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10 Great Places for Cat Lovers to Vacation

 

We liked this article at   http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/10/travel/cat-lover-vacations/index.html and thought you might like an excerpt from it.  Check out these sweet spots for crazy cat lovers like you.  (Your cat may try to sneak into your suitcase, but leave him at home, sweet home!)

 

Cat Cafés, Tokyo

Japan’s obsession with all things feline is well documented. After all, this is the homeland of YouTube star Maru, a Scottish fold whose antics have amassed more than 200 million views. Tokyo itself counts more than a hundred “neko” or cat cafés, where patrons come to sip lattes and socialize with numerous cats, who lounge around on chairs, sofas, baskets and occasionally the laps of their human fans. Some of the more popular: Shimokitazawa’s Cateriam, Nekobukuro in Ikebukuro, Curl Up Café in Haramachi, and Nyafe Melange. There’s even a handy map to locate them.

Festival of the Cats, Ypres, Belgium

The Kattenstoet (Festival of the Cats) is held every three years on the second Sunday of May; the next is scheduled for 2015. It celebrates the noble feline with a street parade of floats, music, stilt walkers and costumed townsfolk, many of whom dress as cats, witches or mice. The festival culminates with a performance in which a jester tosses children’s toy cats from the Cloth Hall belfry down to the crowd—a tradition that harks back to the harsh Middle Ages practice of throwing actual cats from the belfry in the spring. (Not to worry: no kitties are harmed in the modern reenactments.)

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Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, Key West, Florida

Cat fanatics who are also Hemingway fans will find nirvana at the writer’s former Key West home. The grand, plantation-style limestone house is the domain of around 50 cats descended from Papa’s original Maine coon, Snowball, who was given to him by a ship’s captain. The cats are polydactyl (six-toed), which lends them their distinctive appearance—some say it looks like the cats are wearing mittens. Hemingway named many of his cats after famous people, and the estate carries on the tradition today; look for Lionel Barrymore and Hairy Truman.

Moscow Cats Theatre

This second-generation Russian theater, founded by Yuri Kuklachev and his son Dmitri in 1990, performs in Moscow when the troupe—which includes around 120 cats—isn’t touring the world. Shows feature a revolving series of madcap acts with names like Catnappers, Cat Clowns and Love, and Cats from the Universe. Expect to see the Kuklachevs’ furry stars performing stunts: walking a tightrope, teetering on a rocking horse and posing on top of a mirror ball.

Kuching Cat Museum, Malaysia

Cats are considered lucky in Malaysia, as in many Asian cultures, and the Kuching Cat Museum in Sarawak pays respectful, if slightly wacky, homage to these fortune-bestowing felines. For starters, you enter the UFO-style building through a giant cat face. Inside await exhibitions, artifacts, artworks and ephemera dedicated to cats. The pièce de résistance: a 1,000-year-old mummified Egyptian kitty. The museum is on a hill, with great views of the city of Kuching, which translates as “cat city.”

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The Supreme Cat Show, Birmingham, UK

At the UK’s largest and most prestigious cat show, held each November at the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham, you can watch cats relax in their pens and be judged in the ring, and browse for every cat product imaginable at an array of stands. Each cat gets a large double pen, decorated by its owner with brightly colored drapes or more creative trappings based on a given theme. In 2012, it was “Diamonds are forever.”

Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary, Rome

The mission of this sanctuary is to “work together to raise the quality of life of Rome’s abandoned cats”—and it welcomes volunteers. Expect to perform duties such as cleaning cages and distributing food to some of the 300-odd cat residents; if you’re living in Rome you can volunteer as a “foster parent” for young kittens in your own home. The site, which contains ancient ruins, has a glamorous pedigree: while filming at the nearby Teatro Argentina, Italian actress Anna Magnani famously spent her breaks here feeding the cats.

Dominique and His Flying House Cats, Key West, Florida

Dominique LeFort is one of the more idiosyncratic locals—and in Margaritaville, that’s really saying something. The performer and his troupe of trained house cats entertain regularly at Sunset Celebration, a nightly arts festival at Mallory Square Dock. The shaggy-haired Frenchman ushers his nonchalant cats across tightropes and through flaming hoops, all while keeping up a madcap banter with the audience (including his catchphrase, “Clap, clap, clap!”), a shtick that has earned the act a cult following.

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Poezenboot, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Cats and water don’t usually mix well, yet this floating cat sanctuary on Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal has proven a grand success. Founded in 1966 by a local legend named Henriette van Weelde—who took in stray cats and eventually moved them onto a houseboat in the canal—the floating barge has become a tourist attraction, drawing cat lovers and the curious alike. Visitors can volunteer, donate or adopt.

Hello Kitty theme park, Tokyo

A pilgrimage to Tokyo’s Hello Kitty theme park, known officially as Sanrio Puroland, is a must for fans of the cult cat character (a Japanese white bobtail). The park attracts 1.5 million annual visitors of all ages, who come from far and wide to watch Hello Kitty-themed musicals, take a spin on cat-tastic rides and visit Hello Kitty’s house, which features portraits of the famous cat’s family and a bathtub shaped like her face. There’s also a boat ride in which another Sanrio character, Cinnamoroll, leads visitors on a trip to Hello Kitty’s party.

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Furry Wurry – A Cute Story

One of our blogging friends, Carol Moessinger, wrote this account of her beloved cat, Furry Wurry.   Carol also just authored and published an exciting new novel, “A Woman’s Role”. See her book interview,
http://www.bibliophilicbookblog.com/2014/01/interview-with-carol-moessinger-author.html

Her name was Furry Wurry, a gray, white, and orange mini-cat. I say mini because Furry Wurry was smaller than the average tabby, or barn cat as we called the felines of unknown origin that showed up on the door step of our rural home. In her case, she was the only survivor from a litter of a semi-wild female we called Muv. But what she lacked in size, Furry Wurry made up for in attitude.

Why did she have such an unusual name? Well, when she was young, she was more than a cuddly kitten, she was fluffy, and when she purred her happiness-motor sounded like a miniature whirling windmill. So, within the first few days of her residence with us she became Furry Wurry.

She was tough. If another cat or even a large dog wandered through our yard, they didn’t stay long. Before rushing them, her fur would puff up, her tail would become the size of a bottle brush, and she would hiss, spit, and growl until they took off.

There were other quirks in her personality. Sometimes we took a week-end off to visit family, leaving her some new toys, well stocked food dishes, and the run of the house. She wasn’t happy, and when we returned, she showed her annoyance by sitting in the middle of the living room floor with her back to us. We could call her a dozen times, but that cat ignored us, until she felt we got the message. Eventually, we ended up taking her with us. Believe it or not, she was a great traveler.

In those days we had a wood burning stove in the living room which supplemented our furnace heat. During the winter I kept the stove roaring. The cat loved to sleep in front of it, stretched out full length on her back, paws curled, and tail swishing. I could only guess that she was dreaming of stalking field mice through dense summer grass as she snoozed on the semi-circle of warm slate that surrounded the stove.

One bitterly cold day in January, when the brakes of the school bus screeched at the top of the drive-way, and my son and daughter returned from school, she roused herself as usual. Stretching, she let forth a bobcat-sized yawn before sauntering to the door to greet them.

After backpacks and jackets had been dropped on the floor, Jimmy whose hair was stylishly long during the 1970s took her place in front of the stove—a good spot for a quick nap. Within seconds he was sound asleep. Teresa, who was the cat’s favorite human, lingered in the kitchen talking to me. And Furry Wurry hung out with the girls.

When the three of us trooped into the living room, the cat stopped in her tracks. Her eyes grew huge, she hunkered down, her tail snapped, her backside wiggled. Jimmy’s face was turned away from us, and Furry Wurry could see nothing but the mass of sandy hair draped across the slate. An unknown interloper was in front of the stove and had taken her favorite napping spot.

She sprang into action. In an instant she crossed the room and leapt onto Jimmy’s hair, spread around his head like a thick dark-blond lion’s mane. With jet speed, her paws plunged into the waves—raking up and tossing strands in all directions.

Teresa and I burst into noisy laughter. Jimmy unceremoniously roused from a sound sleep reacted with shock, then anger. He jumped to his feet, and with that particular glare reserved for teenaged boys, surveyed the room. Furry Wurry, being the smart cat that she was, realized she had done something wrong. Tail straight out, she turned and charged across the living room, skidded around the corner into the kitchen, and peeped around the edge of the central island work area. Jimmy ran in hot pursuit.
I stopped laughing long enough to tell him that she must have thought his hair was another cat trying to take her place in front of the fire. I asked if he had gotten scratched. No. She had only tangled his hair. The two made peace, but he never found the incident as hilarious as Teresa and I did.

That cat brought affection and levity to our house, and thirty some years later we still laugh about the day Furry Wurry attacked Jimmy’s hair.

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