Friday Cat Blogging – 20 January 2012

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On the left, we have a rare archive photo of Domino playing in the Christmas wrapping paper. I’m using “rare” here in the sense that’s recently become so common for this kind of thing: Not that there are actually any fewer Christmas photos of Domino than there are of any others, but simply in the sense that no one has ever seen this one before. I’m not really sure when or why that sense of “rare” became common, but it has, and it bugs me, so I’m taking this opportunity to vent about it. On the right, Inkblot has taken possession of our Scrabble dictionary following a bloodthirsty game last night. I came in third out of three, partly because of bad luck (isn’t that what everyone always says?) and partly because I was too dimwitted at the end to realize that I could have played DEARIE, not just DEAR. That would have used up a bunch of those damn vowels! Marian still would have won if I’d done that, but at least I could have come in second.

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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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