, if you convert human to cat years at the approved ratio of 4:1, they’ll be exactly the same age on Sunday.  I think this means John should write a book about him.

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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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