Last weekend I made my second trip to the annual Saintly City Cat Club’s Winter Carnival cat show. My sister, Karyn, and I went to the show in 2002 (I think), when we lived in downtown Saint Paul. This year I went with my friend (and fellow cat lover), Bertine.

It is a strange event. There are hundreds of cats and none of them are fighting. Many of them are sleeping, in fact. Most of the owners (or handlers?) were mingling, preparing their cats for judging, or quietly going crazier. Bertine and I wandered around to peek at all of the cats and scope out the craziest of the crazy cat people. I wasn’t very good at taking stealth photographs of those people, but believe me—they stood out in the crowd.

There were six large judging stations in the middle of the auditorium. Bertine and I tried to listen to all of them, but mostly hung out with Walter Hutzler while he was judging the kitten division. He seemed to be one of the most talkative judges, and had funny (i.e. crazy) anecdotes for each breed of cat.

I took a few tips and tricks home with me as I developed a new career goal for myself: cat show judge! It’s time for me to start studying the differences between Burmese and British Shorthair, Ocicat and Bengal, Cornish Rex and Devon Rex…