Friday Cat Blogging – 2 September 2016

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Our new set of sticks with strings and feathers attached is a huge, monster hit. I’m not sure how we didn’t know this before. Marian thinks maybe we’ve never had any around the house with our current cats, and I guess that’s possible.

Anyway, this is now their absolute favorite thing in the world, especially for Hopper. We keep them in the laundry room (where we keep everything that needs to be kept away from the cats), and Hopper figured this out very quickly. She now spends much of her time lounging in front of the laundry room door, hoping that someone will come by and bring out the toy. If either of us walks in the general direction of the laundry room, she immediately trots over with a hopeful expression on her face. A couple of days ago the cleaners left the door open, and Hopper jumped up on the dryer, fished out the toy, and dragged it into the living room, where she promptly shredded it. It’s since been replaced by a somewhat sturdier model.

Hopper still hasn’t figured out where we hide the upstairs stick, but I suppose she will eventually. In the meantime, here she is outside the laundry room hoping that I’ll put down the camera and come play with her. I did.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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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