Pet Owners Come to Cat Show With Claws Sharpened
We are sitting in the Royal Suite of an Anaheim hotel, on the eve of the opening of the International Cat Show, and Karen Hauge is holding a big pouf of a cat, Rufus, in her arms.
Rufus, what they call a Ragdoll, has one of those ho-hum looks in his eyes that makes Morris the cat look crazed by comparison. Rufus is 9 years old. He has been around.
“So has he won any prizes?” I ask.
A silence falls over the room, which contains four humans and an indeterminate number of cats who are climbing on shoulders, balancing on chair backs and streaking across the bed. Then come a few muted snickers. From the humans.
“He’s a supreme grand champion,” says Karen, the show’s administrator.
“Oh,” I say, figuring that must be pretty good. I’m thinking of, say, Buster Douglas and that gaudy WBC belt and wondering how many rhinestones can fit on a supreme grand champion’s collar.
But seeing as how I don’t sense that there’s too much fire left in Rufus’ belly, I ask, “Still?”
“Once you attain that title, you attain it for life,” Karen sniffs.
So that’s how these cat people are. Proud, not at all shy about putting you in your place.
Like their cats.
The reason I’m here is because I, too, think I know something about cats. I have two of them, brother and sister Siamese, who will be 12 years old on Christmas Day.
What I know about cats is that mine are the best. Or at least that’s what they’ve been telling me all these years and everybody knows that it’s bad luck to challenge anything with eyes that glow in the dark.
At any rate, I know my cats would never put up with this competition business. They have their own standards.
Oriental shorthairs, Himalayans, Abyssinians, this Ragdoll creature, kittens --all of them are in the Royal Suite, expected to socialize with each other.
My cats don’t do mixers.
And these humans, they’re just as bad, shamelessly indiscriminate.
Cats are private types. What do they need with their owners blabbing to strangers about their feline habits?
Take Gremlin, for instance.
Gremlin is an ugly cuss. He’s a Sphynx, so he looks like he doesn’t have any hair, but really he’s covered with this peachy-kind of down, which of course shows off all his wrinkles.
Anyway, it seems that Gremlin, who belongs to cat show co-producers Vicky and Peter Markstein, likes to take frequent dips in the family pool in Austin, Tex. To relax. (When you look like Gremlin, believe me, life can be very stressful.)
“Well, one day I came out and saw that he was all red on the top of his head,” says Vicky, who like her husband is a computer scientist with IBM.
“He was sunburned. So now I always put sun block on him when he goes out. He uses one with a protection factor of 15.”
It’s worth noting that Vicky and Peter’s two daughters are grown now.
“Cats are a great child substitute,” says Vicky.
That, incidentally, is one of the reasons cats have overtaken dogs as America’s No. 1 household pet. (Or at least that’s what the people who study these kinds of things say and Lord knows what their eyes look like in the dark.)
Which is also why the cat show people say they’re counting on tens of thousands of feline fanciers making their way to the Anaheim Convention Center starting today, Friday the 13th.
(Just think, all those black cats are just waiting to cross your path.)
Not that the cat owners are taking too many chances themselves, mind you. In the cat world, this competition is a big deal, with almost nothing left to chance. More than 40 breeds are expected, or some 800 cats.
Owners of Persians, for example, bathe their cats about a week before the competition and powder their fur with a mixture of baby powder and corn starch. Then they spend the rest of the week brushing the mixture out of the hair.
That plus a good blow-dry and you’ve got that much admired finger-in-the-light-socket look.
And, naturally, in the best tradition of all beauty pageants, show officials say some contestants have tried all sorts of methods, legal and otherwise, to get an edge.
Among the dirty tricks: tranquilizers and other drugs and fleas.
Well, not fleas per se . But the threat of fleas. Some contestants have been known to unjustly accuse a competitor of being a fleabag in the hopes of getting him disqualified.
Catty, catty, catty.
Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.
