Enter Sylva’s American Museum of the House Cat
Harold Sims heard it over and over again: there was simply no market in Western North Carolina for a house cat museum. To build one would be a waste of time, money and effort.
Sims, 84, understood this argument to an extent. “This is dog country,” he says. “We don’t know cats around here.” Even so, he felt compelled to honor the existence of his beloved felines.
So he built it. And they came.
His creation, the American Museum of the House Cat, opened in 2017. Since then, it’s seen upwards of 15,000 people from all over the globe walk through its doors. The museum is located in Sylva, North Carolina, right off US-441, and features numerous charms, including a mummified cat from ancient Egypt (which Sims named “Hebony”) and a tree-trunk sculpted into the form of a house cat, which purportedly dates back to 17th century Borneo.
“It’s not the best one in the world,” Sims says of his museum. “But it’s probably the best one in this country.”
There’s a good chance that the American Museum of the House Cat is, indeed, the premier house cat museum in the United States. The two closest contenders for the crown are, oddly enough, both located in Ohio: the Feline History Museum in Alliance and the Lucky Cat Museum in Cincinnati. The former features a functional cat house designed by the late modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright, while the latter boasts over 1,000 plastic cats that wave their paws.
Neither museum offers the breadth or diversity of Sims’ collection. In addition to the tree trunk kitty and the mummified feline, the museum boasts a stunning array of feline paraphernalia: a petrified corpse that was extracted from a chimney in England, wind-up toys from the 1890s, Tiffany glass and California glass pieces, containers of now-defunct cat food brands, and a robotic cat that pops out of a trashcan like Oscar the Grouch. There’s also a pinball machine, a carousel, wall art, and so much more.
Sims, who purchased everything in the museum himself, doesn’t discriminate in the items he chooses. A wide variety of countries are represented, from Japan to Germany to Hungary and virtually everywhere in between. It’s interesting, Sims says, to see how different cultures interpret the essence of the feline. “French cats are cute,” he says. “German cats are stern—proper and sober—which is typical of that culture. Japanese cats look happy, playful.”
Sims has been, by turns, a Navy man, a doctor of education, a boat builder, a biologist and a professor. Since retiring in 1991, however, he’s dedicated his life to one cause: the honor and protection of felines. In many ways, it’s become a calling. The museum itself is an outcropping of the cat shelter that Sims opened in 1996, called Catman2 (“like Katmandu,” Sims explains), which became the first no-kill cat shelter in Jackson County. It’s still going strong, housing anywhere from 60-80 cats at any given time, sans cages, near Sims’ home in Cullowhee. The museum and shelter are wholly intertwined: over the past two years, the museum raised $35,000 for Catman2. That money paid for the spay or neuter of more than 600 cats.
Indeed, Catman2 has been an enormous success story: a decade ago, 69 percent of cats that entered the Jackson County Animal Shelter—one-third of which were healthy and adoptable—were euthanized due to space limitations. In 2017-18, the euthanization rate had dropped to 16 percent. And here’s the kicker: none of the cats in that 16 percent were even eligible for adoption, due to illness or other factors. “A 100 percent release rate for adoptable cats was a historic first for the Jackson County Animal Shelter, and may even be a first for the state of North Carolina,” Sims wrote on Catman2’s website.
Cats have, indeed, become a golden years’ obsession for Sims—so much so that he’s earned the endearing nickname “Catman.” In addition to the museum and the shelter, Sims has also published multiple books about felines, including one called Kevin Tells the Story of Catman2, in which a “vampire cat” named Kevin (a real cat whom Sims grew to love), recounts the genesis of the Catman2 shelter.
“In two other books, Catman tells stories about me,” writes the remarkably literate kitty. “In his first book, Kevin the Helpful Vampire Cat, he told how I was kind and helpful. He told how I always went to new cats coming to his shelter and said ‘Don’t worry. You are very lucky to be here. Catman loves cats and he will treat you well.’”
Sims has drummed up an idea for another book, written from the perspective of Hebony, the museum’s mummified cat. In ancient Egypt, felines were often thought of as spiritual escorts, and as such they were routinely killed and placed in human graves. Sims considers that now-defunct practice as immoral. And in the forthcoming book, Hebony, the protagonist, will expose this brutal ritual to his feline companions.
“[Hebony] finds out that cats are being killed...so he undertakes a quest to figure out what’s going on,” Sims says. “He discovers what’s happening, and becomes a whistleblower. But they eventually catch him, mummify him. And that’s the end.”
Sims dabbles in poetry as well. He self-published a collection titled Poems, Song and Other Silly Things about Cats. The second-to-last selection is called “Why I’m Still Doing this at My Old Age,” and it offers a glimpse into Sims’ motivations for starting, and growing, the shelter.
Well, when I opened my first little cat shelter,
I had one little cat.
Before I knew it, I had two little cats,
And the next thing you know, I had four little cats,
Then eight little cats, and soon a shed full of cats….
Well, this is the way it all started.
Some days, I wonder why I’m still here.
Well, what’s the use of wondering
If what I did was right or wrong.
I had to keep expanding,
Because the need was strong.
Some said, I went helter-skelter,
When I spoke of a larger shelter.
But I took up a nail and board
And built a shelter I couldn’t afford.
I couldn’t leave cats living in despair,
That was more than I could bear.
I had to save each needy one.
The new shelter was built. The deed was done.
You’ve read my other poems today.
In closing, here is what I’d like to say.
Had I not done this, I would feel so bad,
And this poem might end, with words very sad.
I’m glad I didn’t walk away.
No doubt, I’d do the same today.
The future of the American Museum of the House Cat is simultaneously exciting and unforeseeable. Exciting because, if all goes as planned, the museum’s collection will soon be moved across the street into a freshly-constructed building much larger than the current space. Sims plans to pull out all the stops when the new building opens: he wants to install sliding barn doors on the front, with a happy (fake) cat perched on one side and a sad (also fake) cat perched on the other.
“The happy cat is happy because he’s been rescued. And the sad cat is sad because he’s looking for a home,” Sims explains.
After walking through the barn doors, visitors will be greeted by an enormous mural of a cat’s face. And there will likely be a cat music room somewhere in the mix, too, because “cats have always been highly popular in the field of music,” as Sims puts it. The ambitious octogenarian claims that many of his ideas were inspired by the Kuching Cat Museum in Borneo, which is widely considered one of the best of its kind in the world. “It’s going to be a big ‘wow’ for people when they walk in,” Sims says of the future space.
But on the flip side, there’s a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the museum’s future. Though it’s wildly popular at the moment (see: those 15,000-plus international visitors), Sims knows he’s no spring chicken. Some days, he feels like a “dinosaur that just keeps trying to survive.” Moreover, there’s no clear plan for the museum once Sims goes to that Great Cat Tree in the Sky. But whatever fate has in store, Sims can pass serenely into the next realm knowing that his efforts made a difference.
After all was said and done, the people did want a house cat museum. And by God, Sims gave it to them.
“When I die, I can die in peace,” he says. “Because I’ll know that I’ve given back.”