Monday, May 26, 2014

Retrospective: Pippin knows POSE

Pippin around 6 months old
The camera was constantly being pointed in Pippin's direction. I never used flash, which is why so many of my baby Pippin pictures are of him being sleepy. It was the only time he was still enough to get an in-focus shot! And this was an old camera, my mom's; so it wasn't the latest and greatest in technology. And fifteen years ago, the latest and greatest wasn't digital. It was just a better film camera.

So I have the computer apart again, who knows why--I don't remember and my photo album doesn't say why. Pippin liked metal. Cool metal. He was always hot. That was another weird thing about him that I wasn't used to. Pizza and Tiger were solar panels, always searching out the warmest, most intense sunspot in the room. Pippin went for the cool drafty areas.

The big side of my computer, when placed flat on the desk, was irresistible. It attracted Pippin almost instantly. I reached for the camera, and for the first time I said, "Pose for me." I really wasn't thinking about what I was saying. I didn't expect anything different to happen. 
Pose for me!
He drew himself up, nice and neat, put out one immaculate white gloved paw, and gave a perfect model's stare off into space elegantly gaze.

I was so startled I almost dropped the camera. I caught the strap, got the camera back into my hands, and only then took the picture. And Pippin held the pose during this entire clumsy episode.

Then he changed position and posed again.
A goofy pose this time
He waited each time till he heard the camera shutter click. Oh and believe me, he got plenty of praise. Such a good kitty to pose for me! Want to pose again? Of course, yes, that's beautiful! How about again?
The third pose
I really don't know if he would have kept going, but I didn't want to make "pose" a boring thing. I thought perhaps if I kept it interesting, he'd do it again sometime.

And he did. All I had to do was ask him to "Pose for me" and I'd get a lovely set up pose. Which he would then hold until I took the picture. I never asked him to pose while he was playing, though; I figured that was a bit much to expect of a kitten (no matter how big he is, and by the way, he's still just 6 months old in these pictures).

As he grew up, I no longer had to even ask him to pose. If I had the camera out, he'd look at me and see if I wanted a posed shot or a candid one, which usually he could deduce from my body language, and then he'd either pose or go back to doing what he was doing. Sometimes if he didn't want a picture of what he was doing to be taken, he'd deliberately pose. Like when I tried to get a picture of him sleeping in the sink. I never did get that shot!

How he learned what the phrase "pose for me" meant, I'll never know. It was very useful, though!



Retrospective: Pippin and Tiger

Tiger was a dignified cat. She was the sort of dignified that required several pounds of being overweight and a stately walk to go with it. She was not about to lower herself to spats with any kitten, no matter how indignant she was about his arrival.
Her old bones liked lots of cushioning.
Because, since I didn't know any better, their introduction consisted of me putting Pippin down in the room and letting Tiger deal with the new kitten as she would. I was lucky Tiger was old and stately and dignified, or I probably would have had a cat fight on my hands at some point.
Watching
I wasn't completely ignorant, though. I didn't force the issue, or plop Pippin down right in front of her. I gave her the room to ignore him if she wanted to (and yes, she wanted to very much). But even a crotchety fourteen year old cat couldn't completely quell her curiosity, so she watched him. From around corners, and in this case, over a pillow.

On rare occasion she got closer to him as long as there was a barrier in the way. Here they are on a corner bookshelf that became a regular mediator between them.
Little Mr. Adorable

She has her doubts
A month later they had reached an agreement. It was along the lines of "if you let me alone I'll let you alone." The worst she ever did was hiss at him.
Tiger realizes he's on the shelf above her

Intolerable. She will leave.

Pippin tries to be helpful and leave first
Tiger didn't realize how much she'd gotten used to him until he disappeared. She and I and he all went to the vet one Monday morning. Tiger went because she had a funny solid nodule on her back, and what with Pizza dying of cancer earlier that year, I was freaked out about anything even the slightest bit odd. (It turned out to be an "indoor" pimple, the kind that form under the skin instead of mostly above it.) Pippin went because it was time to have his fatherly ambitions curtailed. I went because neither of them could drive a car.

It's interesting to me that I don't remember how I brought them. I only had one cat carrier because Tiger and Pizza always shared one--they took comfort from each other's presence. I know that a little later I put Pippin and Tiger both in harnesses. I think this time I must have had Tiger in the carrier and Pippin on a harness, because I couldn't put the two of them in the same carrier, and I would have gone with what Tiger was familiar with to help with reassuring her.

When later I put Tiger in a harness, she amazingly went from a cat who meowed every ten seconds in the car on the way to the vet to a cat who rode in the front seat and didn't say a word. I think, although it's not like she could tell me for sure, that she got carsick in the confines of the carrier, and when she could look around at long distances, she didn't feel sick to her stomach. Like a human that doesn't get carsick as long as they can look out the front window. She had never thrown up in the car, so obviously it wasn't that bad, just bad enough she complained about it. She wasn't meowing because she knew she was going to the vet's office: she liked the vet's office because everyone fussed over her and said she looked so pretty.

In any case, this first co-visit to the vet resulted in me taking Tiger home without Pippin, since he had to stay there all day for his surgery. I'd taken the day off work, and during the middle of the day I took my car to get its spare tire fixed.

Mom told me that while I was gone, Tiger went prowling through the house, crying. Mom checked food (always an important thing to Tiger) but there was plenty. Litter wasn't too dirty, water was fine. Mom couldn't figure out what Tiger was upset about. And then she got a strange idea, and she said to Tiger, (not really expecting this to be what was wrong, but she'd tried everything else), "Don't worry, she'll bring him back this afternoon. He'll be back, don't worry about him."

And Tiger immediately shut up and settled down to wait.

When I brought Pippin home that evening, I was amazed at the change in Tiger. She didn't hiss at him. She even slept with him (although not in a pile, but that could simply have been Pippin's preference. He got so hot that he preferred not to sleep against anybody.)
I couldn't believe my eyes!
And she played with him. Not full-contact games, of course. You must keep in mind her dignity. But other games. When I was on my bed, watching tv, the two of them would be with me. Tiger would be on my lap, facing toward my knees, and Pippin would be on his back, against my side, with my arm curled around him. I would be lying mostly flat. Pippin was fascinated by her short little tail. It wasn't short, not really, but to him it was, since his tail was as long as he was. And Tiger would flip her tail over into his lap, under his front paws, and allow him to pat at it with his paws.

When she got tired of having her tail played with, she'd flip it over to the other side where he couldn't reach. Only one time she was lazy, and instead of actually moving her tail, she turned her head and hissed at him to stop playing with it. He froze, his paws right above her tail, and his paws were twitching almost imperceptibly as he tried with all his kitten brain to obey her and not play with it, but he just .... couldn't .... quite .... manage ...

I reached down and flipped her tail to the other side, saying in a mild scolding tone, "Now, Tiger, that was just mean. He's a kitten, how do you expect him to resist a temptation like that?" I never knew how much she understood of English, but I do know she never did that to him again.

Another game they played was King of the Hill. I had a bookshelf and a desk back to back (I was living in a large basement room with enough furniture to furnish a house. I know because when I did buy a house, the furniture I had fit quite nicely into it without a lot of room left over!). The bookshelf had another small bookshelf on it. The desk was a rollback. So Pippin had to learn to climb up the rollback or jump up onto the small bookshelf from the large one.

This meant that for weeks, Tiger could get up on the highest point (the small bookshelf) and mock him. You may remember he wasn't the most coordinated of kittens, and jumping and scrabbling for a hold wasn't exactly in his repertoire at first. 

He learned, quickly, by watching how she did it. And finally, he got to be King of the Hill! Tiger pretended she didn't care. She pretended very dramatically and projected quite a lot of indignant annoyance, in order to make his victory more satisfactory. Tiger did actually have a kind streak to her. You just had to realize she wasn't going to express it in an obvious way!
Finally, Pippin gets to be King of the Hill!

Upstairs they slept as double-decker cats on my mom's chair. Pippin didn't know it, of course, but this was how Tiger and Pizza slept on this chair: Tiger on top, Pizza in the chair. Perhaps Tiger felt that things had come full circle and that life was okay again. Pippin was different, of course, a kitten and annoying as kittens are, but perhaps not so annoying that one couldn't be happy to have him around.
Everything is as it should be



Monday, May 19, 2014

Retrospective: Pippin and the Hornet

Most of the time when I'd come home, Pippin would be waiting in the kitchen (which is where the door to the outside was) to greet me. Sometimes he'd sleep through my car noise arrival, and then I would go find him to let him know I was home. It was rare, though, that he wasn't waiting in the kitchen.

One day in April of 2011, he wasn't in the kitchen. But he wasn't fast asleep either. He was in the living room, watching something aerial with much fascination. He acknowledged me when I came in from the kitchen with a glance, but went right back to staring at something.

Something flying. Something flying around the living room. It settled on a curtain long enough for me to see what it was.
This wasn't actually the same day, but it's Pippin
in the living room so it counts, sort of.
It was like a bee, in that it had a segmented body with antenae on one end and a stinger on the other end. But it was like a bee in the same way that a Boeing 777 is like an origami paper airplane. This thing was huge! It could have starred in its own Syfy channel late night flick. It looked like an escapee from a Ray Harryhausen movie.

It was terrifying. A part of my brain began screaming and ran and hid in the depths. Unfortunately I had to remain calm and do something useful. The rest of me began to think about what to do.

My first thought: Let's just grab Pippin and abandon the house. Well, okay, not abandon completely--we can go sit on Mom & Daddy's front porch until Daddy gets home and he can take care of it.

There were two problems with this course of action. First, it was incredibly embarrassing. I was a grown woman, years older than college, much less high school, and as a grown woman, I should be perfectly capable of taking care of this sort of thing by myself.

Second and more importantly, I had a friend coming over for movie night. In about a half an hour. And my dad didn't come home for another three or four.

Fine. So I had to be an adult about this. But now what? Do I catch it or kill it?

I got the imagery that goes with the amount of splat a bug that big would make, and the cleanup involved. Hasty shudder. Okay, we don't kill it then. Catch it.

Catch it?! I don't even want to get near it!

Pippin, still fascinated by the flying monstrosity, was also a little puzzled at me standing there, seemingly paralyzed. Wasn't this such a cool thing to watch? Look at it flying all around the ceiling fans and the windows and through the air!

I have a feeling Pippin sometimes thought I was a bit of a wet blanket when it came to enjoying obviously enjoyable things.

Then I remembered I had a bug catcher. It had a long plastic tube with a battery powered vacuum on one end and a plug that you stuck in the other end once you had the bug safely in the tube. This was a marvelous invention with one major problem: the vacuum wasn't strong enough. It wasn't strong enough to corral a camel cricket, much less this escapee from a horror film!

But I tried it anyway, not knowing what else to do. Sure enough, the flying whatever it was didn't even seem to notice that it was supposed to be being sucked into a large tube.

Sigh. Now what?

Well, I also had a net from the time I had an aquarium and fish. It was a large net for an aquarium fish. It might actually just fit the thing currently fascinating Pippin and terrorizing me. The problem was, it was in the kitchen, and I'd have to take my eyes off the creature in order to go get it.

"I have to go get something to catch it with," I told Pippin. "You keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't get away."

Did I expect him to understand me? Not really. That's a fairly complicated concept. I was mostly making myself feel better. I was hoping I could duck into the kitchen, grab the net, and come back into the living room before it managed to disappear. If something that enormous could disappear. Knowing my luck, it could.

My luck, such as it was, held. As in, I couldn't find the net, search though I might, and when I came back into the living room, it had, quite certainly, disappeared.

I said some unrepeatable things. I looked very carefully all over for it. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, and finally I realized Pippin wanted me to look at him. I don't know how I came to this conclusion, given that he was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, not even looking at me. He was staring in one direction, eyes not moving, ears not twitching.

Feeling like an idiot, because I should have checked in with the predator in the house first, I followed his gaze, and sure enough, pinned on the end of it (so to speak) was the creature, hanging in the fold of the curtain.

My friend was bound to be here any minute. I had to get this thing out of the house. Maybe try the bug vacuum catcher thingy again, now that the critter was not flying through the air?

I crept up on the creature very carefully. Pippin watched with interest. I turned the vacuum on, and eased the tube over the bee-thing, and then quickly plugged the end of the tube once I had the creature in it. The vacuum did help, actually; it kept the thing from being able to launch, at least.
Here it is, the dreadful beast!
I took photos, and looked it up online. The only thing close to it was a hornet. I didn't realize hornets came in extra large. I took a photo with a quarter to show people just how big it was.

And by the way, it seems a whole lot bigger when it's flying around, loose in your living room! 

I took it outside, still in the tube, obviously. Just as my friend pulls into the driveway. She got out of the car, and I asked, while she was still too far away to see it, if she wanted to see this monstrous bee I caught. I couldn't remember if she was one of my friends who finds this sort of thing interesting or extremely creepy. 

She's actually kind of in the middle, but since I had it safely corralled, she came over to take a cautious look. She said later she was glad she had, because she wouldn't have believed it was that big.

Then I had her go to the door. I waited until the pacing hornet got to the end opposite the plug. Then I quickly took the plug out and made a kind of baseball bat hitting a baseball action with the bug catcher, flinging the hornet out into the air.

And then I ran for the kitchen door without looking behind me, having both of us duck in and shut the door very quickly, in case the hornet decided to take revenge. 

After all that, Pippin was tired and took a nap while we had supper and watched our movie, safe from the predations of overly large bees.
sleepy kitty


Sunday, May 18, 2014

Retrospective: The Little Red Kitten

Twice fifteen years ago ...

My brother had Tiger and I had a brown tabby cat named Pizza. (I have a hard time talking about him, partially because it hurts still, and partially because so many people get stuck on the name and are sniggering under their breath whenever I say it, so often I feel it's pointless to try to talk about him.)

Then my brother grew up and left home, and Tiger, unable to go with him, considered herself abandoned and in her opinion, I was not an adequate substitute. She would allow me to provide a lap for her, when she felt like having lap cat time. She would spend time with me if she wanted a human. Sometimes she preferred my mother to be the human. Sometimes, not often, my father. I was never close to Tiger. She was a bit of a tyrant and cranky to boot, and I although I tried dutifully to love her, as she had no one else ... she was very difficult to love.

I loved my cat Pizza, very much, and he rather took care of me. He was my emotional guardian during some times that weren't so nice, and he loved me so much that even when he was dying of a cancer that was visibly eating him alive, he didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave me alone. It was the hardest decision I ever made. And I still don't know if it was the right one.

Fifteen years ago ...

And so there I was, in the agony of grief, accompanied by Tiger, who may not have loved me but she certainly had loved her brother cat. I knew what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to adopt another cat to love and not wallow in your grief. I didn't think I could possibly love anyone else after Pizza died, but I tried to do what I was supposed to do.

Only I couldn't bear the thought of adopting a random kitten and having him or her turn out like Tiger; a cat who merely tolerated me, and my inability to truly love her a constant source of regret. I wanted a cat like Pizza, a cat who loved me back. There'd been a cat before Pizza. Tiger's other littermate, a girl kitty I chose and named Little Miss Muffet. She'd run away while she and Tiger were still indoor-outdoor cats. (Tiger became indoors only after that, and when Pizza joined us, so was he.) Little Miss Muffet hadn't loved me any more than Tiger did.

So I looked up cat breeds, finding cats who had Pizza's peculiar broad shoulders and stocky body, and then read to see if they matched his personality. Pizza had short hair, not long hair, and he wasn't an enormous cat (although you could have fooled me when he was on my lap and incredibly heavy), but the cat breed who most matched him was the Maine Coon.

Then I looked up cat breeders and found one not twenty minutes from my house. I knew you were supposed to look at several breeders to make sure you found one that wasn't just churning out kittens, a backyard breeder, but instead one who cared about the bloodlines and making sure they weren't inbreeding and stuff like that.

I went to this breeder (and I'm not going to name names--they were not a good place and they shut down years ago) to do the checking them out thing that you were supposed to do. I'd never been to any other cattery. I really didn't know what I was looking for.

I did have enough sense to know myself, and to know that I shouldn't play with or pick up any kitten already promised to someone else. How horrible it would be to fall in love with a kitten I couldn't have!

The woman showed me around. Her house was spotless. You'd never know she had any cats. That was because all the cats were in (large) cages in the basement. It was a nice basement, not dark or damp like ours had been in the house when I was little (we'd moved since then). But it quite took me aback, seeing all the cats in cages like that.

Note here: just because a cattery does not raise their kittens "underfoot" doesn't make them a bad cattery. But it does mean the kittens haven't a single clue about human house life, which can be a problem if you don't have time to teach them all about everything. Imagine bringing a human toddler into your house who'd never seen sinks or toilets or washing machines or beds. They'd spend half the time terrified and half the time getting themselves into serious trouble!

When a cat was going to have her kittens, she got moved to a cage upstairs in the sunroom. I didn't really like that arrangement either. But what did I know? I was just making mental notes, reserving judgement until I had something to compare it to.

The cats all seemed very friendly and eager to see you. I didn't realize at the time, and in fact only now that I've seen how Max reacted to me when I was gone all day and he was so lonely and bored, but these cats were too eager to see me, too eager to be petted.

And then the woman showed me a litter that was ready to go to their homes. In fact, most of them had already gone. I think there was only one or two other ones left. But that one, she said, doesn't have anybody to take him yet.
Before he was Pippin, younger than 3 months
There was this little red kitten. Curled up in the litterbox, of all places. I carefully scooped him up. He woke up when I lifted him to my shoulder for the very first time.

He looked into my face. He gave a little contented sigh. And then he went back to sleep, cuddled up against my shoulder, all the trust in the world, right there in one little orange furry bundle.

I hadn't come to buy a kitten. I was certainly not ready to bring a kitten home. I was not doing this. No. I was going to scope out several breeders. I was going to do this thing by the book. I was certainly not taking this little red kitten home with me.

And I didn't. I managed to get through the entire night without calling her back and saying, panicky, you didn't sell him yet did you? I want him!
Pippin comes home with me
I had to wait, though, to take him home. To this day I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd gone and gotten him the very next day. But I was going on a week long trip to visit relatives, and what would I have done with a brand new kitten? (Cancelled the trip is what I should have done.)

When I brought him home it was late August 1999. He was four months old. When I took him to my vet for his well-baby checkup, she saw cataracts in his eyes. He was just a kitten! There was a specialist, an ophthalmologist who mostly worked in the next state over but once a month came to a vet place near me. I took him there, and the ophthalmologist confirmed the presence of partial cataracts. 

He said Pippin could probably see as well as a near-sighted human could see. Well, I was a near-sighted human (extremely) and I figured we'd get along just fine. The vet specialist also said that two things can cause cataracts in a very young kitten. Either genetic birth defect, or abuse to the mother while she was pregnant.

Well, I thought I should call the breeder right away to let her know that those two cats shouldn't be bred together again, since obviously there were bad genetics at work here. I wasn't expecting her to offer to take him back or even to offer a partial refund; I simply thought she should know something which affected her breeding program.

She didn't offer to take him back. She didn't offer a partial refund. She flatly refused to believe me and said I didn't know what I was talking about. So I had the vet mail her a copy of the report. She never contacted me. I didn't contact her again, because by now I had seen quite enough of the timid, terrified way Pippin behaved to have concluded that since the breeder didn't care about the genetics, it was because she knew darn well how he came to have cataracts, and it was because she or her husband had abused Pippin's mother. Because Pippin certainly acted as if humans had abused him.

I still don't know for sure if he was abused before he came to me. That woman could have been inbreeding and just didn't care that the genetics were bad for those two cats. Pippin was always a very cautious, careful cat who wanted permission before he changed anything about his environment. He might have simply been born that way; I have since heard of other cats who were like that. I mean, apparently, most Persians are like that, which is why you see them in houses with lots of decorative items (they won't play with something unless you tell them it's okay). 

But I do know that you can clearly see the cataract in his left eye (which was always the bad one) in the photo she took of him before I ever saw him, the photo she had on her website for him. And perhaps that is why no one had bought him before I came along, blissfully ignorant of the true extent of some people's greed. 

I'm glad no one else got him. Very few people would have understood a cat like Pippin. I believe he and I were destined to be together. I didn't mind the partial blindness, or the cardiomyopathy that developed later. I wouldn't give up the time we had with each other for anything. He was such a special, loving, wonderful personality.



Saturday, May 10, 2014

CFA Cat Show

On May 3rd, I drove two hours to a cat show. I'd never been to a cat show before. This was the Cat Fancier's Association (CFA) version. TICA is the other major cat show association.

I'd decided I really didn't like the TICA feral look in the Maine Coons and had chosen a different breeder, who invited me to come to the cat show to both meet her and also, just because it's a cat show. (You don't need an invitation. You can go to a cat show, just walk in the door and pay your entry fee. If you're just coming to look, it's extremely reasonable. This one was just $6!)

The cat show was in a large exposition type building. The kind where it's basically just a huge enclosed space and people can arrange stuff in it for whatever they're doing. This one had tables set longways across the space. The tables are the tables you are most familiar with for mass events: the rectangular white ones that the legs fold in from each end. Along the right side (as I walked in) were the judge's "booths". Each booth had four tables lining the back and each side, and then the front had a table in it, so the judge had a little corridor to walk.

Right before the cats were going to be judged, they'd call over the intercom for "Maine Coon Kitten 45" and if that was your cat, you would hastily extract your cat from his/her waiting tent that you'd brought and bring the cat to the judging table.
The temporary cages with Maine Coons waiting
their turns. You can see the clips!
The cats were put in temporary cages (seriously temporary--they were held together by those black metal clips you use for when a paperclip isn't sufficient) and the judge would take each cat out and put her/him on the judging table, which had a stand with a sisal scratching post on one side.
Looking at a sleepy red tabby Maine Coon
This cat was so mellow he fell asleep in his
 temporary cage waiting for his turn to be judged.
Some of the judges were women and some were men; the one I watched (with the Maine Coons) was a guy. He'd take one cat out, put him/her on the stand, and then use a feather toy to coax the cat up onto the post. That way he could see the cat's conformation without having to manhandle her/him. Of course he's also supposed to look at the way the head is shaped and all that, so there was a bit of manhandling.

One person showing their cat told me, indicating her cat "this is a five hour grooming job." The lady I came to meet had brought three cats ... does that mean she spent fifteen hours grooming? Of course, we're not talking just combing them out; we're talking bath, blowdry (which for the Maine Coons probably takes the most time!) and then combing. With lots of different combs and stuff. If you've been to a hair stylist, you know the difference between the way you usually put your hair up and the way they do it. (Unless you're one of these amazing people who actually spends an hour with their hair and makeup each day--then I don't suppose there's much difference).

So, no, you aren't really allowed to touch the cats. But if you are willing to use their alcohol wipes to clean your hands (so you don't spread disease potentially between cats), some of them will let you scratch ears (where it's not so hard to "repair" the rumple damage you do the fur!) and some of them prefer you pet the back end (where you're not putting your hands and possible viruses and bacteria near the cat's mouth/nose area) and some of them not at all.

You get better luck the later in the day it gets, because although I didn't quite follow what was happening with the ribbon distribution and judging, I think that what happens throughout the day are elimination rounds, and if your cat makes it to a judging session late in the day, it's one of the top cats. Which means there are going to be cats later in the day who are done for the day, and then their people don't mind so much about you messing up the grooming job. They still mind about the bacteria transmission, but like I said, some of them bring wipes or the squeeze bottles of waterless cleaning stuff that you can use first and then they'll let you pet.
Dylan (Ragdoll) and Steve
I met a Ragdoll from Sal-Shire Ragdolls whose name was Dylan. This is Steve (Sal's husband) holding Dylan. Dylan was a companion cat for the younger cat they'd brought to be actually in the show, so Dylan wasn't in any danger of being too mussed up for the show since he wasn't in it.

I had lots of interesting conversations with perfect strangers. Some of them, when I told them I was probably getting Maine Coons, wanted to persuade me that their particular breed was better. (There weren't many of these, actually, simply because when someone is looking for a Maine Coon, someone with say, a Siamese knows you're not headed for their end of cat-dom.) But Ragdolls have similar temperments to Maine Coons. I said that I wasn't sure about the hair-care. One of the things I like about Maine Coons is that despite being long-haired, they don't require a lot of combing (generally once a week will do it).

Sal promptly insisted that Ragdolls weren't all that hard to care for either, and that their coat fur was different "almost more like a rabbit's; here, feel" and offered me the back of her show-cat (not Dylan) to pet. I wasn't sure about this (already knowing the grooming requirements for show cats, even if I hadn't yet heard the 5 hour figure) but she said it was fine, so I petted. And really, it was very silky without feeling sleek. A very different texture. I don't know about the rabbit comment. I've only once petted a rabbit.

I also met a woman whose breed of choice were Birmans, and they nearly managed to seduce me away from Maine Coons. Mostly they didn't because, although I didn't ask price, I know Birmans are much rarer than Maine Coons and she was probably asking more than I could afford, especially for two!

The lady I came to meet was Ginger McFadden from Br'er Coon (yes, like Br'er Rabbit). I didn't think to take a picture of her (have I mentioned I'd be a terrible reporter?) but I did take a picture of one of her three cats she brought.
A Br'er Coon kitten
Also, I discovered a very interesting thing about cat shows. Most of the cats there are under a year old, and all of them except the "household pet" category were un-altered. Because they are so young, they view the entire experience as something new and cool and interesting, instead of an older cat's viewpoint of "new," which is more like mine (envision crossed fingers and me hissing, as if to repel a vampire). And because they are so young, even if they are in heat (which one of the Br'er Coon kittens was), there's not a lot of problematic behavior with them.

Although it does explain why Mrs. McFadden only brought girls ... 

Next to the Br'er Coons were the iCoons from Florida. They are friends, and Mrs. McFadden was the one that started the iCoons' lady upon the Maine Coon path. The iCoons cattery is apparently located on a farm like place where they have cows and horses and dogs and fish and who knows what else. She had brought her oldest daughter (college age) who was very nice to talk to and patiently posed with one of their cats for a a photo.
iCoons
Next to them was a lady who wasn't their friend, and of whom I disapproved. She specializes in white Maine Coons. But because the CFA breed description doesn't specifically say the cats have to be able to hear, she deliberately breeds for deaf cats so they do better in the show ring (the noise of the crowded show hall doesn't bother them). Well, they are certainly pretty, but come on. You're supposed to breed for temperament, so the cat has the mental and emotional ability to handle the noise, not breed for a deformity that makes the cat not a particularly good pet or (heaven forbid a show cat have to fend for itself) hunter. Maine Coons are supposed to be "natural" cats. It's one of the reasons I like them, compared to the Persian with the unattractive squashed face or the Siamese with the elongated triangle head.
White, pretty, but deaf, Maine Coon
Although a cat show might be boring if you're just there to watch the judging (and it was, since I had no idea what was going on) the rest of it is interesting. Most of the time the cats' people aren't involved in the show rings, so you can talk to them. And there are vendors around the edges who have cat stuff

Mrs. McFadden showed me a cat toy she got in Vienna that is a retractable feather wand. What a brilliant idea, I thought; instead of having to securely put the toy away after playtime so your cat can't entangle themselves in the string, it retracts into the handle. Also makes it take up less storage space. I googled retractable cat wand toy when I got home and found that amazon does indeed have something similar. (I have faith in the 'net's ability to produce, eventually, anything.)

There was also a lady who makes drawings of cats that are not only attractive, but funny. She has an eye for cat behavior. She sells cards, but unfortunately I didn't have her money of choice. I just had a credit card and enough cash to get me in the door of the cat show. Or I would have bought a box and my friends and family would be getting them for birthdays. Of course, she has a website. And I will probably get some, eventually.

Most everyone was very nice to me, but a woman who had an Ocicat was very snobby and quite nasty, actually. Apparently there aren't many Ocicats ("There are only 20 of us!") and breeding them is like, I don't know, being exclusive and thus everyone who shows the slightest ignorance must be actively shunned. Also she didn't really understand genetics. (You can have a mixed breed cat who shows, say, Ocicat traits, like various personality traits or body structure or coat pattern, without ever having had a pure-blood Ocicat in their bloodline. Because the genes for an Ocicat had to come from somewhere! It's just chance that a mixed breed cat may have combined a few genes in the same pattern, enough to give them the characteristic coat pattern maybe, without the full Ocicat genetics in place.) 

At the very end, right before I left, it  happened again. I was escorted by the Birman lady over to a woman in the household pets show area (very small number here) who had a Maine Coon from a breeder in my state (which I'd actually already eliminated). Her Maine Coon was a, wait for it, red classic tabby. Just like Pippin. 

Only huge. He was three, and probably one-third again Pippin's size. The lady who owned him (both the women were very nice to me) was demonstrating how amiable and nice and lovely her cat was, by illustrating he didn't mind her turning him over, cuddling him against her, etc. He, the cat, truly didn't mind. He obviously was quite fond of his lady.

The fact that he was bigger than Pippin ever was helped my reaction be less acute than when I went to Megacoons and played with a red classic tabby kitten just like Pippin had been when he was a kitten. But I was still overcome and had to leave rather abruptly.

I'm getting tired of these kitty expeditions ending with something abruptly reminding me of how much I miss Pippin. Especially when I still have to hold it together long enough to drive home. At least this time it was only two hours on the road.  

On the way home, I saw a wreck in the oncoming lanes which had the entire interstate shut down on that side. I was going fast(er than the speed limit but we're not going to mention that now are we) so I didn't see much, only an 18 wheeler with the trailer ripped open, like the entire side and top were missing, and the contents piled up in a cascade coming out of the side, with steam or smoke rising from it. The cargo was not distinguishable as anything. I think it was steam, and the cargo had been on fire, and just got put out not long before I came by, given the presence of emergency vehicles (including a fire truck) at the scene.

My father before he retired drove 18 wheelers for over 50 years, so I asked him how in the world a car and a truck could get together to cause that. Now I'd seen an unmarked car with the truck, the police cars, and the firetruck, but the car itself didn't look damaged, so it could have been simply an unmarked police car, or even the unfortunate person in the car closest to the accident. Daddy said it could have been the truck all by itself. You've seen the ripped up piece of rubber from a truck tire lying along the side of the road (if you're lucky) or across the road (if you aren't.). He said when those initially peel off, they are hot enough that they could ignite cargo if it got thrown up against and through the side of the truck instead of out along the road.

There weren't any ambulances at the scene, so I don't think anybody was hurt (based on my guess that if the firetruck had time to get there and put out the fire, the ambulance had time to get there too if it was needed). But I sure felt sorry for the miles of cars at a standstill on the other side. And very glad I was headed this  way, not that way!

So that was the cat show experience. I'm glad I went. It was very interesting. I liked seeing all those different breeds "in person", so to speak. But it was very tiring for me.

I looked later at the list of cat shows for the CFA. This was the closest, geographically, they ever got to me. There's even cat shows in St Petersburg, Russia, and in China, and New Zealand (I forget who told me they'd gotten a cat from a breeder in New Zealand in order to get a cat without any of the bloodlines here in the States. Now that's dedication to out-crossing the bloodlines!). And in all kinds of other places: Malaysia, Japan, Switzerland. I think the closest one again is in Florida. I'm very glad I went to this one, even though it was extremely last minute (I got invited Thursday morning; went that same Saturday!) And I just don't do last minute very well!