Caturday felid trifecta: Eighteen celebrities who love cats; cats going up stairs; the American Museum of the House Cat; and lagniappe

Here you go: the 18 celebrity ailurophiles featured, including photos and videos of their moggies. They include Taylor Swift (of course), Drew Barrymore, Ricky Gervais, Kate Beckinsale, Katy Perry, Martha Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Ellen DeGeneres, Ed Sheeran, Mark Ruffalo, Russell Brand, Robert Downey, Jr., Miley Cyrus, Kat Dennings, James Franco, Jesse Eisenberg (he was on Team Cat when we debated at the New Yorker Festival), Mayim Bialik, and Cameron Diaz.

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From FB; a video of cats going down stairs, most of them awkwardly.. I like “Slinky Kitty”.

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Did you know that there is an American Museum of the House Cat in Sylva, North Carolina? I discovered it when Facebook foisted a short video on me. Here’s where Sylva is, and it’s not far from Asheville (birthplace and burial site of Thomas Wolfe) or Pigeon Forge (home of “Dollywood”).

Some information from the site:

The American Museum of the House Cat is dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of art, artifacts, and literature of the HouseCat for the purposes of education, historical perspective, aesthetic enjoyment, and for the significance of the unique five million year relationship between man and the domesticated feline.

The Museum was closed for several years, but opened up again in 2023, and is still active. Admission for adults is $10, and $5 for children. Here’s a ten-minute video of a visit to the Museum by “Cashew Paul”.  This looks like a MUST for all cat lovers.

I have two Chessie System playing cards: rarities (see 5:30). You need to know who Chessie is, along with her kittens Nip and Tuck and their father Peek (doesn’t he look proud?). Note also the medieval “petrified cat”, a signed Warhol cat, and a ton of cat art, clocks, ceramics, pendants, stuffed toys, and so on.  And a display of FELIX, my favorite cartoon cat.

And there’s a movie about the curator, Dr. Harold Sims, which I found on YouTube (see below). The blurb on the site:

Little Works of Art, a documentary by Kim Best, is the story of our Curator, Dr, Harold Sims.  Serving as an introduction to our American Museum of the House Cat, this short film details the love and passion Dr, Sims feels for the Cat.  The Cary Theater featured Little Works of Art for their Local Premiers Series in November of 2017.  Little Works of Art then debuted at the 1st Annual New York Cat Film Festival in December of 2017 with the awarded honor of being chosen as the title feature for the Program Two and has been touring the country throughout 2018 with stops in cities and towns from the West Coast to the East Coast delighting cat lovers everywhere.  In 2018 Little Works of Art was one of the films officially selected for the LongLeaf Film Festival held at the North Carolina Museum of History.

Voilà: “Little works of art.”  Don’t miss Dr. Sims’s passion for cats, and what he wants done with his body after he dies. And you get to see more stuff from the Cat Museum.

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Lagniappe: I saw this photo on the FB site Meow, and I needed to find out the details. I found them, of course, on YouTube, on a news report in the video below:

Meet Suki and her staff, Francesca Bourdier.  After Suki attended all the Zoom classes that Bourdier watched, Suki got her own cap and own, but not really a diploma. That’s okay, though.