Wow! What a totally awesome, fantastic and joyous day the Catathon was. Can you believe it? It's over and I'm an extremely happy and grateful person. I am continually thankful at what you webcammers and supporters do for this Rescue Center.
It was a very busy morning yesterday with getting the final things arranged. Lots and lots of last minute things to put into place. We were all so excited about the upcoming day though.
A couple little glitches--Tom, who was helping me emcee, had a family medical emergency and couldn't come. So.....you had to bear with just me! And on the first basket, we had the wrong mic turned on, so the sound was muffled. But, presto, that was taken care of and was no longer a problem. Everything else went good.
Bids came in from all over. We at one time had close to 900 viewers on! The logs for the Chat were over 1000 pages! We all had so much fun. Lots of people arrived. Catman offered several "Match the Bid"--2 on many of the rounds--those were fun to do. I wasn't expecting that--added to the excitement! Thanks Catman!
We also had our famous 2 visitors arrive, once we made $15,000! It was HOOPS and YoYo--in the living flesh!! They had a thank you message to give. We were so privileged to have them arrive....just for you and FFRC!
We also had a chicken dance--yes, that's right. Connie was awesome and agreed to do the chicken dance. Jodi and I joined in (all complete with chicken heads!) and we all had a great time with it. More than $1,000 was donated for Connie's willingness to do this!
The goal of this year's Catathon was to help put a payment on the new Parking Lot. The total cost was $30,000. I had originally said $29,000, but to add the drainage pipe under the road to the river was $1,000. I was hoping to make a good chunk to use as partial payment on this bill. IT IS PAID IN FULL!! Yes, in full. We made over $8,000 in pre-sales, which was astounding. Every Basket and every Big Ticket Item and every Giant Ticket Item was sold. Then we added in the food money and the Table Sales money. We also sold many many items from the Table Sales--anything left was boxed up to use for our carnival/concert in September.
Now for the BIG news! We made.............are you ready for this?? It was $38,523!!! I am still in awe of this. My arms and legs were quivering, even at bedtime last night. The excitement kept building for me yesterday, and then when these totals were coming in, I could hardly write--my hand was shaking! It's hard to say how grateful I am. I feel like I'm surrounded by caring and loving friends, volunteers and webcam viewers. It's a wonderful thing. This Catathon has involved a huge network of people to make this so successful. I am deeply grateful.
I'd like to say an extra thanks to Steve--he's been an angel thru all of this for me. So super supportive and helpful. His patience is endless. And to my family....instead of just realizing how busy I've been this month, they've pitched in to help--even some of the granddaughters! Families are a wonderful thing.
So, now we will be using this week to pack up and mail out all the winning items. This will take us some time to do, but hopefully will be done by the end of the week, if not, the beginning of next. Our 2nd load of t-shirts should also be coming in. As soon as they arrive, we'll also be sending them out.
If you have noticed that we've missed something (Name that Cat, Sponsor a Cat, your order that you've received is incorrect, etc.,) please let me know. We try very hard to make things right.
Again, I'm so grateful for the support, the donations, the votes, the boxes, the clicks of the ads, the visits--all of the various ways of support. It means the world to me. You are all indeed Friends of the Friends of Felines Rescue Center.
