October 20, 2017

Friday Super Cat Blogging – 20 October 2017

For two weeks I’ve seen no cats in London close enough to photograph. Last night it started raining and I figured the jig was up. No cats.

Then, this morning, we decided to go up to Portobello Road and browse the antiques. We got off the bus and Marian suddenly motioned for me to slow down. The proximate cause was this little cutie-pie of a cat who came over and let us scratch her head while she smooched around the gate:

A minute later, I saw a shop across the street that announced itself as a Pet Boutiqué & Cafe Lounge. Was this one of those cafes that has cats roaming around? No, but it did have this magnificent Grumpy Cat wannabe lounging on one of its pink stools:

Two cats this week! But we’re not finished yet. Remember that gray cat from last week who was prowling around Edwardes Square Park but disappeared into the foliage before I could get a picture? On our way home, we saw him again. He clearly didn’t want to make a new friend, but he was kind enough to pose for a glamour shot before he hightailed it away:

Not done yet! We got home, and around dusk the tiger-stripe cat showed up again. He was friendly and came up to me, but then I made the huge mistake of picking him up. That was OK, but then I walked into the house and he went crazy. So this is the best picture I got:

And there’s more! It turns out the white cat was watching the whole thing:

After two weeks of drought, it was suddenly pouring cats. So why not put up one more? Last night, thinking that it was time to give up on London cats, I decided to photoshop a picture of my mother’s cats onto some London scenery. Since I went to all that trouble, I might as well put it up. Here are Luna and Lilly keeping a close eye on the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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