Yes, it was a purr-fect day

Published in The Chronicle March 5, 2007

We were going to the cat show.
My brother, my friend and me.
I was going because I really wanted to see all the cats.
They were going because I was schlepping them there.
They lasted, um, about five minutes.
"Know what it smells like when they put 500 cats in a gym?" my friend asked.
"Like they put 500 cats in a gym," he answered himself.
I don't care. I didn't smell anything. Besides, it was 225 cats, not 500.
I love the cat show. The North Coast Cat Fanciers group holds one every year at Clearview High School. It was at this very show 12 years ago that I bought a skinny little loudmouth I named Charlie Chan. He's sitting on my lap right now, no longer skinny but just as loud as the day I bought him.
If you have never been to a cat show, let me set the scene for you.
Vendors of feline paraphernalia line the hallways leading to the gym. They sell cat toys and cat beds and anything else a cat could ever want.
In the gym, cages of cats sit on rows of tables that stretch from one side of the room to the other. Their owners sit on chairs in front of them. Some are friendly, some are not (the owners, not the cats). I saw more than one sign that said, "Do not touch; owner bites."
Four judging tables line one of the walls and there are so many categories, judging goes on all day long.
I peer into cage after cage. Fluffy cats? Not for me. I'm in search of Siameses and their look-alike brethren, the Oriental Shorthair.
Ah-ha. I finally spotted my favorite - an all-white Oriental Shorthair. He looked just like a white Siamese.
He was curled up asleep in his cage - which was actually more like a zippered pup tent - with a chocolate-point Siamese that looked exactly like my Charlie did 11 years and about nine pounds ago.
The white cat's name was Versace. His Siamese friend's name was Zhivago.
As I looked at them, a woman came over and took the white cat out.
"He's beautiful," I told her.
"Thanks. It's his turn to be shown. When I come back, you can hold him."
Hold him? Me?
With that, she went scurrying toward the judges' tables.
When it was Versace's turn on the judge's table, he was a star. His beauty was overshadowed only by his personality. He batted at the cat toy the judge waved in front of him. He was quite charming. A winner.
But he didn't win! The judge put a Second Place ribbon on his cage.
How could that be?
Versace's owner, a woman from Denver, took the beautiful white cat out of the numbered cage and walked back toward her table. I waited a couple of minutes, then I followed.
When she saw me, she said, "Oh, do you want to hold him?"
She had been serious!
"Can I?"
"Sure," she said and she handed him to me.
"I can't believe he didn't win," I told her.
"I can't believe it either. He's No. 1 in his region," she said, "and 25th in the country. Oh, well."
"Do you win money at these things?" I asked her.
She laughed.
"No. It costs me money, a lot of money.
"But, when he wins one of these," she said as the back of her hand brushed the ribbons attached to the front of his cage, "I feel pretty."