I had been expecting some kind of lavish setting with extravagantly-dressed people parading cats around in some kind of circus ring. What I found was a bare concrete-walled exhibit hall with cheap booths set up and lots and lots of people with cat cages on tables. There were a variety of exotic cats, but generally one cat looks pretty much like another (especially when asleep, as most of these were).
There is not as much variety in the different cat breeds as there is in dog breeds. A dachshund and a poodle and an English sheepdog look wildly different, but cats seem to be divided into two basic varieties:
As an example of the former, we saw an example of a newly-popular breed called a Sphinx, which is completely bald -- no whiskers or eyebrows, even. It looks like a giant wrinkly version of a hairless baby mouse. We're told that sphinxes tend to be fairly mellow and friendly. Since there is no insulation between it and the world, I think the Sphinx likes people because they are warm against its skin, and the other cats find the Sphinx nice and warm to cuddle up against because it's leaking all its body heat away.
I didn't like the fluffy overstuffed-sofa kind of cats, because most of them just sort of lay there like, well, overstuffed furniture.
Janet once showed me the most intoxicatingly exciting cat toy ever invented. She opened up a little tin, in which she had a dozen of those little plastic rings that come off the top of the milk jug. The cats flick them around the floor like there's no tomorrow. They give one a whack and chase after it, and when they catch up to it they play a little head-game, giving it little pats, slyly turning away from it to give it false hope of freedom, trying to trick it into running for its life. When psychological torture of an inanimate object becomes tiresome, they give it a hard whack again, and the game starts all over as the milk ring skitters across the floor.
The game ends, as do all the games our cats play, when the toy goes under the refrigerator. We expect the refrigerator to eventually be toppled over by the huge growing pile of milk-rings and bottle caps and Lego pieces underneath it.
We're always looking for something to hasten our refrigerator's demise, and we weren't disappointed at the cat show. There were a great variety of things for sale, from flexible fishing-rod type cat-tormentors, to laser pointing devices you could hang on your keychain. Cats will chase a laser spot very aggressively.
Somebody had a big basket full of little woven plastic tubes about two inches long, which looked vaguely like Klein bottles. It was labeled "Cat Toys $1". Janet said, "These must be made of the same plastic as the milk rings", so we bought one.
When we got home with our new little pink cat toy, it turned out that none of the cats were interested. Then Janet figured out that we'd been conned into paying a dollar for a 5-cent hair curler.
We went over to the auditorium section around 4:30 so we could get seats, because the show was going to end at 5 and that was when the parade of cats (all the winners) was supposed to happen. There was an ok presentation by an animal-control officer, who told the story of how she rescued a starving kitten from a storm drain. This was nice until I started wondering how many people were homeless or starving or being shot at in wars at the same time this lady was risking her life to save a kitten.
I realized that it's easy to care about animals, and it's sometimes very hard to care for your fellow human beings, because animals don't have any nasty habits like looking funny or speaking the wrong language or believing in the wrong God. Animals don't get upset at your misplaced charity or try to take over control of their own rehabilitation. Animals have no politics. It's not wrong to have empathy for other living things, but the easiest ones to love aren't always the most important.
Then the animal psychic spoke to us. This was a lady who claimed she could diagnose pet/owner compatibility problems. I figured that was nice enough, until she told us she does it over the phone, by talking to the animal.
She also told us cats are telepathic, which is why they do the things you don't want them to do. Supposedly, it works like this:
I am sure our cats' only heightened perceptual ability is that the cranky ones can tell when I'm in a "picking cats up and petting them" mood, and they stay the hell away. I think they're keying on the fact that I'm leaning over and reaching for them with my hands, and I rather doubt there's any reception of mental thought-waves involved.
I don't remember what the kitty astrologer talked about, because I repressed those memories in an effort to preserve my sanity.
Finally, there was the show where they gave out the final awards. This was a bit of an anticlimax; they had a bunch of different categories for purebreeds and house cats (anything that's not a purebreed, or has been spayed or delawed). They held each cat up and gave them awards. This was actually kind of dull for me, and I figured out that the reason is that what I like about cats is actually playing with them and getting to know them and interact with their different personalities. Every cat is totally neurotic and insane in its own pathological way.
The judging doesn't show you much of this. About all you do learn is that show cats don't mind being held up with one hand under their shoulders, and one hand under their pelvis, stretched out to their full length. They must get used to being held that way at actual shows, because we later tried this at home and almost nobody was willing to sit still for it - though Sake (usually the most pliant) would stay up there for almost two whole seconds before she started squirming.
The judging was delayed, so we had to listen to the animal psychic for an extra half hour or so. After she told us about how cats give out positive energy that puts your aura back in balance, Janet groused, "Will somebody please shoot this woman?"
Cats are mostly pretty sensible. I can't say the same for their owners.