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The cat’s meow

Reddit users find Times Observer’s wrapping paper page ‘purrfect’

Screenshot from Reddit This post on Reddit of Thursday’s Times Observer page A-10 had been upvoted, or essentially “liked,” over 40,000 times as of early Friday.

Good luck predicting what will go viral on the internet.

On Thursday, one of those items was the Times Observer’s page A-10.

Because people on Reddit evidently love cats.

As of Friday morning, Thursday’s A-10 — a wrapping paper page with a cat design — had about 45,000 upvotes (or “likes”) on Reddit and over 300 comments.

“I need this!!,” one said. Another called this “for the purrfect gift”

Here are some of the other comments:

“I want some, and I want it right now.”

“Santa’s Marketing Department should hire whoever is behind this.”

“That’s actually a really nice design. Well done.”

“I need this as an actual roll pronto. That pattern is so charming!”

“It’s a Christmas miracle.”

“Any present wrapped in that would clearly be a step down from the wrapped package itself. And I’m only kinda joking…”

And it sparked a lengthy discussion about the recyclability of paper because, well, why not.

Times Observer Publisher Bob Patchen is an active Reddit user and started scrolling on Thursday night.

He searched Reddit by “Hot Posts,” bringing the most popular items on Reddit.

“I start scrolling through and get probably eight or nine posts down and I see a post about a local newspaper using wrapping paper,” he said. “I looked at it for a minute.”

That’s when it hit him — it was Thursday’s page A-10.

“I found it organically,” he said.

Comments included people asking for a copy. So Patchen is sending papers as far away as Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“It’s all because someone local found it interesting enough to post,” he said.

The design was selected by Kortney Carlson, one of the Times Observer’s advertising sales representatives.

“Kortney went through and picked the cats and everybody loves cats on Reddit,” Patchen said. “It’s wholesome. As toxic as Reddit can be, there’s this honest wholesomeness at times that makes it refreshing, and we just happened to get caught in the middle of it.

“It’s organic and it’s fun,” he said.

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