Falling Felines Photo Fundraiser

Hi All! You may know that I've been working on a popular science book on the history and physics of how cats land on their feet when they fall. The book will be coming out from Yale University Press hopefully in early 2018, and it will feature lots of wild photographs and illustrations of falling cats, such as this classic sequence from 1922.


The history of falling cat research runs from literally the dawn of physics up to the present day, a remarkable 300+ years of investigation of a seemingly mundane problem.  Unfortunately, it's in talking about the more recent research that I run into problems. Once I started looking at images from the 20th century, I found that a lot of key copyrighted photographic sequences are  really, really, expensive to license, even though I feel that they are essential to the book's success. My publisher is a non-profit university press which doesn't have funds to cover the costs of such licenses, which is why I'm here.

I'm looking to raise about $3500 to cover the costs of key remaining images for my book. These images will include:

Important images from a paper by Rademaker and ter Braak from 1935, which first explained the most important cat-turning mechanism: $400
Iconic images of a twisting cat next to a twisting astronaut that appeared in LIFE Magazine in 1969: $2400
A photograph of a cat receiving a skydiving certificate thanks to an unexpected fall: $50
A technical image from the 1969 work, illustrating exactly how the cat flips over: $150
An illustration from the 1960s showing a professional high-diver mimicking the cat's motion: $300

Most of this cost is in the Getty images from LIFE Magazine, and they are the most important to me.  I will include/exclude images based on how much funding I end up with in the end.  Any additional funds which end up not being necessary will be sent to local cat rescue groups.

I hate asking for funds for such things, but I've had a heck of a year in terms of finances, including cancer treatment for my late beloved kitty Sabrina, a replacement of my air conditioning system, and storm damage from Hurricane Florence (on the second floor; go figure).  But I would like to offer the following in return for folk's donations:

$20: a shoutout and thank you on twitter!
$40: an acknowledgement of you and/or the pet of your choice, cat or otherwise, in the end credits of the book. (Nothing profane, obviously.)
$100: the aforementioned acknowledgement as well as a signed copy of the finished book sent to you. (I'll cover US domestic shipping costs, but will ask for help with international costs.)

Possibly more incentives as we go along!  I'm aiming to have the funds in place and finish all the figure purchases by the end of this month.

I thank you and my cats, who also make appearances in the book, also thank you!