Spoiled Rotten : There’s Nothing Cat People Won’t Do for Their Pets, and That’s the Way Cats Like It
Clumps of cats flit across Joanne Cobb’s blouse. A chain of golden kitty faces dangles from her wrist. Cat-shaped barrettes collect her long, brown hair.
Sartorially speaking, she is not alone.
Cobb’s husband, Mark, sports an image of their cat, Buffy, across his broad chest, where Buffy’s puss is immortalized on a T-shirt. And Buffy herself is no slouch in the fashion department. Her wardrobe consists of a tiny T-shirt that says, “When the going gets tough, I go to Grandma’s.”
“I told you my daughter was a cat nut,” says Grandma, Elizabeth Police.
Indeed, the Cobbs’ San Bernardino home is guarded by three cat-shaped topiary shrubs designed to look like Buffy, if Buffy were a bush. The Cobbs have cat wallpaper. Cat mugs. Cat curtains. Cat art. Ceramic cats.
Until recently.
“There was a ceramic cat on the steps, but she pushed it off and broke it,” Joanne Cobb says. “She didn’t like the competition.”
It’s time to correct one common misconception. It is not the sometimes noble human race that sees fit to take the hapless cat under its wing, as it were. The cats are in charge of the asylum, folks, and it’s awfully nice of them to let you hang around.
Under the circumstances, don’t be surprised if cat people tend to be the Patty Hearsts of the animal-lovers’ kingdom: They identify with their fuzzy captors.
“The reason they get so crazy about their cats is the cat is the kind of animal that’s on top of you all the time,” says pet expert and radio talk-show host Warren Eckstein. “If you’re sitting on the couch and you have a Great Dane and a cat, the Great Dane is at your feet and the cat is on your head. Their mobility gives them the ability to be at human eye level, which establishes a really close relationship.”
Eckstein was among the 32,000 cat people and 800 cats who descended on the Anaheim Convention Center last weekend. The lure was three days of kitty worship and competition known as the International Cat Show, presented by the International Cat Assn.
These are truly cat days, judging from the species’ booming popularity. You can tell that more people are making cats part of their family by the names they give their furry relatives, says Eckstein, an admitted feline fiend who calls his own three cats if he’s going to be home late (his voice booms out over the answering machine).
“For years, every cat was Fluffy and Whitey. Now, it’s Sam and Leo,” he says. “It sounds like a poker game.”
With cats so prominent in certain quarters, it’s important that they look their best. It is Sandra Allen’s mission to see that they do. She makes and sells cat hats at 10 bucks a pop, itty-bitty sun visors with loops for ears that point up. At the cat show, cat people were practically crying for Allen’s kitty wear.
“I’ve had people have their hats stolen or lost, and they come in in tears,” says the Lancaster resident. “Believe it or not, we get in big discussions about what color looks good on which kitty and what kind of fashion statement you want to make.”
And such a choice--you have your neon surfer cat hats, your patriotic cat hats with a flag motif, cowboy cat hats emblazoned with cacti and boots, and Santa Fe-style cat hats with Indian designs. For an extra two bucks, cats can party down in glitter, lace or rhinestones.
“Very elegant,” Allen says.
Kim Andraos of Monarch Beach was one among many who whipped out a ten-spot to put her cat in a hat. Her kitty’s fashion statement? Strictly surfer.
“My cat lives at the beach,” she says of Guiseppy Andraos.
Then there are cats only a mother could love. Like Mr. Sunshine, a big hairy hunk of butter-colored cat with more toes than he probably needs.
“He has six toes in the front and seven in the back,” says his mother, J.R. Janoski, 53. “I call them snowshoes.”
Snowshoes on an especially well-endowed cat can come in handier than the pedestrian four-toe arrangement. Mr. Sunshine can pick things up with his toes, most notably those favorites of kitties--food bits.
“He’ll spread his toes and hold it in his hands and eat it,” Janoski, the “cat-rescue lady” of Van Nuys, purrs with pride.
Stacey Braun also calls her cat “my little sunshine,” although only unofficially. His real name is Burton, after the thespian Richard. Burton is a lot of cat--22 pounds’ worth of flamepoint Siamese, to be precise.
Braun, 36, from Hollywood, has been doing kitty curls all day. She has been lugging Burton around the convention center for a weighty hour. When she throws him over her right shoulder, easily half her torso seems to disappear.
And all for naught. Burton didn’t even make the finals, even though he was, well, incredibly clean. Braun had spent hours washing him.
“You could eat this cat right now,” says Braun.
Then there’s Rex Vaughan, a gray-striped shorthair from Redondo Beach.
Rex is snoozing in a round, poufy kitty cozy. He is already, at the tender age of 2 1/2, a retired champ, having won a zillion ribbons during the past two years. This time around, he graciously declined to enter the competitive fray.
“It’s like climbing Mt. Everest,” says his father, Stanley Vaughan, 52. “Once you’ve done it, you’ve done it.”
Vaughan likes to bring Rex to the shows anyway. Rex loves people. People love Rex. It’s a winning combination. Rex also likes Tootsie Pops. Vaughan is brandishing one in an attempt to wake Rex up.
Rex plays dead. But finally the cherry Tootsie Pop wins the battle.
“If you can love a cat, you can love a human being,” sighs Vaughan, who, like many multiple-cat owners fearing authorities will thin their brood, won’t ‘fess up to the size of his animal house. “He’s not an only cat,” Vaughan says simply.
But don’t think that there’s such a thing as a free lunch, even in the cat world. All that parental love and affection comes with a price, and there are many kitties that do, in fact, carry their weight.
Like the considerable Bill Bailey, a large, gray Scottish fold. Bill used to go on surveillance with his mom, an undercover fed, when she was posted in Chicago.
“She’d get bored sitting there for a couple of hours, so she’d take her cat for company,” says Bill’s grandmother, Jay Babcock, 66, of Los Alamitos.
And the well-dressed Buffy goes to work with her landscape-architect dad Mark Cobb every day.
“One lady came by and said, ‘Do you have human kids?’ ” says Mark Cobb, 33. “I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘I didn’t think so.’ ”
Buffy, an autumn-colored tabby, is rewarded for her industry with her very own beanbag chair for watching TV. She works with the Cobbs. She sleeps with the Cobbs. The tale of Buffy is told in a spray of color photographs tucked between the bars of her cage: Buffy in a baby T-shirt and grown-up sneakers, Buffy with a smiley-face dangling in front of her kitty face, Buffy in “her Elmer Fudd hat,” as her mom Joanne Cobb calls it.
There are few certain things in this crazy world, but there’s one thing you can count on: The Cobbs love their furry baby.
“We’re wrapped around her paw,” says Joanne Cobb dreamily.
Cat Trivia
* Black cats are considered good luck in England, bad luck in the United States.
* Ancient Egyptians mummified and entombed cats with their dead owners so they could enjoy the afterlife together.
* Cats have 244 bones; humans have 206.
* Cats use 30 muscles for hearing; humans use six.
* Cats can stare for hours without blinking; humans can stare for seconds.
* Cats make their fur stand on end to make themselves look bigger to potential enemies.
* There is a catnip gene, which about 30% of cats lack. This explains why some cats trip out on the stuff while others couldn’t care less.
* The word cat is almost the same in several languages: chat in French, katze in German, katte in Swedish, kot in Polish.
* Tail position tells you kitty’s emotional state. Back-and-forth twitching: conflict, feels aggressive. Straight up: interested in something. Curves gently down and then up at the tip: relaxed and at ease.
* Kneading is the way kittens stimulate the flow of their mothers’ milk; they continue the behavior in adulthood whenever they feel comfortable and unthreatened.
* Cats have 25 to 30 whiskers, which help them navigate; each is attached to a delicate sense organ.
* Catty expressions: Sneaky as a cat. Curiosity killed the cat. Cat got your tongue? But never will be dog-ugly.
