All you cat lovers, remember all the millions of cats mewling through the world’s rooms lay all their hopes and trust in you, as the little mother cat at the Stone House laid her head in my hand, as Calico Jane put her babies in my suitcase, as Fletch jumped into James’s arms and Ruski rushed towards me chittering with joy.
William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside (1986)
A little over a year ago, my friend Andrew Paine (of Sonic Oyster Records fame et al) and I jointly released a limited edition compilation album, The Continuing Saga of the Visiting Kitten. It came out on our conjunct of a label, Sonic Dust Recordings.
We promised at the time that all proceeds from this release would be donated to Cats Protection in the UK and I’m so pleased to be able to report that all copies of the album have been sold. After the deduction of manufacturing costs and postage charges, the net amount of £232 has been raised from sales of the album, a very pleasing figure given that there were only 100 copies of the album available and they were sold relatively inexpensively. With the use of Gift Aid for the charity donation, which adds an additional 25% to the amount, we’ve been able to donate a total of £290: wonderful!
Here’s a scan of the thank you letter from Cats Protection (click the image to open a bigger, more easily readable version in a separate window):
Andrew and I would like to thank all the cat-friendly artists who, in addition to the two of us, gave exclusive material for the album (texlahoma/Matthew Shaw, Richard Youngs, Space Weather, Alistair Crosbie and ILK); and can we also thank all those who were kind enough to buy it in the first place: we hope that, as well as the satisfaction of making a financial contribution towards the great work that Cats Protection does, you also found something of value in the compilation itself. You’ve made us very happy that we could make this donation! Thank you thank you thank you! My own cats, Hamish & Bob, two beautiful brothers who were rescue cats from Cats Protection, thank you, too, from the bottom of their kittyhearts.
And we’re talking seriously about curating a second volume to be released later this year, in a different format and with more exclusive material; felinophiles, stay tuned for more!
The final plug: if you’re in the UK, you can also make separate one-off or regular donations to Cats Protection here.
