Friday Cat Blogging – 12 June 2009

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Everybody is green today.  On the left, the mighty hunter Inkblot is in search of his prey: a blade of grass or two to munch on — which he will eventually barf up.  On the right, the mighty snoozer Domino has burrowed her way under a quilt and is wondering why she’s being disturbed in her hidey-hole.

In other feline news, Scientific American examines the evolution of the housecat and concludes that it’s all about the food bowl.  They love us because we feed them.  Needless to say, this is not exactly breaking news, especially for those of us who open cans of cat food each night and are exposed to such piteous cries that you’d think we had been keeping our furballs in kitty concentration camps all day until dinner was served.  Luckily, they make up for this mercenary attitude by being really cute, which is clearly their comparative advantage.  Otherwise they’d never have lasted.

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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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