Sandra, I too looked at the Mudcat Cafe public group Facebook page.
(nor am I on facebook)
and I saw two separate posts,
one before Christmas and one on/after Christmas,
asking why the Forum was offline.
So that gave me a clue.

I also looked at
Mudcat's Twitter account, Jack,
and the account was active and all,
but had no posts about the problems that took Mudcat offline.