#catshow

#catshow

Behind the Scenes at a Cat ShowWe all know what to expect of a dog show, because some of them are broadcast to the world. That's not quite the case with cat shows, which cater more to a large but intimate world of cat lovers. The cat competitors are trained to be at ease in their cages and in the judging ring, but they still want to play with anything that moves, including nearby cats. However, as laid back as the cats and their owners are, the judges take their tasks quite seriously. Personality plays no part in judging the best of the cat breeds. A cat can be sound asleep while the judges check whether the jawline is just right, or the cat's hair is tipped with the proper color for its breed. The judges have committed to memory the standards for 42 breeds recognized by the Cat Fancier's Association. But then there's the household pet division, where personality comes into play, as well as cleanliness and health. That's the division the judges enjoy the most, and so do the spectators. Get a look at what goes on at a cat show from the perspective of a cat lover journalist attending her first cat show, from the qualifications of the judges to the training of show kittens, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's CBS station. -via Fark(Image credit: FinnFrode) #cat #catshow

The Champion Cat That Doesn't Fit InMistelle Stevenson has a cat named Dawntreader Texas Calboy. He's a very special Maine Coon cat because he is a male calico. Calico cats are almost always female, and when Calboy was born in 2017, they assumed he was female because of his three colors. At twelve weeks they discovered he is definitely a male. The rare male calico is often due to Klinefelter’s syndrome, meaning his sex chromosomes would be XXY, and therefore sterile. Stevenson let this "sterile" kitten live with the females in her cattery, but when he was seven months old, some cats turned up pregnant. Was Calboy the father? DNA tests were inconclusive, because Calboy's genome appeared to come from two different cats. The tests were repeated, and they determined that Calboy is a chimera!Sometime early on in utero, two embryos that would normally develop into two different cats, each with its own set of DNA, fused together and grew into one cat. This does not mean Calboy is a hermaphrodite; he doesn’t have any other extra organs or body parts. It means he’s a kitty cocktail carrying two kinds of DNA. Some of his cells carry one cat’s set, some the other.