A Paradise for Pussies

A $35,000 feline theme park inside a four-bedroom California house, scaled for eighteen cats, with elevated walkways, custom climbing poles, perches at every height, and interconnected platforms running through every room. The man’s cats do not touch the floor unless they choose to. The floor is for humans and guests who’ve made poor life decisions.

I have had cats. I have given cats cardboard boxes and dangled string at them and considered this a reasonable life arrangement. I was wrong, apparently. The bar is a carpeted highway running the perimeter of every room, with off-ramps into the kitchen and a spiral staircase in the hallway.

The cats, predictably, look like cats—which is to say they look like they expected all of this and are mildly disappointed it took so long. One photo shows several of them arranged on a wooden platform near the ceiling, gazing down at the photographer with the specific contempt of tenants reviewing a substandard renovation.

The man’s name wasn’t widely reported, which feels correct. Some acts of devotion should remain anonymous. He spent thirty-five grand converting his home into a cat palace, and his cats tolerate him, and somewhere in that dynamic is the whole truth of living with cats. You don’t own them. You apply. Some of us just apply more expensively than others.