Category Archives: Cat Shows

Annie’s latest show :)

February 28, 2016 admin 10 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

As you may have seen on our Facebook page yesterday, it was show time again for Annie!

I’m going to write you a full report 🙂 I don’t have many pics to share but you see, last week in my blog I shared lots of pics but hardly any words, so this week is just the opposite way round! I will write quite a lot of words and only have a couple of pics 🙂
(the real reason behind this of course is that the hoomins didn’t take hardly any pics at the show, so I’m blaming them really – shhh!) 😆

So, as usual, Lula and I were snuggled up in the big bed having dreams about birdies and toads (or at least I was, Lula was snoring away quite happily too) when all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, we were rudely awakened by the hoomins switching the light on and banging around, putting the kettle on and all the ‘morning’ things the odd ones do!

© www.bengalcatworld.com — Zzzz… Zzzz… Zzzz…

Lula and I carried on sleeping, didn’t even go and sniff breakfast – we’re not stupid 🙂 … After a while, they switched off the lights and marched out of the house with Annie in her carrier so the rest of us could carry on with the important things like catnaps 🙂

They went off to pick up Sue, our breeder, who was also Duty Vet at the show. Interestingly indeed, Sue has now neutered our dad, Harley – he’s dad to all four of the Bengals in our World, and Sue is now going to show him as a Neuter. He’s been shown before as an entire cat and reached the Grand Champion level which is very good considering that he only went to a few shows, but now he starts again and goes for his Premier title to start with! We’ll let you know how he got on later.
But the interesting thing about this is that he’ll now be competing against me and Spike for Best of Breed and maybe side classes if we are ever in the same show, and also if he catches up with us (we are both already Grand Premiers), he will be competing against us in title classes too! 🙂

But back to Annie … she arrived at the show and was soon settled into her pen, daddy looked after her whilst mummy made sure everything was set up on the trade stall 🙂

This was another double show: Annie was entered into one show in full, but only in the Olympian and Best in Colour class in the other one. This is a great idea that the show managers do for this show, it costs a bit less money and the cat is handled less and the two most important classes are usually the title and BiC/Best of Breed.

Soon enough, it was time for morning judging to start so mummy was able to get the catalogue to look at all of Annie’s classes. This was a big show with a large entry in all classes – there were 10 in Annie’s Olympian class in one show and 11 in the Olympian class in the other 😯 There were also big entries in the other classes.

As the results came out, it was not to be Annie’s day in terms of the Olympian – she didn’t get the title nor the reserve, they went to two other superb cats (all the cats at Olympian level are wonderful, otherwise they wouldn’t be there 😉 ) So, although this was slightly disappointing, as Annie only needed one more award to earn the title Olympian Bronze, it just wasn’t to be, so the hoomins waited to see the results of the other classes.

And here they are!
In one show she won Best in Colour, beating 4 lovely boys, though she didn’t get BiC in the other show.

That just left the side classes, and another new one we’ve not mentioned yet, in the full show Annie was in.

So… Prettiest female…. there were 5 in the class and Annie came 2nd! She was beaten by the girl that got the Olympian.

The next class was Any Visitor (this is for cats that live a certain distance away). There were 7 fabulous cats in the class and Annie came…. First! Yay! 🙂

Then the final class which is specific to this show only – The Ultimate Cat Class! A cat needs to win this on two separate occasions with 2 different judges and they then earn the title “Ultimate Master Cat” and have the initials UMC in their full name title.

And the result? For female adult cat…Annie won! So she just needs to win it once more at a future show to have this special title 🙂

Here’s Annie’s rosettes 🙂

So the only thing left is for me to let you know how our dad got on 🙂 Well, we’re obviously from good stock as he earned his Premier certificate in both shows, and also won Best of Breed in both shows 🙂 He only needs one more Premier certificate to earn the title Premier cat and will then go into the Grand Premier classes to try and catch up with me and Spike 🙂

Phew! There we have it! I think I’m going to go and join Lula in the big bed now and have a nice catnap 🙂 Maybe dream about little mices this time 🙂

Take care my friends!
Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows

Little Annie: Little Star!

February 7, 2016 admin 15 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

Wow and wow! What a day Annie had at the show yesterday! The little pesky did good!

So, as usual for a show day, we all got rudely awakened in the middle of the night when the hoomins came traipsing downstairs, disturbing our nice catnaps, putting all the lights on and serving breakfast at an unearthly hour! They are soooo inconsiderate sometimes! 😯

But soon enough, they left the house with one little Annie pesky, and we could all go back to sleep and think about breakfast at a much more reasonable time 😆

Little Annie didn’t like being in the carrier by herself, though – she’s used to having a companion with her: usually Spike but sometimes me (she’s not fussy). So she miaowed and miaowed and miaowed until mummy relented and let her sit on her lap for most of the journey where she purred and looked out of the window and tried to lick daddy’s nose whilst he was driving 😉

But this was our ‘home’ show so it didn’t last for too long! In fact this was a double show! The Shropshire show (our home county) and the Gwynedd Show (this is a county in Wales), and to confuse it all, the show takes place in Staffordshire which is next door to Shropshire, but we don’t really need to worry about all that 🙂

So Annie was soon settled into her pen which was close to the hoomins’ trade stand so they could sort of keep an eye on her throughout morning judging when the hoomin exhibitors have to leave the pens.

Annie is now of course competing in the very top class – the Olympian. She needs 5 Olympian awards at different shows to earn the title, Olympian Bronze. She already has two, and with it being a double show yesterday, she had two opportunities to earn the award. But when the hoomins looked in the catalogue, they could see she was up against a cat that was already Olympian Bronze in one show and a cat that was already Olympian Silver in the other, so they knew it would be tough….

…. But Annie only went and won it, didn’t she? And not just in one show, but in BOTH! The hoomins leapt up and down for joy (or at least mummy did, daddy doesn’t do such frivolities. At least not in public anyways). They said they would have been happy if that was all she won all day because that is the ‘main’ class that you are competing for.

It looked like that might be the case when the Best in Colour results were published as Annie was beaten in both shows by a wonderful marbled Bengal boy who is absolutely adorable and is an Olympian Gold cat! An old friend who beats her sometimes, but she has also beaten too. Mummy and daddy were cool about that.

Then the side classes came out and Annie won first in all of those! Including mummy’s favourite side class – prettiest female!

There was a bit of confusion at one point as there was a 2nd place certificate put on Annie’s pen, so mummy thought she had been beaten in that class. Upon closer inspection, though, mummy saw that she had both a first place and a second place for the same class! So she went and checked and the 2nd place was a mistake, Annie had in fact come first 🙂

This is how her pen should have looked (with yet another rosette added on)

At one point when the afternoon side classes were being judged, my daddy managed to get a picture of Annie with the judge and her steward 🙂

What a good little pickle she was being while they talked about her 😆

Then the day was drawing to a close with only Best in Show to do. Mummy and daddy knew she had stiff competition from the marbled boy, Sanjay, and from others too, so they weren’t counting any chickens.

But then! Yet another rosette appeared on Annie’s pen – a big blue one with the fabulous words: “Best of Variety. Pedigree Household Pet”! This meant that for the Shropshire show, Annie had won Best in Show out of all the Pedigree cats! (27 in total were entered, though a few may have been absent).

This also meant that Annie would be going up to the posh pens – the Best in Show pens – where she would compete against the winner of the Non-Pedigree Pets for Overall Best in Show Household Pet!

Then the judge came along to decide which was the winner and our Annie won it! Very exciting and all the more sweet as it was our home show! 🙂 What a fabulous day 🙂 🙂

Here’s all her winnings, pic taken at home today

And these are all her rosettes – what a haul for one little girl!

So after all that excitement, it was time to hurry on home and give me my dinner and some of my favourite chicken treats. And perhaps feed the others too 😉 And then Annie had a nice catnap on mummy’s lap 🙂

Take care my friends!

Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spot

First show of the year – and what a show it was!

January 24, 2016 admin 14 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

So, we went to our first show of 2016 yesterday and let’s hope the year carries on the way it started as we had a wonderful day! 🙂

Mind you, it did start off much too early – I was having a nice snooze with Lula in the big bed when I was rudely awoken in the middle of the night! 😯

I’d kind of guessed something was going on the previous day, though, the way the hoomins were fussing around, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised 😉

After lots more fussing around, Annie and I were put into our nice big carrier and transported up north somewhere, about 100 miles away. I’m not sure of the exact distance as I took the opportunity to get a few more cat naps in, snuggling with Annie instead of with Lula 😆

After an uneventful journey, we arrived at the venue and Annie and were checked by Sue the vet (and our breeder) with of course nothing to worry about – then it was into the show hall where I made sure my pen was up to my high standards!

I then checked my surroundings to make sure there were no unsavoury characters nearby 😉

Annie then checked her pen over too!

And she seemed to be fine with it, so that was that! It was then time for the morning judging to commence where they decide the important classes – the titles and Best of Breed!

My mummy and daddy had to leave us for this, but the results board was checked regularly I’m told. I was going for an Imperial Grand Premier Certificate, whereas Annie was in the top class – the Olympian! Luckily enough, both of our results got published quite quickly and my mummy and daddy were so proud! I had beaten two other wonderful boys (another Bengal and a Russian Blue) to win my certificate, and Annie had beaten 3 other girls to win the Olympian! I still need 4 more Imperial certificates to earn the title, whereas Annie needs 3 more to get to Olympian Bronze 🙂

Here’s her certificate 🙂

It then seemed to take a long time for the results for the other classes to be published…. but they were worth waiting for, in Annie’s case in particular! But first let me tell you how I did 🙂

I didn’t win Best of Breed, there were 4 in the class and the judge awarded it to a pretty girl 🙂 I then came 2nd out of 2 in a class for Bengals, Mau or Ocicats; 2nd out of 3 for “any cat not bred by exhibitor”; and – you’ve guessed it – 2nd out of 4 for “Any Foreign Neuter” 🙂 So I told my mummy I like to be consistent 🙂

Here I am with my rosettes and certificates (am enjoying a nice catnap you might notice 😉 You can never have too many cat naps) 🙂

Annie was consistent too! Albeit at a slightly elevated level to me!

So, not only did she win the Olympian class, which is a massive achievement in itself, she then beat 4 boys to win “Best in Colour” (the equivalent of Best of Breed for the Household Pet section which she competes in). And then it was time for her side classes –

1st out of 2 for Any Shorthair Cat (Club Class). But the cat she beat is an absolute star of household pets (she is an Olympian Gold, and has been for some time, and regularly wins Best in Show), so this was fabulous!
1st out of 5 for “Prettiest Female” (my mummy says she always loves it when Annie wins this class)

And finally … she came 1st out of 7 for “The Cat with the Glossiest Coat”

Wow! She had what’s known as a “red card day” which means she won all of the classes she was entered into! And Annie’s results were from 4 different judges (one judge did two of her 5 classes), so it wasn’t based on just one judge having a soft spot for her! What a little star 🙂

Here she is with her certificates and rosettes 🙂

And another one, because she’s so cute 🙂

So there we have it! The show was quite late to finish as it had been such a busy day for everyone, but pretty soon we headed 100 miles or so back down south and came home and had some nice dinner and another nice catnap or two 🙂

Take care my friends!

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spike, Spot

Christmas Show News!

December 20, 2015 admin 8 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

I’m getting quite excited because I’ve been a very good cat all year long and I’m hoping for lots of presents from Santa 🙂 I think I need some nice chicken treats and maybe a comfy pink cushion all to myself so I don’t have to share with the littlest pesky, aka Annie 😆 I hope you get lots of nice gifts too 🙂

Talking of the Peskies, I could tell on Friday that it was time for them to go to another show by the way my mummy was cleaning them and trimming their claws and getting the show bag ready…. what I hadn’t anticipated was that I was going with them! 😯 I thought it was a bit odd that she trimmed my claws too and gave me a wash and brush up! 😯 This was to be my first show in more than 18 months, I wasn’t sure if I would remember what to do (i.e. be nice to the judges and not growl at them or, worse still, bite them 😆 )

My daddy has been a bit poorly, so she was taking us to the show on her own, although she did pick up a very nice young man called Lee on the way. I think she knew him as they seemed to talk a lot about the kind of things you hoomins talk about so I’m sure everything was above board 😆 Lee did remark (several times) on how good we all were travelling in the car as it was quite a long way to go – about a two and a half hour trip each way 🙂 But as I said before, I’m a very good boy and am easy to take anywhere 😉 … (are you listening, Santa? 😉 )

Anyways, we got to the show in plenty of time and mummy got our pens ready. Luckily, Spike and I were next door to each other, so that made things easier, though Annie was on the other side of the show hall. She gave us lots of cuddles, then went to check Annie, only to find that she had spilled her water all over her pen 😯 So she put her in with Spike whilst she sorted it all out and then waited for it to dry out 🙂 This made the cuddling job easier too as all three of us were therefore together 🙂

Pretty soon, though, Annie had to go back to her own pen as it was time for morning judging to start so mummy had to leave us and we were all on our best behaviour for the judges 🙂

Meanwhile, mummy checked the results board regularly to find out how we had done 🙂 Here are the overall results:

It wasn’t Annie’s day in terms of the main classes as she was up against 4 other cats for Olympian and didn’t get it, and up against two others for Best in Colour and didn’t get that either.

In her side classes, though, she came 3rd out of 6 for Prettiest Female; 2nd out of 3 for Any Shorthair under 3 years; and 1st out of 7 for The Cat with the Shiniest Coat! 🙂 So not too bad in the end 🙂

Spike and I were up against each other for the Imperial certificate and for Best of Breed. There were 5 good boys in total in the Imperial class and, by some stroke of luck, I was awarded the Reserve Imperial! (ie. second place) A nice Tonkinese won it 🙂
For Best of Breed, it was only us two as there were only 2 brown spotted Bengal Neuters there and Spike beat me! Harrumph! 😆

We were in different side classes:
I came nowhere out of 11 in the Visitor class; but 1st out of 6 in the AV British or Foreign Senior class! Yay!
Spike came 3rd out of 6 in the Any Variety Foreign class and 1st out of 2 in the Bengal Cat Club Any Neuter class! 🙂

So it was a pretty good day all round – not the best we’ve had but not the worst either 😉

Here are some pics which I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for lol 🙂

At the end of the show, mummy brought Annie to Spike’s pen whilst she cleared up Annie’s 🙂

Soon, mummy had cleared away all our pens and off we all went, with Lee too, back on the long road up north 🙂 Again, we were all very good cats on the way home, though of course I was the best behaved and soon we were home to tell daddy all about our day 🙂

So that was the last show of 2015 and we now have a bit of a break until the next one in late January. I wonder who mummy will be taking to that one? 🙂

Take care my friends!

Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Lula

Girls’ Day Out!

November 29, 2015 admin 8 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

I’ve just woken up from a nice catnap in the warmth, listening to the wind howling outside and the rain pelting down. I’m so lucky to have a snuggly place or two to rest my weary head 🙂

Anyway, I woke up to tell you all about the show yesterday where Annie was competing and Lula was showing off! 😆

I knew something was going on the day before the show as my daddy decided to give Lula a bath! Lula wasn’t all that impressed by it, but she seemed to scrub up really well! Annie had had a bath earlier in the week after she’d been out in the cat garden and rolled in some unimaginable things: they were not pleasant and quite smelly – silly girl! 😆

So the two girls were all dressed up with somewhere to go when Saturday morning (very early morning I might add) arrived and the hoomins were up way before the crack of dawn doing their usual hoomin things. Then it was time for me to have some peace and quiet and some nice catnaps as they were soon gone and a nice calm re-emerged in my house 😉

The show wasn’t too far away, and they battled through the stormy weather to get there nice and early. They were soon settled in their pens – Annie in her usual show pen which has to be all white and anonymous, but Lula in her posh exhibition pen where she once again strutted her showgirl stuff!

Lula is retired from competitive shows, but still really likes to go out and show off, so it was really great for her to have the opportunity at this show 🙂 She was also right next to mummy’s stall so she had company all day long 🙂

When she wasn’t strutting her stuff, she was either going out for a walk and checking out all the stalls…

…Or she was just chillin’!

She had a lovely rosette provided by the show which shows her posh pedigree name which my mummy loves! 🙂

Meanwhile, whilst Lula was showing off to the visitors and trade stand holders, Annie was being judged in the competitive classes! She is now in the very top class – the Olympian! There are three levels to Olympian – you have to get 5 Olympian certificates from 5 different judges to earn the title ‘Olympian Bronze’; then 5 more for Silver and then 5 more for Gold! As you can imagine, it is very elite to be Olympian Gold as not only do you have to win all those certificates, but you’re also up against a lot more cats than for previous titles.

So this was Annie’s first attempt to win an Olympian certificate… and win it she did! What a clever girl! Here’s her certificate so you can see what it looks like! 🙂

She was then up against a lovely boy for Best in Colour, but guess what? She won that too! 🙂

Then it was her side classes and the first one was the one that mummy always wants her to win – Prettiest Female! She was against a very pretty girl for that, but she only went ahead and won it! 🙂 Sweet!

Then, in her final class, she was up against 3 other cats for ‘Best Household Pet under 2 Years Old’… they had to wait a while for those results, but it was worth the wait as she went ahead and won that class too! Clever poppet!

Here she is in her pen with all her achievements on show!

And here’s her Olympian rosette which is now also in mummy’s office 😉

So Annie had what is known as a ‘red card day’ which means she won every class she was entered into 🙂 What a little star 🙂

Then, it was time to pack up and head home with the weather even worse than it had been in the morning, though no-one was too worried about that 😉

Our next show is in a few weeks where not only will Annie and Spike be going, but also little old me! It will be a brown spotty day out 😉

Take care my friends! 🙂

Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Lula, Spike, Spot

Let’s do the timewarp!

November 16, 2015 admin 2 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

Phew! What terrible weather we’re having in our World recently! It’s been so bad, I’ve been forced to stay indoors a lot of the time and have lots of catnaps 😉

We therefore don’t have many tails to share this week, so we thought we’d take a trip down memory lane to November 2014!

We started off by going to one of our favourite shows – the Bengal Cat Club show which we also went to last week and I wrote about in my previous post 😉

Last year, Spike did very well, coming first and winning Best of Breed 🙂

But Annie did even better, winning first place, Best in Class, Best in Show Pedigree Pet and then Overall Best in Show Household Pet!

Of course, we also spent time in our cat garden as the weather seemed so much better than it does this year!

I never managed to quite get away from those peskies…

We were all still quite curious about mummy’s office, as it had only recently been finished

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Or at least, some of us were curious….

Annie seemed to think that praying for nice things to happen was a good move

But she enjoyed hanging out in the fresh air not doing much too 🙂

Spike meanwhile continued to show off his laid back skills

And then, at the end of the month, Annie and Spike went to our other favourite show, The Supreme! It was held later than it was this year and again both did very well with them both getting first place and best of breed in their respective classes

But at the end of the day, what we all really enjoy most is a nice catnap, and we found a lovely spot in mummy’s new office where we could all indulge together! 😆

We hope you enjoyed doing the time warp with us!

Take care my friends!

Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spike

Great day at the Bengal Cat Club Show!

November 9, 2015 admin 8 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

As you’re probably aware, I had some lovely, peaceful quality time yesterday as those peskies went off to the Bengal Cat Club show 🙂 That meant I could have my pick of the beds for some lovely catnaps where I dreamed of chicken treats and warmer times 🙂

But I guess you’d rather hear about their day than mine? *sigh* OK, I’ll pass on what they told me 🙂

Yet again, I got woken up far too early though the hoomins thought they could get away with it by giving us our breakfast. But I am not one for eating in the middle of the night, so I carried on with my snooze through all the shenanigans 😯 I knew it would be dry food and there would be plenty of it, so I got up a few hours later and had breakfast in my own time, thank you very much 😉

By that time, they’d managed to drive through some pretty wet weather and got to the show safe and sound. It was in a little town hall in Wiltshire, a lovely part of the world.

The peskies sailed through vetting in and pretty soon were settled in their pens. Annie’s was next to the window so she had a great view every time she came out and watched all the comings and goings on the High Street 🙂

She soon got comfy in her squishy donut bed

Spike was only a short distance away, he enjoyed a bit more breakfast and then chilled out on the floor rather than in his nice comfy bed, silly boy 🙂

It was soon time for morning judging, so the hoomins went to the little cafe in the room next door to let the judges get on with their important jobs 🙂 After a while, the results started to trickle through but I’ll let you know them all in one go to save you having to wait 😉

Spike:

– Reserve Imperial out of 3

– Didn’t get Best of Breed – 10 in class

– 2nd out of 5 in one side class, unplaced in the other one

Annie:

– Awarded the Imperial. Which she didn’t actually need as she has already reached that level. But she was entered into that class due to the way the closing dates work and the fact that the Supreme where she got the final Imperial she needed, was after the closing date for this show…. I know it’s all confusing 🙂

– Didn’t get Best of Breed – 5 in class

– 1st out of 5 in one side class, 1st out of 2 in another side class and 2nd out of 5 in her final side class.

So overall the results were pretty good and the hoomins couldn’t wait to come back in and see them at lunchtime 🙂

Spike was happy to see them too and told them so in a very loud voice! 🙂

But then he chilled out a little and had a stretch on his blanket

Annie was being a good girl and was so happy to see them and gave them lots of kitty kisses and made cookies with her paws 🙂

Then it was time for the all important Best in Show judging! Spike wasn’t a contender as he’d not won his title class, nor best of breed, but Annie had won her Imperial, so she was in with a chance!

They read out all the pen numbers for the pedigree section, then it was on to Household Pets where they read out the non-Pedigree pet before finally reading out the pen number for Best in Show Pedigree Pet … and it was Annie!! Yay! This was the 2nd year in a row she won this!

So mummy took her to the posh pens where the Best in Show Non Pedigree Pet is judged against the Best in Show Pedigree Pet for Overall Best in Show Household Pet!

She was far more interested in what they were doing on that table behind her though, than what was going on for best in show!

Up against the gorgeous non pedigree pet for overall…

The judge took ages to decide between the two, she really struggled to make up her mind!

But in the end, she awarded it to the stunning non-Pedigree pet, so Annie wasn’t awarded the Overall Best in Show. But that mattered not, the hoomins were overjoyed and meanwhile, Annie went back to her posh pen, pulled down the drapes and carried on staring at what was going on at that table behind her!

But she loved her posh rosette and she won lots of lovely prizes, so she is a clever girl too 🙂

A short while later, it was time to pack away and head back home where we all had a special tea and some nice chicken treats (which I’d been dreaming about all day) 🙂

Take care my friends!
Love from Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spike

All the news from the Supreme Cat Show!

October 25, 2015 admin 6 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

Well, it’s been a while since my last blog, but I’m here again now! I blame my mummy of course… a couple of weeks ago she said she was too tired to help me write my blog and then last week, she traipsed off to the other end of the country and didn’t leave me with the password to log on to her computer! 😯 I really ought to get her trained much better… she’s not so bad with my favourite chicken treats nowadays, but she has a lot to learn otherwise! 😆

Anyway, enough of my little rant… this blog is of course meant to be all about the Supreme Cat show which took place yesterday! For those of you who don’t know, this is the pinnacle of the GCCF show calendar: it’s the feline equivalent of Crufts! So it’s very prestigious 🙂

The show actually started a day early for the hoomins as they went to the venue the day before to set up mummy’s trade stand 🙂 It’s getting so large now, it would have taken too long to do it in the morning for this show as the public are allowed in much earlier than for other shows.

Luckily, it’s not too far from our home, so although they were late serving our dinner, they did at least manage to come home to us all on Friday evening rather than going off on their gallivanting and leaving us with the cat sitter like they did just a few days previously! 😯 (can you tell, I’ve not quite forgiven them for that? I haven’t yet managed to train the cat sitter in the dispersal of my favourite chicken treats, so they are very few and far between when she is looking after us! 😯 )

Ahem… back to the Supreme… So the stall was pretty much set up on Friday but they still needed to be up much too early on Caturday for my liking, so I carried on having a nice catnap in my comfy Tigga Towers bed and let them get on with it 🙂 Pretty soon, the Peskies were whisked away with mummy and daddy so I was able to get a much better quality of sleep.

They got there within an hour or so with the quiet Caturday early morning traffic and the Peskies passed through vetting in. Daddy whisked them off to their decorated pens which he had prepared the day before whilst mummy put the finishing touches to the trade stand whilst she had the chance, as it got very busy indeed once the public were allowed in with lots of lovely comments about all the products 🙂

After a while, the judging commenced and Spike was going for his 2nd Imperial Grand Premier certificate. He was such a good boy when being judged and was a purrfect gentleman for the judge and her stewards 🙂

The judge checked him over very carefully, as she does for all the cats she assesses 🙂

After she had looked at all the cats, she made her decision! It was a long time coming as there was a delay for the rosettes, but when it did, we found out she decided to award another boy the Imperial and also best of breed, so it was not Spike’s day 🙂 But that’s cool! That’s what makes showing so exciting, you never know how well your cat will do 🙂 At least that meant Spike could go back to his comfortable pen and chill out for the rest of the day 🙂

Then it was Annie’s turn! She was also a very good girl for the judge and gave him her sweetest looks. He spent quite a while assessing her and then sat down to write his report 🙂 Annie was being held by the steward and tried to take a sneaky peak now and again, though she pretended she wasn’t really 🙂

And then he reached his decision, he had awarded Annie the Imperial certificate – yay! This means that Annie now has 5 Imperial certificates, so she can claim the title “Imperial Grand Master Cat” which is quite some achievement at such a young age. What a clever girl 🙂

But it wasn’t finished there – the judge then had to decide who was Best of Breed out of her and the boy who had also won his Imperial. So the judge asked the stewards to take them both out of their pens so he could look at them side by side

And then he decided… and said that both cats were very lovely, but only one could win and it was Annie! Yay! 🙂 What a nice man he is 🙂 🙂

So that meant that a little later on in the day, Annie was in the Best of Variety judging where all of the Pedigree Pet Shorthairs who had won their classes were up against each other for Best Shorthair Pedigree Pet!

It was therefore back to the ring for Annie where three judges were to make that decision. There were 5 or 6 cats in the running and again each one was looked at very carefully by each of the three judges.

Out of the these cats, they then narrowed it down to the top 3 and Annie was one of these three! How exciting! 🙂 🙂
But then… the final choice was made, and unfortunately it wasn’t Annie, so that was the end of the judging for her. But what a fantastic day she had had! And don’t forget, she is still so young, there could be lots more Supreme shows for her to go to in the future! 🙂 🙂

Whilst daddy looked after the peskies, mummy spent the rest of the time on the stall and met some very lovely people including lots of Bengal Cat World fans – Edna, Pam, Debbie, Diane, Gabriella to name but a few! And another of our friends, Nicola, was a very big help as she was helping out on the stall due to it being very busy and holding the fort very capably when mummy dashed off to watch a bit of the judging 🙂 Thanks to all of you for coming and for the lovely gifts lots of you gave us 🙂 🙂

But then, all too soon, the day drew to an end and the show was over. The exhibitors packed away their wonderfully-decorated pens and prepared their beautiful felines for their journeys home and the stalls were gradually dismantled and packed away for another day.

It was a wonderful day with a great atmosphere. Annie and Spike behaved impeccably and the stall had by far its best takings ever with some wonderful feedback from customers too.

It was then time to drive home and share out some of those lovely treats our friends had bought us 🙂 I was a big help in that respect 🙂

I hope you enjoyed reading my little tale 🙂
Take care my friends!

Love from Spot

xxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spike

Success at the Show!

October 4, 2015 admin 6 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

Are you having a nice weekend, my friends? We had a fantastic one! Or at least Annie and Spike did! I think it was one of our most successful show days ever 😆

So, here’s a bit of background before I get into the detail as it’s all a little confusing for a cat like me 😉 So this is what my mummy told me…

Yesterday, there were 4 smaller shows all taking place at the same time in the same location. Within the cat shows we go to (GCCF), you get “All Breed Shows” where, as the name implies, all breeds recognised by the GCCF are eligible to take part; and you get “breed shows” where there are only either one or a few breeds of cat eligible.

One of the advantages of being a Pedigree Household Pet like Annie is that you can go to all of these shows, as they always have a HHP section 🙂

So yesterday we had the Tabby Cat Club, which Spike was entered into, he couldn’t enter any of the others. Then we had the Burmese show, the Colourpointed British Shorthair Show, and the Egyptian Mau show. Annie was entered in the Egyptian Mau show (Title Class, Best of Colour Class, and Side classes) AND the Colourpointed show (Title and BOC only), as HHPs could enter a max of two shows if desired. See! I told you it was confusing!

It was a pretty routine, if foggy, drive to the show – another early start but they all arrived safe and sound and went through all the usual stuff for a show 😉 Then before you knew it, it was time for morning judging to start 🙂 Being 4 smaller shows meant that the results were quite quick at being displayed, and Annie’s were first so let’s see how she did…

In the Colourpointed show, she was awarded her Imperial and Best in Colour too!

Then for the Mau show – she again got her Imperial and Best in Colour! For her side classes, she came 1st in the class “The Cat the Judge would most like to take home” so she was unbeaten with one result to come, Prettiest Female, and then it was there! Daddy went to look and saw that she came….second! 😯 Ah well …. you can’t win ’em all.

Still… Annie had lots of pretty rosettes on her pen 🙂

But the best was yet to come! My mummy’s friend came over and said to my mummy she was very lucky to have a bottle of Prosecco on Annie’s pen! Mummy hadn’t realised, so she rushed over there straight away (amazing what a nice bottle of fizz can achieve 😯 )

But better than the fizz, was the reason it was there! Annie had won Best in Show Pedigree Pet! 🙂 Yay!

She was beaten, however, by the non-Pedigree Pet for Overall Best in Show Household Pet, so because it’s a smaller show, they only had the Overall BiS in the posh BiS pens, so that’s why Annie didn’t make it over there this time 🙂

Here’s a pic of that beautiful rosette (and fizz), taken at home:

And here’s her other rosettes, taken at home today 🙂

Phew! So Annie now has 4 Imperial Grand Master Cat certificates, and needs just one more to be awarded the title “Imperial Grand Master Cat”. But the next show she is entered into is the Supreme Cat Show – the biggest and the best in the country! There’ll be tough competition there for sure!

Now onto our Spikey boy….

He was quite chilled at the show, as ever, and started off the day alert and ready to go! 🙂

Unlike Annie, he had not been awarded an Imperial certificate before (to be fair, he’d only been in one Imperial class before 😉 ) and he was up against 3 other handsome boys, including our friends’ Egyptian Mau, so it was a tough class and no chickens were being counted 😆

His results took a bit longer than Annie’s but they were worth waiting for as, not only did he win the Imperial class, he also won Best of Breed too! Clever boy!

Then for his side classes (which have pretty boring titles compared to the HHP ones 🙂 ) – he was in the Junior Neuter class which he came 1st in and then in another tough class of 4, he also came first in the Visitor class! Wow! This meant that Spike had had a “Red Card” day, which basically means that he won every class he was entered into!

So, remember I told you that my mummy went rushing to Annie’s pen to ~~make sure no-one nicked~~ have a look at the bottle of Prosecco and her rosette? Well, when she was there, she also visited Spike (they were very close to each other at this show) and would you believe it? There on his pen was a “Best of Variety Neuter” Rosette! This means out of all the neuters in the “Foreign” section, Spike was judged to be the best!

Well, as you can imagine, my mummy nearly jumped around the hall in glee! 🙂 🙂 But instead she went rushing round telling everyone she knew and insisted that they all came to look at his pen … “sigh” …. I’m just glad I wasn’t there as I would have had to disown her, I’m afraid 😆

So after all the excitement, mummy went back to her stall and actually managed to serve some customers 🙂 And a little while later, they called out on the tannoy the cats that were being put forward to the Overall Best in Show Pens. So, this is where, for each category (Foreign, British, Oriental etc) you get Best Adult (entire cats), Best Kitten, and Best Neuter – these are Best of Variety. The judges then choose which is the best on the day of out those three, and they are the ones that go in the Best in Show posh pens! And from there, all of the different winners from each category are judged against each other for Overall Best in Show!

Well… my mummy had just finished serving a customer when they called out the cats to go to the posh pens. And wouldn’t you know it? Spike’s pen number was called!! 😆 People say they have never seen someone rush around the floor in such excitement before! And the best thing was, my daddy and our breeder, Sue, were stood near Spike’s pen, but had not heard the announcement so were completely unaware! Not for long though, as I’m sure you can imagine by now 😉

So off Spikey went to the posh pens and soon made himself at home!

Then it was time for the overall judging. The judge came and looked at every cat and cast her expert eye over them 🙂 Spike was a very good boy and let her take as long as she needed 🙂

And then it was time to make up her mind! And she chose…. the British!! Oh well, like we said for Annie, you can’t win ’em all, and everyone was as pleased as punch (or even prosecco) that Spike had got as far as he did as it was a fantastic achievement! (btw – amongst all his prizes was a nice bottle of pink fizz for my mummy to ~~guzzle~~ share too! 🙂

Here’s Spike’s collection of rosettes 🙂

So there we have it! A fantastic day, that will remain a fond memory for many moons to come.

Take care my friends!
Love from

Spot

xxxxxxxx

Annie, Cat Shows, Spike

Wow! What a show! :)

September 13, 2015 admin 6 Comments

Hello my friends, Spot here!

We hope you have had a lovely weekend? It’s been a wonderful show weekend for us here in our World 🙂 After a few disappointing results at recent cat shows, the excitement from yesterday more than made up for them! 🙂

And of course it was little Annie pesky who stole all the limelight… Spike pesky says he hopes one day to have his turn too but in the meantime, he was practising his Clint look in the cat garden today. He thinks he needs to look more mean and moody to impress the judges, but I’m not so sure 😯

So back to yesterday… it was dark and raining when the hoomins woke us up… that didn’t bode well for the day. The rain carried on pretty much all the way to the show which was in Manchester, UK, so not as far as some shows they go to, around an hour and a half’s drive.

The hoomins and the peskies got there nice and early, as usual, before anyone else and before anything was open so they had to sit in the car and chat amongst themselves for a few minutes and listen to the rain. Pretty soon, others started to arrive, so mummy could unload the car (getting very wet in the process) and start to set the stall up. Then the vets were there shortly afterwards so daddy could take the peskies to be vetted in and settle them in their pens where they had some more breakfast 🙂

A couple of hours passed… more people and their furry friends had arrived in the show hall which was full of hoomin and cat chatter; mummy’s stall was all set up and it was time for the judging to start! As per the usual GCCF rules, the judging is anonymous so all the hoomins have to leave their cats for the morning, whilst anxiously looking for the results on the boards as they are posted.

And what great results they had (mostly)! Here they are in detail 🙂

Spike:

He came first out of three in his title class, but the judge decided not to award the Imperial certificate. My mummy said she was expecting this to be the case, so it wasn’t a surprise and still nice that he came 1st out of three lovely cats.

There was a bit of a wait to find out his Best of Breed class, and when it was posted, my mummy was disappointed to see it was awarded to the cat in pen 160. Spike was in pen 166. …. then she thought she’d have a look at the lovely Bengal in pen 160 – only to find out he was a Russian Blue! 😯 😯 Now, only a Bengal cat is eligible to win Best of Breed for Bengals!

So my mummy went back to the results board and could see that the judge had not written the second ‘6’ very well! It looked like a zero at first glance, but when you looked closer, it was actually a 6! Pen 166! Spike had won BoB after all!

So my mummy went to the show managers desk to clear up the confusion, and they confirmed that pen 166 had won! The show manager went over to pen 160 with my mummy where the Russian Blue had two BoB rosettes! Now, of course, in a single show you can only win BoB once – twice is being greedy 😆 But of course one of the rosettes was Spike’s and pretty soon it was placed on his pen where it should be 🙂 🙂 It’s a good job mummy checked!

That just left Spike’s side classes – he came second out of three cats in both of those, so not wonderful, but not terrible either. Kind of in the middle 😆

Annie:

Wow! What a day Annie had!

She was also going for her Imperial certificate but was up against two other beautiful girls. Luckily, the hoomins didn’t have to wait long as the results were posted very quickly… and Annie had won! Fantastic! 😆

Then, it was an anxious wait for Best in Class… she was up against 3 boys, two of whom were far more experienced and had much higher titles than she’s got (they were Olympian Silvers)… but Annie won again!

Then the side classes…. the first result posted was in a class of just two… but she came 2nd 🙁 Hmmmmm…..

Then the next – in a class of 6 she also came second! Much better!

But the best was yet to come in terms of side classes: In a class of 7 for “Cat the Judge Would Most Like to Take home” Annie came first!

What great results! Everyone was sooooo pleased! But wait! There was more good news! She only went and won “Best in Show Pedigree Pet” didn’t she? Coming out on top over lots of wonderful other pedigree pets too! What an achievement and her first Best in Show at a large all-breed show!

So now I would normally share some pics, but I don’t have any at the moment of the show day 🙁 Instead we took some earlier in the cat garden to show off the lovely rosettes that were won 🙂

Annie was sitting in the laundry basket being silly (as normal), so my mummy decided to pin her rosettes on there!

But they are so big, you can’t see her very well!

So Annie decided to see if she could nibble on them to make them smaller 😉

That Best in Show rosette is bigger than she is! 🙂

Of course, Spike had a well-earned rosette too, so here they all are together 🙂

And here’s what everyone really wants – the title certificates! 🙂

Annie now has two Imperial certificates so needs three more, each from different judges, to enable her to claim the title of Imperial Grand Master Cat 🙂 Yesterday was Spike’s first attempt at the Imperial level, so he still needs 5 from different judges in order to be an Imperial Grand Premier Cat 🙂

Phew! After all the excitement of yesterday, we spent today playing in the cat garden and having lots of catnaps 🙂

Take care my friends!

Love from

Spot

xxxxxxx

Spike:

Annie:

Tales from a Spotty cat