Sadly, I am afraid that the Quinte Cat Show has been cancelled this year… Apparently there were not enough entries for them to run it. We will leave this up anyway for interest’s sake.
Hopefully, everyone has marked their calendars and set aside time this weekend for one of the most important events of the year – the Quinte Cat Show. My Crazy Cat Lady friends are all puffed up about it.
As always, the show will offer the opportunity to see fabulous felines of many different breeds as they vie for championship points and ribbons. There’s even a “Household Pet” category for plain old moggies, the mutts of the cat world. Don’t get too excited about taking your own Mr. Fluffer Cat at this point, as registrations closed last week.
Much as I aspire to achieving Cat Lady status, there never seems enough time to get to all the requisite catty events and the proceedings at these shows still strike me as vaguely mysterious. In response to loudspeaker announcements, cats of many different breeds and colours are moved into cages around a judging table. Official-looking individuals then examine the collected felines one-by-one, stretching them out on their arms to impossible lengths and depositing them back in the assemblage cages from whence they are whisked away by their handlers.
Of course, you couldn’t expect cats to be trotted around, required to sit, stand or do anything on command as are dogs at their shows. Allowing themselves to be stretched is more than enough to ask of any cat. Still, I’ll have to pay more attention this weekend to see on what basis those coveted ribbons are awarded. Surely, there must be at least one award for “Longest Cat”.
Like most spectators, I go to cat shows just to ogle the lovely siameses, Devon rexes, bengals, himmies, abbies and, yes, even the moggies.
For the most part, the purebreds seem to find the show scene pretty unexciting and go about their catnapping, face-washing business as if they were at home on the couch. Not so some of the “Household Pets”. Mr. Fluffer Cat is already a bit put out because, yesterday, he was given a bath, then chased around the house by a Crazy Lady with a loud device blowing hot air at his fur. Now, here he is tail-flicking in the back of a cage, with dozens of strangers peering in every few minutes and he doesn’t like the look of that flat-faced kitty across the way. Wait until someone tries to stretch him out…Life as a cat show judge is probably not all petting and purrs.
The show is being held Saturday, May 11th and Sunday, May 12th, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Quinte Curling Club in Belleville. Yes, it is also Mother’s Day on Sunday and if your Mum is a Crazy Cat Lady, she’ll love to spend part of her special weekend with the moggies.
Details about how cats are judged and handled at these shows can be found on the Canadian Cat Association’s website.
Dr. Fiona Gilchrist
Hillcrest Animal Hospital – Quinte West/Trenton, Ontario
May 2013
