The short clip shows just about everything wrong with cat shows.
Amid the subdued noise of the show, in which hundreds of people collectively try not to freak out the felines who definitely don’t want to be there, Beethoven — number 176 — was called up.
Anyone who knows anything about cats could tell little dude was not gonna do well.
“Beautiful coat, shiny, nice green eyes,” said a judge, a woman wearing cat ears.
Having exhausted her supply of superlatives, she ran a hand down Beethoven’s tail, then grabbed both his front legs from behind in a way I’ve never seen anyone try to move a cat and tried to spin him around.
Beethoven wasn’t having it.
The void unleashed a symphony of hisses, feints and dodges while trying to get away, but the judge — seriously, has she ever dealt with a cat before? — shoved him, then tried to grab him again as if the pointless evaluation could be saved.
That’s when The Conductor lunged in for a hard right paw-slap, leaving #177– a white chonkster on deck — with a look that said “Oh no he didn’t!”
“I need the owner here now,” the judge said, like a doctor snapping at a nurse for a scalpel as a patient’s blood pressure plummets on an operating table.
Beethoven was disqualified, but he should have gotten points. He should have gotten all the points.
Oh, people who participate in “cat fancy” will tell you their ridiculous soirees are really just social events for the feline-inclined, as if they don’t privately rage when their cats lose like Patrick Bateman stewing over the fact that Bryce prefers Van Patten’s business card to his own.
But seriously, what the hell is going on at these shows?
Most of them are celebrations of the cat world’s worst excesses, with people lugging their terrified $10,000 Savannahs, $4,000 Bengals, currently out-of-fashion Persians and other breed cats to gymnasiums or hotel ballrooms where they’re mishandled, judged like collector’s items and measured against absurd arbitrary standards written by God-knows-who.
The breed standards read like wine descriptions in obnoxious catalogues: “The tail should be long and sturdy, powerful yet restrained like a rhinoceros in a steel cage. The coat should be of moderate length and silky, yet not so shiny as to invite comparisons to the Arkenstone of Thráin, that wondrous jewel. The head should be angular, recalling the good old days of colonial occupation in Siam when elegant men and women would lounge in opulent royal palaces enjoying stiff cocktails as the locals fanned them. The paws should leave tigerian pug marks, but the toes should not be arranged so close together as to appear inartful…”
The insanity of it makes me want to pose as a judge, grabbing a cat and taking a deep huff from its behind as horrified cat fanciers look on.
“I get notes of summer in New York, rotting garbage and the perpetual smell of urine on the 6 line. Hints of jasmine, cinnamon and Temptations Seafood Medley filtered through the miraculous feline intestinal system! The flavor profile is ecstatic. Oh! The aftertaste! Bitter yet triumphant!”
Except for the non-breed portion of the show, which you get the impression is treated like a non-televised undercard fight at a UFC event, the participants are basically big-upping cats who come from breeders, holding them up as the feline ideal while allowing a few scraps to fall off the table for those dirty little moggies who were the result of two cats voluntarily copulating, not some breeder putting Big Tom and Queen #7 in a cage together until BT puts one in the bun.
Ew, a shelter cat!
You know what I say to these cat shows and their judges? Look at this dude! Look at him! Behold his handsomeness:
Not only is he charming and ridiculously good looking, his office has many leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany. Cat judges, eat your hearts out!
Pain In The Bud 
sad to read that cat shows are even taking place under such conditions. He’s so handsome
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This was highly tongue in cheek, but yeah, it’s for people, not cats. It’s just a weird culture what with the cats who hate being there and the arbitrary breed standards.
If people enjoy it, I’m happy for them. Not my thing, as amusing as it would be to bring Bud to one and let him loose on the judges. He’s scared of vacuums, paper bags and other intimate objects, but people? Nah.
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I would pay to see Buddy go after a judge!!🤣🤣
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I think i mentioned i went to one cat show years ago at MSG and regretted it. It was out of curiosity. They had cloned cat🤮 C.C. I wanted to scream at these people. I don’t remember seeing that disgusting display on events. I did get to meet and talk to woman who adopted the famous cat Scarlet. She told me Scarlet passed away. Scarlet was famous burned cat who risked life to get her kittens out of burning building in Brooklyn.And Cat Fancy? Nope. Had one subscription and in the back they had ads for purebred cats.
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A very long time ago I lived with a medium-haired black cat named Belladonna. She had the sort of beauty and disposition that allowed me to show her at a couple of cat shows. Belladonna was entered under the “Best Household Pet” category and won a Second Place ribbon at one show. Although the shows we went to we pretty low-key I imagine they are not all fun and games for the kitties; and if I was gonna do it again I’d definitely consider “showing” Ramses. Betcha he’d take First Place.
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Little Buddy is absolutely beautiful and I am confident he would make mincemeat of any judge who dared show such blatant disrespect…LONG LIVE LITTLE BUDDY!
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Buddy is a premier example of the astonishing beauty of random bred cats! I just don’t see the point of breeding cats when there are sweet and gorgeous kitties to be found homeless on streets and in shelters. I’ve never met a cat who liked to be boxed up and taken places. That said, we did attend two cat shows in the distant past. I was amazed at seeing the purebreds ride on their owners’ shoulders and stay calm while they moved through noisy crowds. Judging was boring and pointless to me. We went mainly for the vendors. We took home some high-powered catnip, cool cat toys, and t-shirts with cat designs (for humans).
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Sounds like a convention. That part would be pretty cool.
And yeah, that’s exactly how I feel, re: breeding when we still put down something like 800,000 cats a year in the shelter system. When I was looking to adopt and was trying to educate myself, almost everything online was a breakdown of the “best breeds.” Endless listicles that don’t even acknowledge the existence of “regular” cats. If you don’t know anything about cats, you might get the idea that you’re “settling” if you adopt a non breed cat. No doubt that’s exactly the impression many people get when they go online before adopting.
I told Buddy you said he’s an example of the “astonishing beauty” of moggies and he said “Mrrrrrp!” But he’s still technically a Buddinese tiger.
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Ok, why did you go through all the BS cat stuff when you were thinking of adopting? All you had to do was google “cat shelters near me” and there ya go! 🤣
Seriously, I’ve never researched my pets before I got them. Most were acquired through word of mouth (people know if they have a pet that needs a home, they can call me), or they just kind of fell into our laps. We’re the last stop before the shelter and I’m so glad the unwanted birds, cats and mini weenie came into our lives.
The only ones that I actually put any effort into were the last 3. Oliver, Archie and The Bean all came from the same local shelter. And the effort I put in? That was driving there and checking out the kitties they had on hand. 🤣 Sure, I checked out lots of other shelters online that were miles away from me to see what kind of cats were out there. I would’ve been perfectly fine with driving to get the “cat of my dreams”. But that was always when I was just thinking about getting a new pet. But when it came time to adopt these 3, I was compelled to go the shelter. Something made/told me go there on those days. That’s how we got our kitties. Fate is what guides me in the finding of animals. It’s the only part of my life that it actually works and I welcome it! 👍
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Well Buddy was my first pet. I had no idea how to care for a cat and I wanted to make sure I was doing right by the little dude.
I still made my share of stupid mistakes, but I was able to learn a lot too and avoided making even more.
Also, not every cat shelter wanted to adopt out to someone without vet references and I thought it was weird that some of them wouldn’t even let you really interact with the animals first.
Fate’s not a bad way to do it. If you feel compelled, maybe the “cat distribution system” works that way for you.
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I went to one Show in London – it was “no cats” just Humans dressed as cats, sellling cats toys etc for charity with a stage show of cat like performers – across the road was a group of shelters with cats for adoption – you obviously had to complete forms and arrange a home visit – it was beautifully done and great fun ( and packed!) there was also various groups on animal rights and Veganism – basically my tribe… – it seemed to me to be the way to do it, celebrate the species not the breed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ocQIxoI18k
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That sounds awesome and definitely the smart way to do it. I don’t mean to come off preachy and I hope the humor in the post offset my criticism, but I see videos of these cats held up and inspected like meat at a butcher shop and they’re not having fun.
I wonder if I can find a cat publication that would send me to CatFest as a journalist. Fear and Loathing in London…with cats.
Of course I would not be able to bring Bud, even if they did allow cats. He lost his freedom to walk among the public a long time ago when he became a celebricat.
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