ABOUT THE KEEPER

Joe lives in Miami with his wife, one house, and — at the operation's peak — more cats than chairs. He did not plan any of this. Nobody plans the 305. A gray kitten claims the place, a flood survivor arrives in a cage marked with the wrong name, and a decade later a man is standing in his kitchen at 6 AM explaining scheduling policy to a tabby who has already won.

His qualifications are real. Every cat in this operation was a rescue. He opens cans on a schedule the committee sets, he loses arguments with dignity, and when the household did something worth remembering — which was daily — he remembered it. Eighteen years of it. The show exists because somebody finally had to do something with all those records.

The cartoons are how he tells it: real cats, a real house on a real canal, retold in animated form with the volume turned up. The cats are the stars. The stories are true where it counts. Joe holds the pen — and I dictate.

— Maximus, Patriarch & Narrator, on behalf of the committee