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Overview:
The two-day Mountain Mist Cat Fanciers Show brought cats, handlers and judges from across the country to Eugene for a late-season cat competition.
Beam Me Up Scotty is an attention-grabbing creature, a walking cloud with a snub, flat face typifying exactly what a Persian cat should look like.
That doesn’t mean he likes the attention. When it was his turn to be judged during this weekend’s Mountain Mist Cat Fanciers Show, the assembled crowd gave out an impressed ooh.
Scotty backed slightly away, only to be nudged into place by judge Dennis Ganoe.
Even a cat can get nervous in high-pressure competitions.
“He’s competing with all the big boys,” said his owner, Patty Stewart.
Stewart and her daughter Michelle Smith are Springfield residents who organized the show and operate Panei Persian and Exotic, a cattery where the family team has bred and raised award-winning cats for decades.
This is the first year for the Mountain Mist Cat Fanciers Show. (Before the pandemic, a different club operated local Cat Fanciers’ Association shows.) Smith had managed three previous shows before this weekend’s event, which filled the Lane Events Center auditorium with rows of cats in upscale carriers, judging sessions with audiences and tables for toys, treats and local cat causes.
Cat people can be an exacting crowd. But the Mountain Mist show, Smith said, was exceeding her hopes for the return.
“This is the first year out of the fourth year of doing this that I’ve not had any complaints,” she said. “Let me tell you, it takes a lot to not even get a complaint.”
Inside a cat competition
Unlike a dog show, where different pooches trot and hop their way through obstacle courses and into judges’ hearts, a cat show is all form. Cats are evaluated on breed-specific attributes: strong, solid bodies, fluffy coats, fitting facial bone structure. Toys are a frequent distraction to get better etiquette out of a fussy cat.
Florence resident Elizabeth Kennedy brought Tessa, her 11-year-old chocolate tortoiseshell Persian cat. Kennedy has been breeding cats for 17 years and bred Tessa’s mother and father.
This will be Tessa’s last show, Kennedy said, a farewell to the required weekly baths to be show-ready. Tessa will return to her true passion: sitting in her cat tree under the heater and letting the warm air blow on her. But does she even know she’s a big deal, walking away from a glitzy life?
“I think she does,” Kennedy said. “She’s very stuck up about it.”
The cat show was more than a highlight of regional talent. It’s one of the final weekends of the cat fanciers season, so elite cats looking for point total bumps and their handlers found their way to the Lane Events Center. (A certain number of points nets a commemorative title, leaving a narrow window to maximize points before the season resets in May.) The Mountain Mist Cat Fanciers Show brought in competitors and judges from across the country.
“Every one of these cats has something precious and beautiful and amazing inside of them, and I get to pull that out and show it to people,” said Jacqui Bennett, who has been a CFA judge for 15 years. She came to Eugene from Texas for this weekend’s show.
It’s not all serious business for the elite feline specimens. The cats also had a costume contest. Bo, a regal Maine Coone from Patty and John Cruikshank’s Nacoonzi Cattery in Estacada, Oregon, wore a tropical get-up complete with sunglasses, if begrudgingly. “He’s kind of cranky today,” Patty Cruikshank said.
Kristen Junker, from just north of Des Moines, Iowa, was one of the out-of-state competitors. She brought two of her Siberians: Joshua, almost 11 years old, and Looking So Dapper (Dax for short), not yet 1. Joshua in particular is an acclaimed cat, a Grand Champion, Grand Premier (the category for spayed and neutered cats) and Midwest Regional winner.
Junker, a food chemist in her non-cat show life, said part of good showing etiquette is going to different competitions geographically: This is her third show in Oregon this season.
“When I take him places, I don’t make a lot of friends,” Junker said. “But it’s a competition. Some people would say, ‘Bring a better cat.’”
