And depending on where you stand, the Cat Fanciers Association Feline Historical Museum in Ohio is either nirvana or a terrible dream because it’s cats and more cats. And then, even more cats.
They’ve got cats in frames and also cats on film. There are also glass cats and porcelain cats. Cats literally EVERYWHERE!
Curiously, there are no real cats there, unless you happen to show up on a day when a breeder friend of museum manager Karen Lawrence brings some Maine Coons to show.
“Well, you know, I travel too much,” said Lawrence, who traverses the globe as a cat show judge.
So, who’s saying cat ladies are crazy?
The museum is operated by the Cat Fanciers’ Association, Inc, a nonprofit preserving the history of cats and the people they control.
The foundation opened the museum back in 2011 in an imposing granite-clad building that once housed Midland-Buckeye Federal Savings and Loan.
However, the S&L went belly-up but the cats persevered.
Ever
ywhere you look around the place, there are depictions of cats. Cat artwork and also calendars cover the walls. Cat figurines filling cases. Tributes to pets who have crossed over the to Rainbow Bridge populate a memorial book.
Among the museum’s prized possessions is a red cat house which was designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s proteges for the Tonkens family, for whom Wright designed a human house in Cincinnati. “Residents for Felis catus,” the accompanying architectural drawing reads. Spelling, apparently, was not a priority in Wright’s firm back then.
An entire room of this museum is devoted to maneki-neko cats, the perpetually waving Japanese talismans. Dozens of examples are on display, each with a paw raised in everlasting greeting: a cat that resembles a poodle; a cat with a clock on its belly; a set of cat nesting dolls; even a cat in the shape of a teapot, its beckoning arm outstretched to form the spout. A ceramic pea pod is filled with pea-size cats with a set of chopsticks poised creepily within reach.
Another room honors the Siamese cat, a breed introduced to America long ago by President Rutherford B. Hayes. He wasn’t the only famous Siamese fan: A computer screen shows members of the regal breed being stroked by celebrities ranging from Laurence Olivier to Jimmy Stewart.
Even the bathroom is decorated with cat memorabilia — Chinese prints of cats hanging on the wall, a cat figure peeking into a mirror on the window ledge, another peering into a small fishbowl.
Virtually everything in the museum was actually donated.
Lawrence has 19 boxes of books for the library which are still waiting to be unpacked. She’s gotten used to hearing visitors say, “Now I know what to do with my cat collection.”
The museum also displays the sublime in the form of cat figurines by such celebrated manufacturers as Waterford, Royal Doulton and Lalique; a bronze sculpture that is the only cat created by famed artist J. Clayton Bright, better known for his horses and dogs; with an ancient, exquisite ceramic likeness of a warrior on a cat’s back that once decorated a roof in China.
And then there’s what some might consider just ridiculous, a collection of cat dolls that occupies what was once Midland-Buckeye’s bank vault.
There are cats dressed like kings and queens, cat brides and grooms, a feline Cinderella in a wedding-cake gown and also a few cats that resemble a young Laura Ingalls Wilder, clad in calico and bonnets.
“Some of those cat dolls are pretty weird,” Lawrence allowed. “They’re creepy.”
But it doesn’t matter … they’re cats! And so of course, they’re superior.