Reality 101: These big cats are family

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger / Journal on Fri, May 10, 2013

Deborah-Ann Milette, from Oklahoma, with her Savannah cats, 4 year-old Peanut, at left, and 7-year-old Motzie, at right, Tuesday, May 7, 2013. (Morgan Petroski/Journal)

Months ago, a team of cancer specialists walked into a room to discuss with Deborah-Ann Milette how best to deal with the bad news.

That was, until the therapist in the bunch noted that Milette was accompanied only by two very large, very exotic, very gorgeous Savannah cats. “I have a problem with this situation,” Milette recalls the therapist grousing. “She has no family here. No family support.”

	Meet Motzie (and a bunch of other cats) Enchanted Cat Club’s Feline Fiesta 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, School Arts Building, Expo New Mexico. Cost: $4 adults, $3 seniors, $1 children under 12. Parking $5. Coupon available at enchantedcatclub.com

That was a very large mistake.

Milette, who isn’t one to conceal her emotions, glared at the therapist and hoisted Motzie, the bigger of the two cats, onto the table between them.


“Meet Reality 101,” Milette snapped. “This is my family. My family support.”

She fired that therapist from her case.

Milette tells me that story, with slight variation, twice during her visit this week from her home near Oklahoma City. She’s brought along the family, much to the delight and momentary apprehension of those who stare or snap photos with their cellphones as the big cats slink through the parking lot, lobby and newsroom of the Journal.

These cats turn heads.

Motzie might also turn out to be the World’s Tallest Cat (Domestic) as measured by Guinness World Records. (The 2013 Guinness edition lists Trouble, also a Savannah, of Lodi, Calif., as the current world champ at 19 inches from paw to shoulder top. Alas, Trouble used up his nine lives before the book went to print.)
He’s a big one, that Motzie, about the size of a small bobcat.

Nobody knows how big until the official photographed, videotaped and notarized measuring takes place Saturday at the Enchanted Cat Club’s Feline Fiesta at Expo New Mexico.

Which is what brings Milette to Albuquerque. That, and she loves showing off Motzie.
“I consider Motzie the goodwill ambassador of the breed,” she says. “He is the people’s cat, and so it’s only right that I share him with people.”

Size, though, isn’t everything. They are beautiful creatures, cheetah-spotted and graceful and looking straight out of the African bush were it not for their harnesses and leashes.

Motzie, 7, is a second-generation Savannah, meaning he is 29 percent serval, an African wildcat, and the rest domestic house cat; the smaller Peanut, 4, is third-generation Savannah, or 16 percent serval.
Savannahs are one of the newest cat breeds, growing in popularity among those who are willing to shell out between $9,000 and $16,000 for a kitty cat.

(Milette won’t say how much she paid for her cats, though in news accounts about Motzie’s momentary escape in 2011 from a Longview, Texas, motel, the big cat was reportedly valued at $80,000).

Savannahs, though, are a misunderstood breed, banned in several states because they are considered too wild, too exotic, too dangerous for personal possession.

Yet a recent New York Times article dug up no reported incidents of injury attributed to a Savannah.
“These legislators who try to pass these bills don’t know what they are talking about,” says Milette, who has traveled to various states to lobby against Savannah bans. “They get the mistaken notion that these are vicious creatures the size of cougars. But when they meet Motzie, they realize they’re just big – but not that big – pussycats.”

Milette’s cats are friendly enough to be welcomed as guests at nursing homes and children’s hospital wards, and she expects they’ll visit a few while she is in town.

As Milette and I talk, Motzie and Peanut roam freely around us, lolling on the desk, pawing at my notebook and peering curiously out into the newsroom. They are cool cats, patient and apparently comfortable with the attention they attract. These boys come when they are called, are leash-, litter box- and car-trained and, frankly, less aggressive and skittish than an average cat might be in similar situations.

That Savannahs are unique and misunderstood might be why Milette was drawn to them.
She is like that, too.

Her life has been both adventurous and harrowing and nearly unbelievable were it not for a scrapbook she keeps with news clippings and documents as proof.

She survived a sexually abusive childhood, leaving home at age 13. She was the first woman assigned to the U.S. 10th Special Forces Group as an Army medical corpsman and cartographer, the first female U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspector in Rhode Island. She has a patent for thermally processing eggs into cans, helped create “tube foods” used on NASA shuttle missions and has worked in some of Boston’s finest restaurants. For a time, she traveled the country trapping lions, tigers, cougars and other exotic cats – the “real” big cats – that escape from private owners. “I like the spice of life,” she says. “I have no sense of fear.”

At age 59, she also has no living human family members, at least none from whom she is not estranged. She never married, never had children. She is 100 percent disabled from her tours of duty in Vietnam, and as a result Motzie also serves as her official service animal.

Motzie goes everywhere with her. Motzie and Peanut are truly her family.

Two weeks ago, Milette walked away from chemotherapy. At that meeting with the cancer team, she told them she didn’t want to know how, or when, it would end for her.

“Because once you know, you give up,” she says.

And so she will take the lessons her big cats have taught her. Cats, she says, don’t care what others think. They never show signs of sickness or pain until it is too late to do anything. They just keep on going, enjoying their time in the sunlight, living large.

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