Los Angeles Natural History Museum – January 24, 2026
Today I did something a little different. I was invited to this show about cats at the Natural History Museum and since I try to never say no, I went. We met at my friend’s house and made our way to the Sepulveda Expo Station. I double checked beforehand that I still had my Tap card on my watch and found I had a $15 balance, which I figured was plenty for the day. It’s worth noting that parking is free on weekends at the Metro parking lots. The train was pretty easy and painless and let us off very near the Natural History Museum. It took a few minutes to get our tickets and get into the museum, but hey – I got an educator discount so no complaints from me. I paid $15 rather than the regular price of $18 for the Fierce exhibit plue the $18 museum entrance fee was waived. If you are an educator, be sure to mention it!
As we walked into the museum, I sort of felt bad for not bringing my kids there when they were little. By the time we left, I realized they would not have enjoyed it. Apparently everyone else’s kids were enjoying it because there were kids EVERYWHERE. And they were not all well-behaved. We had to walk through the gift shop to get into the museum and then The Fierce exhibit was on the ground floor so we got into the very cool elevator and went down to find it. There was a cat-related gift shop straddling the entrance and exit to the exhibit so there was no chance of missing it. The exhibit began with tribute to our beloved mountain lion, P-22. There were some interactive components like a projection on the floor of 10 lanes of traffic to illustrate how hard it must have been to cross the freeway (which he did more than once). The next room contained a whole bunch of taxidermy cats and cardboard cutouts of all shapes and sizes that were arranged by continent. Then there were some sabertooth skulls and skeletons. The whole thing was unsurprisingly very educational. We learned about cats’ vision, hearing, whiskers, etc. I think there were more lions than any other taxidermy cats. They had one taking down a zebra and one taking down some kind of gazelle. In the last room there was a loop of cats in Hollywood that showed a clip from a Charlie Chaplin film, a clip from the Wizard of Oz, the MGM lion roaring, and an animated clip with a cat and a capybara. I, along with 2 others in our party, found a bench and sat down to wait for the rest. I will say the loop was not very long – maybe 3-5 minutes. We watched it several times.
After an unavoidable visit to the gift shop, we made our way upstairs to see the special gem exhibit. It was cool to see the gems and crystals in their natural form but I think I was done looking at rocks long before the others. There were a lot of rocks to look at too. I was a trooper though. Even after 4 of our group dropped out to hit the gift shop and the café, I continued to look at rocks. When everyone finally had their fill, we made out way back downstairs to find the others and then hopped back on the train for a late lunch at El Cholo. All in all a very pleasant day.