Saturday 26 April 2014

WHO ARE YOU ALL AND WHY ARE YOU READING THIS BLOG

Let's face it, a blog about cat rescuing in Sunderland was never going to have mass appeal. I started writing it mainly because I've got such a terrible memory that I thought it would be nice to have something to look back on later in life to remind me of what I've been up to. Obviously I hoped other people would enjoy it and did my best to make it readable. I know I can write competently and have been writing fiction, articles, essays, and reviews all my life. But the fact remains that this is a very narrowly focussed blog.

The statistics seemed to bear that out. Once it got going it seemed to get around 200 hits a day which was quite okay with me as it began to match the hits on my much more eclectic blog Freethinking: a journal of popular culture (that is culture which is popular with me and also covered science, society and anything really I wanted to write about -the latest post covers actor Don Gilet, a new arrival to the cast of Holby City and the fuss over David Cameron calling Britain a Christian country). I've no idea about how many hits other blogs get (probably vastly more than this one) but I'm fine with what I've been getting.

Then something seems to have happened over the last few months. The number of hits I've been getting has steadily increased. Yesterday I received, to me, an astonishing 975 hits. I'll say that again, louder: 975 hits in one day compared to a recent average of 200. Already today, and it's only just 7.30 in the morning, I've had 235. 

So who are you all and why are you here?

Obviously labels like kitten photos, cat photos, cute kitten photos are big attractors but they've been up there since I started. Plus they aren't necessarily the posts which get the most hits. By far the most popular post is a history of Animal Krackers (2009, updated about a year ago) with 1709 hits in the last week. Trailing second place with 624 is my Cats Needing Homes list, and third with  is a book review of Tilly The Ugliest Cat In The World. Carole's Cats is fourth and a somewhat sad piece I wrote over three years ago about -well it's called Down, check it out for yourselves.

That's pretty much all I wanted to say. I'm surprised and delighted by the apparent sudden influx of interest in this blog, I just don't know why it's happening and, as I receive very few comments indeed, I've no way of finding out. Maybe it's some computer software making the hits and it isn't really people at all.

Not that it makes any difference as I'll still be here writing about what I write about and publishing lots of my photos of cats and kittens no matter how few or how many hits I get, all the while hoping that there are a few people out there enjoying what I'm doing. 

And if you're one of them: thanks for dropping by.


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