pet connection

Wrapping up a couple of days in San Diego. It’s our annual trip to the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, with a little sightseeing (for my niece and brother) and work (for me) wrapped in.

If you could call what I did today work, that is.

I visited The Cats’ House.

The place is a 1,500 square foot ’50s-era tract house turned feline paradise through the efforts of two artists, Frances Mooney and Bob Walker. I have wanted to beg my way into their home for a decade, but today was the first time all the stars lined up right.

You can see the house for yourself in their books, "The Cats House" and "Cats Into Everything," to name just two. And you see it on the Web too. But nothing prepares you for the in-person tour I was delighted to get today.

For one thing, although I was prepared for all the overhead cat walks and through-the-walls cat access points, I was blown away by the sheer volume of cat kitsch the couple have collected. Nearly every inch of surface, both horizontal and vertical, had some funky little object on it. Cats, sure, but dogs, too. My favorite may well have been a large famed Victorian portrait for two kittens, made entirely out of feathers. Feathers!

Competing with it for complexity and status as my favorite piece in the house is one of Frances Mooney’s own pieces, made entirely of sequins — more than 30,000 of them in fact. You can see the piece on the wall of picture here. And that’s Bob, of course, with Frank, one of eight resident cats.

I brought my photographer friend Morgan down with me to take the pictures, and it’s a good thing I did. The lighting was challenging and the place too overwhelming for an amateur like me.

More later. I have to transcribe my notes and get ready for tomorrow morning’s touristy things before we head home.