Farewell to the Key Marco Cat

On Thursday, February 12, 2026, a packed auditorium of over 200 guests came to bid farewell, celebrate, and honor the extraordinary journey of the Key Marco Cat. The Cat was on a seven-year loan from the Smithsonian to the Marco Island Historical Museum and is scheduled to return to Washington, D.C. in April. The Marco Island Historical Society (MIHS) held a joyful event that brought back Austin Bell, the former Curator of Collections (now the Chief Curator of Collections at the Florida Museum in Tallahassee), as he shared his personal connection with the Key Marco Cat. The event also featured a musical performance by Kat Epple and a special re-enactment by Dr. Carolyn Rosenfeld as Wells Sawyer, artist and photographer of the original Key Marco dig.

“This is a very special event,” said Pat Rutledge, MIHS CEO. “We’ve had the privilege of welcoming over 150,000 visitors to this special treasure, The Key Marco Cat, and you are a big part of that celebration. This would not have happened without a strong partnership with our Collier County partners. The community has been a vital force that is behind everything that we have accomplished here and you all help keep our history alive.”

Introducing Austin Bell, Rutledge said, “He led the effort to return the Key Marco Cat to its home in Marco Island, and someone most of you know very well.”

“This is a farewell but also a celebration and a time of reflection,” said Bell. “What has happened here because of the Cat? What did we learn while it was here? Why its return to the Smithsonian is not an ending but a new beginning.”

“Let’s think back to 1896,” Bell continued, “when archaeologist Frank Hamilton Cushing led the excavation on Marco Island and dug out from the mud a six-inch-tall figure of a part cat, part human wood carving, one of the finest surviving examples of Pre-Columbian Native American Art that was ever discovered in North America. The Cat survived for a number of reasons – a combination of extraordinary environmental conditions, random chance and circumstance, and because there were people that recognized its importance and acted quickly and decisively at that time,” Bell said. “In my research years ago, when the Cat was discovered and pulled from the mud, they had the foresight to bring in Wells Sawyer to photograph and create watercolor images of the objects found. Modern archaeologists most likely will be doing something different and conservators today might cringe on how artifacts were treated 130 years ago.”

“The Key Marco Cat did not come back here because it was found in Marco Island,” Bell said. “It came back here because people believed that this Institution could meet the standards and provide the right environment, professional museum staffing, leadership, and vigilance making sure it is safe. It is also an act of trust, not only on the part of the Smithsonian but on the part of Collier County and the Museum system and the fact that everyone in the community believed that we could rise to that challenge and responsibility. The Cat’s presence revealed what this Museum is capable of doing – it was the catalyst for staff, volunteers, donors, and partners to elevate their own expectations, and those became the standard. The Cat helped this museum grow up. For every visitor from 2019 to the present, they found something steady as they gazed at the outdoor tall wooden figure of the Key Marco Cat linking the past to the present – and that matters,” Bell remarked.

“Life after the Key Marco Cat? The community and the Museum will have a strong cultural identity,” Bell concluded, “and the Cat is going back to where it needs to be to ensure a lasting future. But the Cat will remain with all of us

as a rare, fragile, and irreplaceable Key Marco Cat. That’s the legacy!”