Why Simply Cats

Dan and Ari have been volunteer foster parents for Simply Cats for many years, and in fact all of their own cats were the result of foster fails (fails in that the foster was adopted by them). They have found Simply Cats to be caring, knowledgeable and hardworking. They also appreciate that they are cage-free and no kill. In fact many of the rooms have their own catio!

Meowrathon 2020

In 2020, due to the pandemic, Simply Cats was unable to host one of its largest fundraising events, the Catsino, and had to refund much of the money raised by ticket sales. That year, Idaho Gives had a large fundraising event. Normally the event ran for one day, but that year it ran for two entire weeks! When Ari received an email from Simply Cats asking for people to create donation campaigns and share them to friends and family, they asked Dan if he could post the link on the ODND twitter account. Dan suggested that ODND instead run a weekend of one shots for charity, inspired by F-Cancer, Roll Dice.

So began a whirlwind week of planning and recruiting. Within 6 days it went from a whim to a full fledged weekend of six games with 31 people from around the world helping to raise money for cats in Idaho. They even managed to get some well known people in the TTRPG gaming space, including Todd Stashwick and Donna Ricci! In the end the Meowrathon raised $1,571 and was the largest single donor to Simply Cats during Idaho Gives.

Meowrathon 2021

With the pandemic continuing to rage on in 2021, and in person fundraisers for Simply Cats were still not an option, ODND decided to put out feelers for another set of games. The response from the first year’s participants was extremely positive and so ODND started planning another, more ambitious set of games. They planned for THREE days and TWELVE games! They also worked with Simply Cats to get them set up on Tiltify, a service that allows individuals to create fundraising campaigns for non-profits, and ensures that donations are given directly to the charity.

In the end there were 47 participants. This included Todd Stashwick returning to DM a game for his friends: a returning Donna Ricci, Satine Phoenix, Alicia Marie, David Blue, David Nett, and Trader Brandon. ODND’s Jason also got James Urbaniak, Riley Silverman, and Tenille Goosic to join, even though a couple of them are TTRPG neophytes. Together they all managed to raise a whopping $2,155!

Meowrathons Future

With all the fun and success of the the previous Meowrathons, ODND intends to continue doing them for the foreseeable future. Perhaps even branch out and do different types of charity events and help other charities. So keep an eye out for updates and news, and fill out the form on the participation page to be sent any updates about the games when they happen.