Leaving Peru, Finding (Cat) Sanctuary

I actually managed to wake up early today, so after a luxurious morning of sun room coffee and clawfooted bathtubbing (complete with Cole Porter Spotify homage and sing a longing), I set off for my final day in Peru. I packed up, bid adieu to the Cole Porter Inn, and hit the road.


The road took me to the Circus City Museum. Like everything I have encountered in Peru, the Circus City Museum is quite quirky However, unlike the bucolic splendor and historical weight of the Hall of Fame's location, the Circus City Museum feels more like a bland, nondescript office building. When I say like, I don't mean it in the simile sense. I mean literally I thought I had walked into a travel agent's office by mistake. There were several desks scattered around the uniform grey space and no circus paraphernalia in sight. I even interrupted a woman making copies, who stared at my confusion with a blank, slightly surprised expression on her face. "Umm, is there where the Circus Museum is?" I asked plaintively. Not even the huge sign on the side of the building saying "Circus City Museum" could quite convince me that I was in the right place. To my surprise the woman nodded and pointed to a door at the back. 


As you might expect from the lack of fanfare and spectacle involved in the museum's secret entrance, the museum itself is quite small. It consists of one room. There are no tours. In fact, there were no employees to be found when I wandered back, save for the surprised photocopier. What the museum does have is a pretty impressive photo collection. The room is pretty much plastered floor to ceiling with circus photos. There isn't a lot of explanation for them or an establishment of a historical context for them, but it still was pretty amazing to see the images. Here are some of my favorites:

Nightmare!

                   Mama Thibodeaux?

John Fugate told me tons of stories about the Great Wilno. He was a human cannonball who married a snake charmer with a penchant for dirty jokes.

              

After I left the Circus Museum, I headed back to the Circus Hall of Fame, to squeeze every ounce of information out of that place before my departure. I returned to the office, where I found John Fugate again, and met a new member of the the Hall of Fame Team: Mike Schaub. His exact role in the Hall of Fame workings was never explained to me, but I believe from what I observed is that he either helps out with the books or negotiates performer contracts. The only thing I DO know he does is read palms. He is an 1/8 Roma, a.k.a Romanian gypsy, (just like me!) and has picked up the ability of palm reading, apparently as a celebration of his heritage. He had to leave shortly after my arrival, but before he did, he took hold of my hands and did a quick palm read. This is what he "saw" in them:


1) I have dichotomies in me (who doesn't really?). For example, I like to be noticed but I am pretty shy.
2) I am a solemn person
3) I am a compassionate person
4) I am consistent, "predictable," that is, in his words, "once I know you, I know you." By which I guess he means that I am stable, or true to self?
5) He saw no love in my life right now, in the present (duh), but he saw two: either two in the future, or one in the past and one in the future.


All of this is pretty generic, really, and could apply to just about anyone, but it was a fun exercise and a nice parting gift.


I spent most of the afternoon thumbing through books in the Hall of Fame's collection, drinking coffee, chatting with John and Mike and Dennis, and being confused for an employee by the few visitors that came by. I also met another gentleman affiliated both with the Circus Hall of Fame and the Shrine Circus, but his name escaped me since he was introduced to me in a rather off-hand way, and since he seemed a bit suspicious of me and my motives for writing a book about the circus. I think he thought I was going to Water for Elephants them and make the circus look like a bunch of animal-abusing, shifty-eyed, back-stabbing grifters. Once I explained to him my actual motivations for writing this book, which, along with (hopefully) telling a really compelling story, involve wanting to cast the circus community in a more positive light, he seemed to warm to me a bit. He opened up a little to me, and talked with a stoic but deep sorrow about the "slow demise" of the circus, which, to him and to those men in that little Circus Hall of Fame office, is the center of their lives. I sat in that office and watched those men struggle all day to plan a ten-day circus show that most likely was only going to lose money for the Hall of Fame. And it is tragic. 


So this is the part where I get up on my soapbox for a moment. When I tell people that I am writing a book about the circus, the majority of the time, their eyes light up excitement and curiosity. The circus still seems to hold tight to our imagination, flooding our minds with the same sense of child-like wonder and awe that we exhibit in the face of all marvelous spectacles (fireworks, for example). And yet, circus attendance has died out to a mere trickle, and it is drying and dying out. It is true that animal acts have received a lot of flack in recent decades, some of which might be deserved, some of which might not, but the fact remains, that we as spectators are still captivated by the idea of a circus...so why don't we go to them anymore? Why do we chose movies instead of circuses? I don't have an answer for this, and I'm not necessarily advocating anything, but to see the mournful look in this man's eyes as he talked about the extinction of his way of life was just heartbreaking.


Anyway, the soapbox has been safely stowed again, and instead, let me entice you to support your local circus with some more circus miscellany that I explored on my last day in the Circus Hall of Fame Museum. 

Massive(ly miniature) Hagenbeck-Wallace circus model

Trailer interior

Star performer trailer 

This museum is also pretty tiny, but it has a lot more information and explanation than the Circus City Museum (side note: there seems to be a peculiar and unexplained rivalry/blood feud between the town circus museum and the hall of fame...guess who I seem to have aligned myself with?). 


After my last look around the museum, it was time for me to leave. I gave John a hug goodbye and gave a measly $20 donation to the Hall of Fame (all I could afford), which earned me both a year's membership and an autographed picture of John from his earlier ringmaster days (I think that was a special gift, so don't expect to get one if you sign up for a membership). With that, I waved goodbye to my circus friends, and once again Aretha and I took to the open road, this time in the direction of Center Point, Indiana and the Exotic Feline Rescue Center located there.


Before I get to the cat sanctuary, some more roadside observations about Indiana:


1) Indiana still loves corn.
Yep, no surprise: there's still as much corn as you head down to Southern Indiana as there is up north. It's everywhere. There's no escape. Those little picture-perfect farmhouses are everywhere too. 


2) Indiana's second biggest crop: the Holy Spirit.
The only other thing Indiana seems to grow is churches. You can't drive more than a mile without seeing one. My favorite, and most aptly iconic image I saw from the road was a church with a sign out front advertising the sale of sweet corn inside! No joke (sorry no picture refer back to solo road trip photo-documenting pitfalls disclaimer in previous blog entry). It was the perfect encapsulation of this stretch of Midwest. That and the...


3)Karate, Guns, Tanning: One Stop Shopping
Yes, I did in fact see one sign advertising all three services. Again, no picture, sorry. 


4) Third biggest crop: correctional facilities.
I saw two on my the less than three-hour drive between Peru and Center Point. Corn, Jesus, and Convicts. That's Indiana in a nutshell (as seen exclusively from the freeway). But just like a nut, there's a lot of weird and wacky meat beneath that shell.


One last amusing anecdote before I get to what you've all been waiting for (a.k.a the cat sanctuary): I stopped at Kroger's in Brazil, Indiana before getting to Center Point so that I could have something non-fast foody for dinner, and picked up some beer, which I was able to buy because it wasn't Sunday any more (praise be!). The young guy behind the counter checked my I.D. and when he saw where I was from, he said, "What are you doing in Brazil, Indiana?" He said "Brazil, Indiana" with such disdain that I almost wanted to invite him along on my journey to get him out of the town he obviously abhorred. Instead, I laughed and said, "research." Which seemed to mollify him.


From there, I ended up at (drumroll please) THE EXOTIC FELINE RESCUE CENTER. Before I got there I had been blasting and car dancing to a mix that I made before embarking on the trip. After all that corn and Jesus and pastoral wholesomeness, I needed a little thuggish ruggishness in my life. But, when I pulled up to the entrance and saw this sign,

I turned the music off and proceeded more sedately. Driving down the dirt road, I felt a little bit like I was in Jurassic Park, as if any minute, some wild beasty was going to pop out of the brush, rip open the car, and take a big ol' bite outta me. When I reached the gate, I called Joe, the man who runs the center, so that he could let me in. "Where are you?" He asked. I tried to describe it the best I could, then I peered through the gate and saw a spotted face gazing back at me. "Well, I said, I'm looking at a leopard right now, does that help?" In response, it licked its lips at me. I stayed in my car. Soon enough though, the brave Joe came valiantly to my assistance aboard his trusty Bobcat (the utility vehicle, not the wild cat)...all 5'4" of him. Don't be fooled by his modest proportions and mild demeanor. This guy has these cats wrapped around his little finger. So to speak. More truthfully, he's been doing this since 1991 and he knows every single one of his cats so well that he can actually do this with some of them,

Joe, Big Cat Whisperer

and then others he knows to stay away from. "Watch out, that guy's a sprayer" he said to me, moments before the tiger in question lifted its tail and started to spray an impressively long stream of urine in our direction. Thankfully we both dodged that liquid bullet.


In the dwindling light and miniature flares of the fireflies, Joe took me on a quick tour of some of the enclosures(I'll be getting the full tour plus extras as a special cabin guest tomorrow...including watching the feeding! You might think I'm a weirdo, but watching lions eat carcasses is a big research thrill for me). He introduced me to all of the cats and told me the stories of how they came to the center (confiscated from meth dealers, abusers, black market exotic animal rings...pretty gruesome stuff). 

Peek a boo!

Many of the cats came up to him, and some rubbed up against the bars, while others were more standoffish. For example, in this trio of lions, there is one lion that Joe is wary of. "The others I will go in the cage with, but not him." Almost as if in reply, this lion proceeded to roar and lunge at me as I was taking a picture of his friend. Yowsa!

Terrible picture of the three prowling male lions.

The lion that got me in trouble with the antagonistic lion. 

He led me back to the cabin and introduced me to the cats that would be keeping me company outside my cabin door:

And then I entered the cabin, and found myself in yet another bizarro theme room. 

Yes, that is an animal print bedspread. And a lion and tiger wall decoration. And a painting of a tiger. And photographs of cats. And a lamp with lions and tigers on it. Oh yeah, and don't forget the stuffed animals on the bed. The bathroom is no less cat crazy.

This gives "Cat Sanctuary" a whole new connotation. Anyway, I will leave you all with this...uh...interesting sight, and snuggle up in my peltish bed and hopefully be lulled to sleep by the roars and snarls of the lions and tigers (and leopards, and jaguars, and mountain lions, and servils, and ocelots, and bobcats, and lynxes oh my!). I feel like Jane of the Jungle.