New York Cat Show, Part I

The New York Cat Show was so exciting! It's the first cat show I've ever been too and I had so much fun meeting so many lovely kitty cats.

There are so many kitty breeds that I'd only ever seen in books (I have A LOT of cat books). It was wonderful to finally meet them.

I met kitties of the following breeds: Abyssinian (including ruddy, red and blue), American Curl, Birman, Bombay, British Shorthair, Burmese, Cornish Rex, Devon Rex, Eqyptian Mau, Exotic, Japanese Bobtail, Maine Coon, Manx, Norwegian Forest Cat, Ocicat, Persian (including solid colour, silver and golden, shaded and smoke, tabby, particolour, bicolour and himalayan), Ragdoll, Scottish Fold, Siamese, Siberian, Somali, Sphynx, Tonkinese, Turkish Angora and Turkish Van.

Needless to say, I took many photos. I'm going to post them here over the next few days.

You may be wondering if these kitties were sad and bored hanging out in the cat cages during the competition. I don't think they were. Many of them slept a lot, which is probably what they would have been doing at home anyway. They were frequently out and about with their people while going to the various show rings for judging, or being groomed by their people or posing for photographs. These show kitties were all incredibly well-behaved. Certainly more so than any kitty who's ever lived with me!

This is an American Curl kitty. The primary distinguishing feature of this breed is that the kitty's ears curl backwards. This unusual breed began purely by chance back in June 1981 when a cute little curl-eared stray turned up on the doorstep of Joe and Grace Ruga in Lakewood, California. All bona fide American Curls can trace their lineage back to this one kitty. The autosomal dominant ear-curling gene does not affect the kitty's hearing or any other aspect of the kitty's health. It just makes their ears curl backwards.

In the bottom left of this photo you can see that someone is holding out a feather to the kitty. There are very few things more exciting to a kitty than chasing a feather on a stick. American Curls are born with straight ears. After 3-5 days the ears curl back in a tight rosebud poition and then gradually unfurl until about 16 weeks.

This is a Bombay kitty. If the kitty had been looking at the camera at the time, you would see that this kitty has lovely copper eyes. The Bombay breed originated from a crossing between black American Shorthair male with copper eyes and a sable Burmese female.