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Cat A Book A Day Keeps Reality Away Poster

 poses for a portrait at the museum on Tuesday, March 23, 2021. Bell, recently published a book on the Key Marco cat.

Austin Bell does not currently own a cat. But for nearly three years, a cat has owned him.

That's how long it has taken Bell, curator of collections at the Marco Island Historical Museum, to write "The Nine Lives of Florida's Famous Cat A Book A Day Keeps Reality Away Poster  Key Marco Cat." It's scheduled for a Sept. 21 release date by the University Press of Florida. 

A book about the unique cat-human statue on loan to the museum now seems like natural conclusion to Bell's research for its return visit to Marco Island in 2019. The 6-inch tall artifact's appearance increased visits to there by 75 percent that year, turning it into one of the top two attractions on Marco.

The curious came to stare into its wide feline eyes from all 50 states and 25 countries. Even scholarly journal descriptors talked about it in all superlatives: "most well preserved," "finest example," "most famous." 

And the sense of proprietorship on Marco Island, where the entire museum was designed to safely house a visit from the cat, is off the charts.

But it was back in 2017 when Bell started to ask the questions he'd been hearing and thinking, and, armed with a grant, channeled them into a book. Among them: Just where has the cat been?

More: Five unusual things you may not know about Collier County

AND: Famous feline, the Key Marco Cat returns home to a welcoming island

"People say, 'It was excavated in 1896. So what it's been doing, sitting in a drawer for 125 years?" he recalled. 

"As it turns out ... It's been on display probably more than seven decades. At the end of its time in Marco, it will have been on display for 74 years, which is an enormous amount of time for an object of that fragility and sensitivity.

"It's traveled 12,000 miles  — Houston, Detroit. It's kind of a traveling rock star. It's been in nine different exhibitions. It's been on a postage stamp. It has this fascinating sort of history that kind of parallels the field of anthropology itself, which was in its infancy when it was discovered."

Further as befits a rock star, the cat may be in such extraordinarily good condition because a spa treatment, Bell learned. From what he read, Frank Hamilton Cushing, the force behind the archeological expedition that unearthed the cat, possibly gave it a glycerin bath to preserve it. 

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