If ever you find yourself in Northeastern Ohio for a while, but you don’t want to spend time in the out of doors because it is too hot and/or humid to live, you will want to find some museums to go to. Surprise! Unless you are into classic cars or American football, there are apparently no museums unless you go all the way to Cleveland.

I was not in Cleveland a few months ago, but I was in the no man’s land south of it. As it turns out, Canton only has the cars and the football and a dead president (which I did see). Therefore, my companion and I had to cast about for something that was more up my alley. Friends, I found it in Alliance, Ohio, of all places.

Despite how it may look around here, with kitty comics and albums of cat photos and stacks on stacks of real cats towering around us at our house, I am not really “a cat person.” I’m really not! I was telling myself that I’m really not as I strode into the Feline Historical Museum.

The museum itself is essentially one giant room that is sitting there in pristine silence. There was one lady silently sitting there in silence that I am not joking at all when I say this silence was oppressive. Each footstep we made sounded like sledgehammers to me. Each time we snickered at some bizarre thing, it seemed like a peal of thunder reverberating throughout the room. When we would quietly elbow nudge the other and wordlessly point at an item, there would be a strident over the top cartoon sound effect that cracked the walls and shattered the windows.

In this room there were displays of cat trinkets through the ages, a showcase of Egyptian items including Thoth, and a cat house by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright that looked like it probably had roof leaks. There is an upstairs containing Garfield and a room of lucky cats, but I’m not here to talk about those rooms, as nice as they were. I am here to talk about the most magical room in all of Ohio.

This room was small, I think it used to be a bank vault. And contained within it was dozens of cat/human hybrid dolls and I didn’t see a plaque anywhere that explained WHY but I loved it.

Round and round and round I spun (or just turned around once, it was pretty small) and was met with the delightful view of tens of these cat dolls. Some were cute and some were disconcerting, but all of them were loved by me.

This guy here reminded me of an anime or two I had seen before where there was an antique cat doll who turned into a small cat man and then there was a romantic love that was either unrequited or not with a little human girl. I noticed that he had a giant tag on him as if he were for sale, or maybe that was a tag of information explaining what was going on in here, but I didn’t dare touch it in case I found myself swept into whatever world it was in that cartoon. It didn’t seem to be a pleasant one.

This room was all the pleasant world I needed, thanks! I will think about it for the rest of my days, therefore I endorse this place to you for your own visit some day. Wind your way to Alliance and never regret it!