cat show

Yesterday I turned down the opportunity to see Lance Armstrong race through Santa Rosa so I could go to a cat show instead.

Before you mock me, let me explain. I like cats. I like people who like to talk about cats. I like kitschy cat paraphernalia. (Once, my esthetician told me her mother-in-law gave her a cat nativity scene for Christmas -- complete with cat baby Jesus -- and I was insanely jealous.) If I weren't getting married, I would probably live in a studio apartment with 40 cats.

Also -- and perhaps a more important point -- I do not like standing in the rain and shivering while waiting for men in spandex to ride their bikes past me really fast. I do not care how much alcohol and barbecue are involved. I still do not find being cold and damp fun. (It has been raining non-stop since Friday.)

Therefore, the cat show was a wise choice. Also, at the show, I got a good deal on the super-high end cat food that the kids eat. And I saw a bunch of bizarre cat breeds -- hairless cats, Persians so fluffy they barely had faces, Bengals, Egyptian Maus, etc. -- and their owners, who set up little pastel-colored "cat tents" (yes, this is exactly what it sounds like -- picture a cross between a dollhouse and a tent and add a litterbox and there you have it) for them. And I witnessed the cat judging process, which involved holding the prize-winning cats in the air in awkward positions and commenting on coat color, length of torso, etc.

And I wondered a lot about these fancy-pants cats and how much they must cost (they had purebred kittens for sale at the show) and what kind of life they live when they leave the show. (Do they eat sushi the way our cats do? Do their owners cook for them the way I do? Do they get to sleep with their owners every night the way Mari does with me?)

And I wondered about the not-so-fancy-pants cats that fill up shelters every spring and summer during kitten season. (By the way, if you live in the Bay Area and want a cat, consider adopting from Lake County, which is forced to euthanize animals because there are too many unwanted ones.)

The experience made me very happy to come home to Meep and Mari (who are about 2-3 times bigger than any of the show cats I saw, spoiled out of their little cat minds and would never in a million years put up with anyone holding them in the air in front of a crowd while discussing their torsos). I am so glad we were able to rescue them and give them a good life and plenty of love.