Читать книгу The Cat Handbook - Karen Leigh Davis - Страница 14

Whether you have a purebred or a random-bred household pet that you want to show, you typically must register the cat with the association sanctioning the event. The association uses the registration information to score and track awards. For more information on showing your cat, please see pages 178-187.

hold pet (HHP) categories in which random-bred cats and kittens can compete and earn awards (see page 182). HHP classes existed as early as the mid-1960s, but they were primarily sideshows to the purebred competition, judged by a local disc jockey or someone other than a qualified judge. Often, the so-called judge considered it more fun to choose the meanest, fattest, or strangest-looking cat, a practice that actually demeaned the mixed-breed cat. The Happy Household Pet Cat Club, founded in 1968, and a group of its exhibitors from the Sacramento, California, area were instrumental in changing this by lobbying for fairer standards and equality in judging for HHPs. As a result, TICA was the first association to license HHP specialty judges.

Today, the awards and show procedures for HHP competition are more in line with purebred competition. TICA, ACFA, CFF, AACE, UFO, and TCA also maintain registries for nonpedigreed household pets. The world’s largest association, CFA, does not register non-purebreds, but many CFA-sponsored shows and clubs do have household pet categories that also award year-end honors to the top winners. The Happy Household Pet Cat Club, an international organization open to all feline fanciers, also registers random-bred cats, which allows its members to submit cat show scores and claim titles.