Some Sublime Felines Make a Show of It

“When I’m 90 years old, I am just going to raise these cats and eat chocolates.”

So spake the woman with the blond chrysanthemum-cut hair. Patsy and I had gone to a show at the Glendale Armory sponsored by Cats Unlimited in Glendale. One of the many show shows presented by the American Cat Assn., it was packed with people, and cats of every kind in cages.

Always at an event like that, I seem to be walking upstream against the traffic. I was again. The man at the door told me there were well over 500 people in the great hall. They were all in my aisle.

The cats were in heavy-gauge-wire cages on long tables with their owners or custodians sitting in front of them. Around the edge of the room were tables at which the judges stood. The cat being judged was placed on a plastic padded stand and prodded and placed, all very respectfully. After a cat was removed, the platform was sprayed with a liquid and wiped clean, lest some cat be carrying a germ of some kind.

The crowd was quiet and of all ages and types. Most of the cats were grandly remote, many of them sound asleep in their cages. There wasn’t a case of stage fright in sight although there were some owners who wore the desperate smiles of stage mothers.

One gentleman had accompanied a gray cat called a Scottish fold. Her ears were flat to her head, folded over like the edges of an envelope. He said the cat only raises the ears when it is upset or annoyed. It was a gorgeous animal, cool and reserved at all the kitchy-kooing going on.

There were a lot of those cats that look as if they had just walked out of an Egyptian tomb, their heads long and narrow and arrogant. One man was holding up a shadowy gray one, lean as an eel, which he said was not thin but “a very solid cat.”

The Persians were popular with the crowd because they are so fluffy and relaxed. Some of these cats live in the cages and don’t get to be family pets, one exhibitor told me. All of the cats I saw looked as if they had perfectly marvelous lives, and I refused to believe that any of them live in cages. They all looked as if they lived on caviar and cream and allowed their people to pet them whenever they chose. The cats, I mean. Not the people.

One dream of a cat was 6 months old, the color of Devonshire cream and with a face exactly like a raisin cookie, quite flat with round eyes and a round mouth. The same owner had a white Persian named Sunshine and one at home named Pansy who is lavender-gray. Pansy, a former champion, now just stays home and reads her notices.

The Himalayan cats are dramatic, full and fluffy and flat-faced. The ones we saw had gray bodies and dark, almost black faces and tails. There were several on display, sitting in their cages, all curled into disdainful balls. There is an almost irresistible urge to touch them because the fur looks so soft, but it’s bad form and besides, the owner would have you removed because of the fear of spreading infections.

The second-best cat in the show was a classic silver tabby American short hair. He was silver with black stripes as precise as if he had been enameled by one of the master craftsmen at Van Cleef & Arpels. He was stretched out on his side, almost filling his cage.

There also were a number of Rex cats. One was a dainty little thing, black and white and apricot, who looked as though she had encountered a really rotten home permanent. I know they’re supposed to look like that and she certainly did.

Obviously, I don’t know much about cats. The only cat I have had since one I was small child was the wonderful Cuchulain, dignified and loving, who wandered up the hills in La Habra Heights to our house and announced that he would stay. That’s how I thought you got cats, at the front door or when some kid comes to the door and says, “My Mom says I have to get rid of these.”

It’s sort of the way my husband, Doug, thought you got dogs. He thought you got dogs in the barn. That’s where he got his on the ranch when some mother dog had a litter.

The cat show business is obviously very serious and the cats expensive and beautiful. One young woman named Sally McKinley, who lives in Canyon Country, was ecstatic because her tortoise Persian, Kamir, had won best color, best of breed and won her division which made her a champion that day. The cat was black, amber and caramel. There were 131 cats to be judged and 31 kittens. I guess the kittens just sit around and pick up pointers.

The lady who said she was going to raise her cats and eat chocolates was Nancy Styles. Her cats are exotics, short-haired Persians. She obviously loved her animals and they look as if they were ready to curl up under a Christmas tree. Their faces are so flat they are almost concave. She let me touch a cream-colored one. It felt like chinchilla, dense and soft. She says the black ones feel like fine mink.

She has a cat who is going for cat of the year. One of them has already been designated kitten of the year. Or maybe that was the same one.

They go through a number of steps on their way to the winners’ book. First they become a champion, then they qualify for grand champion and then master grand champion.

Nancy’s cat was a grand champion at 10 months. She held up an immense black fellow with the tip of his pink tongue sticking out of his black face.

Nancy Styles makes cage covers and panels, floor pads and beds and sells them all over the world to cat show people. She also makes aprons and pillows. The curtains and cage accessories look as if they belonged in the guest wing at Versailles. They’re made of flower-printed fabric, edged in eyelet or lace, ruffled, smocked, trimmed in ribbon and braid.

There were several cats who looked like Mrs. Goldfarb, which she was pleased to know because she comes out of a shady background in the hills behind El Toro Marine Air Base. It set the old girl up when we told her she was probably of royal blood.

Cuchulain has been dead long enough for me to think about getting another cat but I don’t think it would please Mrs. Goldfarb. Poor old duck-footed cat.

I sure would like to have one of those soft, fluffy fellows with his tongue debonairly sticking out of his flat face. I don’t think the little kids at the front door with the baskets of kittens have any like that. They’re all in their flowery bowers riffling through their fan mail and posing for photographers.