Friday Cat Blogging – 9 July 2010

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TGIFCB. To celebrate, today we have action cats! I just wanted to prove that Inkblot and Domino do indeed occasionally wake from their slumbers and actually motivate themselves around the homestead.

BTW, over the last few months I’ve been fiddling around with Photoshop a little more aggressively than before, and today is a testament to what can be done with it. The original picture of Domino was hardly more than a black smudge. But a few minutes of diddling around with the lasso tool and a variety of settings turned it into quite a passable picture. It’s pretty amazing. Below the fold I’ve put both versions of the photo (reduced to identical size) so you can see for yourself.

But enough about boring computer software. How about some more cats instead? Hooray! First, courtesy of my sister, who keeps close tabs on the pet-loving British press, here’s an adopted seagull who thinks it’s a cat. The cats it now lives with apparently think it’s a cat too. And second, courtesy of Rich Lowry (reaching across the aisle to us lefty cat lovers), here’s the story of three Marines in Afghanistan who adopted some kittens so adorable there probably ought to be a law against it. Enjoy!

Here are the original and Photoshopped versions of this week’s Domino picture:

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

The December 31 deadline is closing in fast. To reach our $400,000 goal, we need readers who’ve never given before to join the ranks of MoJo donors. And we need our steadfast supporters to give again—any amount today.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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