Friday Cat Blogging – 25 September 2009

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Last night, while I was doing the NYT crossword puzzle, I thought for a while that the answer to one of the clues might be the word for an inability to get to sleep.  But I just couldn’t think of the word.  (And the answer turned out to be something else anyway.)  After I was finished, I turned off the light and went to bed — and then tossed and turned for an hour, unable to get to sleep because I was trying to remember the word for being unable to get to sleep.

Finally, I got up and went to lie down in the guest bedroom, thinking vaguely that a change of surrounding might work.  And it did!  I fell right to sleep.  An hour later, though, I woke up totally disoriented.  There was a box of stuff at my feet!  Why did Marian replace Domino with a box of stuff?  And there was no radio next to the bed.  Why did Marian steal my radio?!?  Then, just as I was feeling totally deranged, I shot up and realized where I was.  A diffent room entirely.  One without either a cat or a radio.  Whew.

So I went back to my usual bedroom and fell back asleep.  This morning, I woke up, went out to get the paper, and as I was halfway out to the sidewalk I suddenly thought, “Insomnia!”  Jeebus.  My brain is now officially defective.

This is a totally true story.  It has nothing to do with cats, though, aside from Domino’s absence from the guest bedroom.  And the fact that cats never seem to suffer from insomnia.  Not ours, anyway, who are currently doing their best beached whale imitations.  On Wednesday, however, they were out in the garden with us.  On the left, Domino is examining one of our plants.  On the right, Inkblot — who, unlike Domino, likes being held — is being hauled around while Marian searches for tomato worms.  In this picture, I think he’s staring at Domino, who has just passed by his field of vision and is obviously up to something he feels he should know more about.

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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?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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