The second week of May, Stephanie Earls, a staff writer for the Colorado Springs newspaper The Gazette, noticed an uptick in cat photos in her newspaper’s general email inbox.
Initially, Earls thought her paper had asked its readers to send in cat pics as a way to engage the community. She loved the idea.
“It was exciting to see something celebrating cats [and] seeing people respond to it,” Earls said. “Colorado is a very ‘dog’ place. We seem to be a little biased.”
Earls wasn’t the only one who noticed the mysterious influx of feline photos.
“[My colleague] said, ‘I don’t know why we’re getting cat photos, but it’s about time,’” Earls recounted in an email.
After a brief internet search, Earls realized the photos were intended for the Northampton newsroom of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, which last month launched a feature called “Cats of the Gazette,” inviting readers to send in pictures of their cats taking over their print newspapers. The only difference between the two papers’ email addresses, Earls noted, is that the Massachusetts paper includes “net” in the ending of its “newsroom@gazettenet.com” address.
Earls said she forwarded about a dozen photos to the Daily Hampshire Gazette and informed a few East Coast cat owners about the email address mix-up.
Lorraine Mangione of Florence was one local resident who sent a photo of her 15-year-old cat, Luca, to Earls. (Full disclosure: A close family friend, Luca often demands a share of this author’s lunch.)
Days later, Earls received the only followup email from Massachusetts: Mangione asked if the newspaper received Luca’s photo. The two briefly corresponded.
“I felt so bad as a pet owner — if I had gone through the trouble of getting the beautiful shot of my cat and the newspaper, and then never heard back or it never showed up in the gallery online … ” sighed Earls, who has a dog, Stone, and a cat, Squeak.
“I was relieved because I didn’t feel like the [Daily Hampshire Gazette] had rejected my cat,” Mangione said, adding she was grateful to Earls for sending Luca’s photo along to the correct address.
“It was funny. It’s a small world,” Mangione said. “I felt like in this age of disconnection, there was this neat little connection: Someone from Colorado Springs is writing to me here.”
For Mangione, the “Cats of the Gazette” column has been a topic of conversation and a way to enjoy community.
“People are so dependent on their animals right now,” Mangione said.
“‘Cats of the Gazette’ by way of The Gazette. It’s so meta,” Earls said.