Look what the cat dragged in: Alvin’s collection returns to the San Diego County Fair
For many San Diegans, the highlight of the county fair every year in Del Mar isn’t on the midway. It isn’t a piece of chicken the size of a caveman’s club or Ginsu knives that slice tomatoes to the thinness of playing cards or a Fun Zone ride so scary it’s called O.M.G.
It’s upstairs on the second floor of the Home & Hobby Show, where about 75 people have filled display cases with a unique slice of Americana: their collections. It’s postcards and shot glasses and Star Wars figurines, of course, but also oil cans and sumo wrestler souvenirs and five years’ worth of advertising fliers left at a house in Poway by prospective gardeners.
The collections often say something about our time and place, something about our humor, our history, our pop culture, and in the eyes of a certain kind of fair goer, the more offbeat the better.
Nothing is more offbeat this year than the stuff collected by a Bird Rock resident named Alvin.
He’s a cat, and for more than a decade now he’s been roaming his neighborhood at night, bringing home to his baffled humans, Merrie and Tony Maino, just about anything he can fit into his mouth. Styrofoam peanuts. Plumbing pipe insulation. A glove. Duct tape. Empty french fry cartons. Coffee cups. Stuffed animals. Socks. A pair of broken sunglasses. Wadded up pieces of aluminum foil. Zip ties.
It’s trash, really, and into the garbage is where most of it went, at least in the beginning. Then one day a building contractor they knew suggested that Merrie Maino enter it in the fair, which she did in 2007 under the heading “Look What the Cat Dragged Home.”
The exhibit was a hit, and Maino figured that was that. Alvin had had his moment in the limelight.
Except he wouldn’t stop, not even as his advancing age (16 now) made it harder for him to jump over fences and even as his propensity for brawling with other neighborhood cats left him with one less fang for picking up treasures.
“It has to be more than 5,000 things by now,” Maino said this week, shaking her head at a pile of it on her living room floor. So she entered part of his collection in the fair again this year, where it’s drawn “Look at this!” exclamations and laughter from visitors. And an Honorable Mention ribbon from the judges.
Maino, a retired parole agent, adopted Alvin at a shelter when he was three. She gave him his name because his gray coat made him resemble a chipmunk and, well, Alvin & the Chipmunks. The rodent analogy seemed even more appropriate once they learned about his hoarding.
A couple of years after they got him, stuff from nearby home remodels started showing up in their yard and house. They couldn’t figure out where it came from until they heard Alvin growling one night the way cats will when they’ve got prey in their mouths. He was bringing a piece of metal pipe in through the cat door.
Maino remembers coming downstairs one morning and seeing a roll of toilet paper on the floor. She asked her husband why he’d put it there. He said he was just about to ask her the same thing. She looked closer at the roll — teeth marks. Then she glanced out the front window. A house across the street had been T.P.’ed. The roll was probably left behind by the pranksters.
Before too long, neighbors became aware of Alvin’s activities. One found him Dumpster diving. Another found him in his van. Maino had to warn construction crews to roll up the windows of their trucks, lest they find something inside missing.
It got to the point where one lady discovered a black bra missing from a backyard laundry line and immediately suspected Alvin. “If he stole it,” Maino told her, “he didn’t bring it home.” She’s pretty sure the neighbor believed her.
Maino isn’t one to attribute human qualities to her cat, although Alvin’s recent habit of collecting seed pods from liquidambar and Magnolia trees has her joking that “he’s gone green.” She doesn’’t pretend to understand what he’s thinking or why he does what he does.
An animal-behavior expert interviewed about Alvin by The San Diego Union-Tribune 10 years ago said there’s “a bit of golden retriever in some cats” and that “bringing a present is a cat’s way of saying, ‘Hey, I love you.’” Maino suspects that’s true. If she is around when Alvin arrives with one of his finds, and they make eye contact, he immediately drops the item and runs off for another one, she said.
“I guess it’s some of kind of affirmation for him,” she said.
She gets something out of it, too. “As silly as all of this is, it’s heartwarming,” she said. Which is why, when Alvin got too old and frail to jump over fences, the Mainos had holes cut in theirs to make his wanderings easier.
There’s an alley that runs behind their house. Sometimes the Mainos go for a walk, and sometimes they can’t help but notice on the ground pieces of this and that.
They know who’s likely to find it. And where it’s likely to wind up.
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San Diego County Fair
When: Through July 4. Closed Mondays (except July 3) and Tuesdays (except June 27 and July 4.)
Where: Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar
Admission: $11 to 18; free for kids 5 and younger. Parking is $13.
Phone: (858) 793-5555 (24-hour recorded information)
Online: sdfair.com
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john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com
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