The year of the cat: Key Marco Cat returns, this time to a home built for it

A concrete-and-glass home was built for it. Around the walls gleam newly colorized  murals the orbs of its carved eyes can feast on. 

A small cadre of artifacts will keep it company and a newly installed generator guarantees it will never know sweat. It even has its own security guard and hurricane evacuation plan.

The Key Marco Cat is obviously no ordinary house pet.

Ten years preparation

The 6-inch statue, half feline, half human, is considered one of the most complete examples of pre-Columbian art in North America, a compact work that announces to the world: This was us. A joint project by the Marco Island Historical Society and Collier County will return it in November to the place where it was created to serve, a one-time talisman for a Native American household.

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This is the reward from what Marco Island Historical Society President Pat Rutledge estimates has been a four-year project to bring the cat back for an extended visit. The exact November date hasn't been set, but a grand opening is planned for January.

With the cat will come several other existing items from the 1896 archaeological dig that unearthed them. They're items that have been to exhibitions in the British Museum and around the U.S. — but not to Marco.

In fact, the quest for this exhibit began when the Marco Island Historical Museum was being designed, according to Austin Bell, curator of collections. The last time the cat was displayed on Marco it had to be housed in a bank vault. 

"Even when they were building this museum back in 2008 I think the original people here had the artifacts coming back on loan in mind. There's that special room in there," Bell said of the concrete and glass cabinetry built to museum security standards. 

"It's one thing to do that. It's another to have educational, interpretational exhibits surrounding around the artifacts, giving them some sort of context, making them more appreciable by audiences," he continued. "I think in the last several years we've been able to do that."

First, the museum had to clamber over a recession. "When we opened in 2011 it was a down time for the economy, and there wasn't money. The county didn't have money to spend on exhibits," Rutledge said.

"We've been focused on completing the exhibits inside, and then our doors and windows exhibit that we added last year on the outside. With that done, we felt we were ready to have the cat come back."

The society is banking toward home, with less than $100,000 left on a $350,000 fundraising goal. Among other things, it will pay for overhead scrims to depict images from the island's native peoples and project a smoky "haze" creating an aura of time travel back at least seven centuries. There are other needs such as insurance and the nitty-gritty of paint and signage.

The county, as the joint applicant, will probably add another $350,000 in value with the generator and other building and security enhancements. 

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Nothing like them

The entire outlay is less than one-third of what the cat is worth. It's so famous it has been immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp. Along with it will come other objects, a carved animal head that has its own intrigue — is it a sea turtle or is it an eagle? —  a men's mask and a shell bearing a painted human figure.

The last created notoriety. Archaeologists accused anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing of manufacturing it until members of his expedition vouched for the discovery. 

The museum already does a creditable business, bringing in around 25,000 visitors a year to see its life-size Calusa village, and a timeline of development that spans the days of ferrying children to school and the sparkling Sixties, when Deltona erected its ranch-y subdivision homes here.

They don't have exact projections, but the cat is expected to substantially increase that visitorship. There are plans for talks and special events. A component for children — and artistic adults — will invite them to create masks to take home or to display in a dedicated area. 

Outlasting Irma

The museum's next hurdle, until last September, was proving its storm worthiness. Hurricane Irma handled that in one long, wet, whiplashed day.

"It was a trial run for us because it was a direct hit from a major hurricane," Bell said. "The building had never gone through a major hurricane, and it held up amazingly well."

"We lost a tree. On the parking lot side," Rutledge added.

"One of the things the county is doing to improve that is they're installing a generator so that if there is another storm we don't lose power so the environmental security and controls aren't jeopardized," she explained. 

That's not fussiness. When Cushing's dig uncovered more than 2,000 masks, wood carvings, pottery, baskets and more, the artifacts began to degrade as soon as they were exposed to air after centuries in oxygen-free muck. The black-and-white images his photographer produced would never duplicate the colorful embellishments that had briefly emerged. 

Cushing had the sense to have an artist reproduce color paintings of the items, which have served as models for the village and murals created for the museum. Merrill Clark, the Indiana artist who created its original ink murals, has been adding color to them as part of the preparation for this exhibition.

Before the Calusa

For all the understanding it brings, the Key Marco Cat will raise as many questions. Before the Calusa lived on Marco, it was home to the Muspa (MOO-spah) people. The Key Marco Cat is presumed to be Calusa, because they had such gods. Still, this little statue, chiseled out of the buttonwood that many landscapers still plant in local yards, could have come from a Muspa artisan.

And then, there's the question of what kind of cat it is. Mountain lion, say some. Cougar, say others. A logical guess: panther.

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Like all felines, the Key Marco Cat is amysterious animal. That may be part of what has made it such a cause on Marco, where donors have been paying $500 or more to receive a special Key Marco Cat baseball cap and a spot on a recognition plaque at the museum. 

"For whatever reason, the cat just seems to really resonate with people, maybe because it's so recognizable and because it's still in great condition," Bell said.

"It's just taken on a life of its own and has been almost elevated to pop culture, a source of identity, almost, for a lot of Marco Islanders. They're proud of their history and the heritage of this island," he said.

More information

To donate or learn more about the upcoming exhibit on see Marco Island Historical Society website: https://themihs.info/

For more information on the Marco Island Historical Museum, call 239-642-1440 or see its website at colliermuseums.com.