If only Suri Cruise were a suri. Marsha Hobert sees the camel-llama relation "all the time."
"They're not camera-shy at all," Hobert says.
About the only suri that Hobert, business manager for an association of suri alpaca breeders, the Suri Network, has not seen is Suri Cruise.
She is not alone.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby daughter turned three months old Tuesday, the child's time on Earth undocumented, as yet, in photographs fit for public consumption. No paparazzi shots. No Sears studio portraits. No bonding moments on Oprah Winfrey's couch.
The so-called "Suri Watch"--the wait for photographic evidence of the Cruise-Holmes production--has prompted at least one Internet petition ("We need some sort of 'real' proof that the baby Scientologist isn't an 'alien baby.'"), a tie-in Website (WhereIsSuri.com) and an Us Weekly online countdown clock, "When Will We See Suri?"
At one point Thursday, the Us clock stood at 93 days, 17 hours, three minutes--and counting.
Cruise rep Arnold Robinson has reassured E! News of Suri's existence. "She is cuter than cute," Robinson said.
Confirming the flack's take: Leah Remini. The King of Queens star tells the new issues of People and Us Weekly that she has seen--and touched--the child.
"She's a beaming baby," Remini says in People. "She looks like Tom and Katie--she's just beautiful."
Remini, a mother of one, like Holmes, and a Scientologist, like Cruise, further reports that the celebrity couple are "just great parents."
"There wasn't a second she was out of their arms except when I held her," the actress says in People.
According to a column posted Thursday on Slate.com, longtime Steven Spielberg producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy saw Suri in Telluride, Colorado. (The baby, presumably, was traveling with her parents.) Marshall and Kennedy, Slate said, "told friends that all seemed quite ordinary."
Spielberg himself can be added to the short list of reputed Suri meeter-and-greeters. Last month, a Defamer.com tipster said Cruise brought Suri by the mogul's office. "I saw it [Suri] only from afar," the source told the site, "but it looks like a regular baby."
Cruise and Holmes, for their part, have both copped to seeing the baby. On Ellen DeGeneres' talk show in May, Cruise even offered an artist's rendering of the child: "More hair," he said as he Magic Marker-ed follicles on the picture of a baby (not his own).
Invariably drawing more attention, though, are items like this: The TMZ.com report that Suri's birth certificate was signed by a hospital nurse who never actually saw the baby. And this: The Us Weekly report that some A-list Cruise friends, including the John Travoltas and the Will Smiths, have never actually seen the baby. And this: The Us Weekly report that a grocery-store clerk in Telluride has.
"Suri is funny-looking," the clerk, Josh Williams, recently told the magazine. "Her fingers are small."
While a picture of Suri would doom the Suri Watch, no officially sanctioned Fotomat moment seems imminent.
"No plans have been made as of yet [to release photos]," Robinson said.
A photo of Suri is expected to go for between $2 million-$3 million on the low end, and $4 million-$5 million on the high end, according to celebrity magazines surveyed by TMZ.com. A People-purchased photo of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt scored a reputed $4 million for her famous parents, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and, eventually, the charities to which the stars donated the cash.
The photo agency WireImage has denied a FoxNews.com story that it tried to peddle a Suri photo for Cruise, only to have the actor's team call everything off when it deigned the bids were too small. "I wish we had the pics!" the agency told E! News in an email.
Suri the (somewhat) unseen was born Apr. 18--the capper, to date, on her parents' whirlwind, made-for-the-red-carpet romance. Cruise, 44, and Holmes, 27, engaged as of last summer, have yet to marry, much less mail out baby pictures.
Until the couple catches up on their domestic chores, the Suri-curious will just have to make do with the four-legged variety. The camera-friendly, four-legged variety.