My family has been blown away by the response to the video of Channing getting the slip from our cat Gracie on Christmas morning. What we thought was just a cute video for the grandparents has now been shared and viewed millions of times, by people all over the world. It’s been turned into a .gif, a meme, and even a remix online. What an incredible surprise!

One of the bonus side effects of “going viral” is that YouTube and licensing companies allow you to make money on your video. Wahoo! But rather than take all the money for ourselves, we’ve decided to donate a percentage of what we make up to January 31st to the animal rescue center where we adopted Gracie.

The Sante D’Or Animal Center in LA is a volunteer run animal adoption center and community focused rescue. The animals in their center come from the streets, are surrendered by residents experiencing extreme financial hardship, a crisis, or those who are no longer able to care for them. They also accept animals from local shelters who would have otherwise been surrendered and likely euthanized due to overcrowding, or left to roam and reproduce in the streets. You can learn more about them here.

This is Gracie I Love You Brooker. We rescued her from Sante D’Or Animal Adoption Center.

When I told Sandie at Sante D’Or about our plan to donate to them we were surprised, again, at the reaction we got back. Not only where they fully supportive, but apparently a private donor who supports the shelter found out about my family and our offer and wanted to help as well! She has offered to match what we donate dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000. What? I know! That’s incredible! We have the potential to raise as much as $20,000 to help support this rescue center so they can continue saving animals.

So every time someone watches or shares this video with friends and family around the world, and they watch and share and so on, they will be helping me make money for my family in part, but also to raise money for this shelter so they can continue to rescue animals from difficult situations. What a wonderful way to kick off your New Year!

If you would rather make a donation directly to the shelter you can do that too! Just visit www.santedor.org/donate, and make sure you specify the donation is for “CHRISTMAS CAT” and it will be included in the total amount for matching. Will you help me get the max donation possible by sharing my video and/or donating directly to the shelter?  We can do it!