Show Cats – Beautiful, Special, and Rare

Posted by Jeanne on January 30, 2009

Show standards are quite specific on the general conformation of cats, but may become complex and variable, depending on the association consulted or the fashion from year to year, with regard to coloration and marking.

What makes show cats beautiful, special, and rare is the fact that attractions like long hair or unusual coat and eye colors are, biologically speaking, recessive characteristics. They are cultivated by patient and careful breeding, until all vestiges of tabby markings, say, are gone from the Siamese and disfiguring, off-color splotches are eliminated from pure white, black, blue, and so on.

Just how delicate this balance is and just how recessive a recessive characteristic can be has been proved time and again by the mating – accidental, of course – of a fancy-shmancy with a common cat who has no style but is bulging with gross, salt-of-the-earth, dominant characteristics. The kittens invariably come up plain cat, with tiger stripes and yellow eyes, and no faint trace of grand lineage in any feature.

The mating of two common cats is equally unpredictable. Often as not, a pair of attractively marked parents will produce babies with random spots and blotches – black eyes, striped noses, and so forth – that are most unbecoming. The same may be true of size and shape. A compact, neatly built mother cat may find her youngsters growing up to be thin-shanked, lean-bodied critters with no family resemblance at all.

If the owner likes cats impartially this will be no problem. Certainly it has never troubled cats. They are not self-conscious about aesthetic defects; none has ever felt out of place at a social gathering.

As a matter of fact, cats of all breeds always try to look as presentable as circumstances allow and seem to have an eye for tasteful backgrounds – white bedspreads, red chairs, bouquets of flowers – which set them off to advantage. There may be other, simpler reasons for it, but there is no denying that cats have a sense of the dramatic. Every cat, whether a purebred Persian lolling on a silken pillow or a nameless waif resting beside an alley trash can, looks as though she expected to be looked at and, better still, admired.