Holy Sh*t, I Went to a Cat Show
My day with the Cat Fancier's Association in Portland, OR
All event photos by the brilliant West Smith (1800westsmith).
I didn’t fully comprehend the gravitas of the cat show until I saw an owner putting makeup on their cat.
”The powder prevents her eye boogies from running,” the owner explains to me, gently patting a blush brush over the flat face of in impossibly floofy cat. It’s just translucent powder, but my mind goes straight to Toddlers in Tiaras.
We’re standing in the middle of a crowded exhibition room at the Double Tree Hilton in downtown Portland, squeezed between rows and rows of gigantic cat carriers. It’s the first morning of the two day Lewis & Clark LH Specialty cat show (the “LH” stands for “long-haired,” obviously), and emotions are running high. For the owners, anyway. The actual contestants are chill as hell, lounging in tiny kitty hammocks, snuggling up to their siblings, or, my favorite, napping in their litter boxes.
Normally, upon meeting a pet for the first time, I put my face on them as soon as I’m 75% sure they won’t bite my nose off. Unfortunately, I quickly learn I won’t be able to pet any of these babies with my hand, much less my face. They’ve been getting primped for hours, and that setting powder is the least elaborate part of their beauty routines.
”Howard uses $50 shampoo, and I use Suave,” a woman named Becca tells me. She’s wearing a colorful sweater covered in expressive cat faces, so I already think of her as a kindred spirit. Howard is a Persian who is nearing his second birthday. “I got the best one,” Becca says. I’m biased because I myself have the best cat, but I let it slide. Howard seems great.
Becca and Howard spent three hours grooming for this show: “We do at least forty-five minutes washing, then forty-five minutes blow-drying, and forty-five in the dryer box,” the human half of the team explains. Later, I realize I don’t know what I dryer box is, but don’t worry, I googled it. This is a dryer box:
The beauty standards for the Persian cats surprise me, someone who used to live in LA and once paid $700 for someone to inject goo into my face to make me look younger (I was 30). A handful of owners cheerfully admit that they pluck their cat’s chins to accentuate their round faces and “smiles.” Judges push back the furballs’ little foreheads, checking for the roundness of the skull and eyes. In both cases, the rounder the better. A breeder with two cat carriers full of kittens claims that she lets her non-competing and retired cats mosey around the house, but any cats bred for shows need to stay in their cages most of the time so they don’t f*ck up their long, tangle-prone fur.
Not that it’s all about looks; cats are also ranked based on their personality. There’s no talent portion in the competition, but I see the judges wave a sparkly toy in front of the cats’ faces. Some of the cats give the toy a gentle smack, but most of them just gaze at it sweetly. Judges are also taking cats out of their little waiting cages, bringing them to the table, and plopping them down in front of the audience — something that would result in a trip to the hospital if my cat was involved. So I guess if there’s no baton-twirling, the personality aspect might be more about what the cats don’t do.
The specifics of what makes a Best Cat vary from breed to breed, and there are SO many intricacies that becoming a CFA judge typically takes five years, not counting the required seven years of breeding experience. It doesn’t leave much room for a quirky guest judge to award points for cute beans and purr volume (but if there was, I volunteer).
Around 11:50 am, judge Wendy Heidt announces she’s going to try to get through her rankings for Best Long Haired Kitten quickly so none of us miss the costume contest at noon.
Unlike the human beauty pageants we’re used to where there’s really only one winner, cat shows are based in a point system that is too complicated for me to explain, but that you can read about here. Instead of awarding only a first, second, and third place in each event, every cat that enters gets a ranking. In this, the Best Long Haired Kitten Finals, Wendy walks from cage to cage of all ten contestants while announcing her decisions.
”I could write my name in this cat’s coat,” she says of 7th place. The small crowd erupts in applause, hoots, and hollerings. This isn’t only about winning, it’s about celebrating. It’s about celebrating cats. For being cats.
When Wendy calls one contestant “elongated” and awards him 4th place, a small child seated on his mother’s lap next to me emotionally utters, “Good. He deserves it,” like this is the end of Remember the Titans or something. When a maine coon wins First Best Long Haired Kitten, the kid leaps to his feet to applaud.
Someone is passing around pieces of a gigantic sheet cake with BLUE icing — a delicacy. I remember one of the owners telling me their cat was in heat (“Look at her, doing a little can can. I just do everything in my power not to touch her butt.”), and maybe for the first time in my life, decline a piece of grocery store cake.
Even though I’ve been observing award-winning cats for a few hours now, I don’t fully understand what separates a well-behaved kitty from a CHAMPION. There’s a wealth of knowledge to this world that would take me years to grasp. So I finally just ask someone whose cat carrier is decorated with multiple ribbons.
What makes a cat ready for a competition like this?
”They have to be dumb,” the owner says without missing a beat.
A passerby overhears our conversation and chimes in.
”The dumber the better!”
Maybe my cat could be a champion after all.