Cat Town, USA: Tenth Life
by Karenna Blomberg
A placid, sunny Florida afternoon. An overgrown garden, accented with stone statues and colorful bird feeders hanging from the trees. An older couple trudges into frame, one holding a midnight blue urn. As the woman—Terry—sprinkles a handful of ashes over the ground, the man—Bruce—delivers a riveting eulogy.
“He had such a presence,” he says.
“He was the head of the community,” Terry affirms.
“All the cats looked up to him, all of them followed his lead . . . I followed his lead, he was that good.”
The deceased? A chubby, striped cat named Mr. Cheeks. Mr. Cheeks was quite a well-known figure at Cat’s Cradle Foundation,the cat “retirement home” founded by Bruce and Terry Jenkins, and the subject of Jonathan Napolitano’s documentary feature debut, Cat Town, USA. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) earlier this year, an expansion of “Cat’s Cradle,” Napolitano’s short film that also played at SIFF in 2019.
Cat’s Cradle Foundation initially crystalized after Bruce and Terry became empty nesters, and were left with a whimsical play village, originally built for their children, lying unused. The Jenkinses had experience caring for many kinds of animals, including a pig and a mini horse, and Terry would frequently adopt and raise kittens. But a chance encounter with a woman struggling to re-home her elderly father’s aging cat inspired Terry and Bruce to convert the play village (and eventually, much of the rest of their property) into a “retirement home” for cats who were considered too old to be adoptable.
By the time the documentary was filmed,Terry and Bruce had every aspect of running the cat shelter down to a science. We explore the logistics of the shelter, getting a peek into Terry’s regimented feeding schedule (including “Milk Monday,” “Treat Tuesday,” and “Fish Friday”) and Bruce’s creative social media strategy, which includes livestreams and Facebook Reels of cats “talking” using filters and voice effects.
While the premise on its own is charming, Napolitano uses his keen eye for seeking out a deeper story—possibly attributable to his work as a videojournalist with NBC—and his intimate understanding of the Jenkinses as people (he documented Cat’s Cradle for over five years and considers them family) to craft a stunning meditation on death and aging. While the four-legged residents of Cat’s Cradle and their antics are the stars of the show, Terry and Bruce are the beating heart of the film. As the home’s feline tenants grow older in age, so do Terry and Bruce, and it is often hard not to see how the sympathy the pair express toward the cats they take in becomes more and more like empathy.
A stunning, face-to-face rumination on mortality blanketed in endearing animal antics, there is not a single moment of the documentary’s 73-minute runtime that goes to waste. Bruce and Terry’s dry, humorous banter and glimpses of their quaint, “opposites attract” relationship is interspersed with scenes of a host of charismatic kitties, among them Mr. Cheeks, Bumble, Nathan, and Garfield. But the realest part of the film is how every moment hangs with an unspoken contemplative acknowledgement of the isolating fears that come with aging, illness and dying.
While American society is seemingly designed so that the elderly are frequently left on their own or seen as a burden, Cat’s Cradle is a microcosmic glimpse of a kinder, more caring world. It is a world of cat birthday parties and boxes of kittens literally being left on doorsteps, but it is also a world in which no one is forgotten; just like Mr. Cheeks at the beginning, each cat is guaranteed to be known and loved for the rest of their lives (and beyond). A hoot and a tearjerker wrapped into one, Cat Town, USA is a lighthearted, triumphant story about never going gentle into that good night. It’s been said that cats have only nine lives, but this film shows that with good luck and a bit of love, they may yet get another.