What is the Cat Fancy?
The Cat fancy is the community of cat breeders who show and breed their cats. We show in TICA but there are other registries. TICA has more shows and each member gets to vote on how the association runs. Cat shows are not a profit making enterprise. Breeders volunteer their time (with sometimes a very small stipend and paid lunch, but often with neither) to put on cat shows. We need usually around 100 cat entries to break even and be able to pay for the show hall and judges travel fee to bring them in. There are no monetary prizes. It is a public forum for us to put our cat up for evaluation by judges to prove our cats are breeding quality and for some very dedicated pet owners who show their alters and non-pedigreed pets.
Some breeders go to all shows, some go when just working on titles. Entry fee and travel cost can be $300-600 per show with a show 1-2 times a month in the NW. On top of working on titles, shows allow us to be known as reputable breeders. We publicly display our cats at shows and our awards. Our awards become publicly viewable on TICA’s website.
The backyard breeder has a love/hate relationship with the cat fancy. Since costs are their main concern, they hope that by going to a few shows they can get the same titles we get and be able to charge show quality prices. They think they will make back the money from the show for years to come. When they are devastated and realize their cats are not show quality, they retreat out of the public eye. They do not continue to show because they no longer want their cats to be publicly evaluated.
This public venue is how we network with other breeders to prove we are not backyard breeders. We send links of our cat’s scores and any regional or international wins. This is also called talking with and working with breeders and breeding programs. What happens at a cat show is public knowledge.
It is not all snobbery like a backyard breeder will tell you. Their problem is they expected free mentorship from strangers for other breeders’ cats. We are very happy to welcome new exhibitors to expand the cat fancy, if it is a household pet or alter. Show mentorship is NOT the same as breeding mentorship. Show mentorship is telling you how shows work, when to take your cat to be judges and how to check finals. Almost every backyard breeder skips that step and then thinks we are responsible for sharing every grooming and breeding tip we’ve spent years and money developing. See breeding mentorship to see the difference.
The Cat fancy can be political, but only at the upper echelons of office, rule voting, and maybe show management. Usually if a backyard breeder is saying this it is because they had low quality cats and wanted to withdraw before too many people observed their cat quality and remembered who they were. A reputable breeder has a public reputation, we want people to remember us and our cats, both breeders and show spectators. This becomes a transparency issue because backyard breeders have something they’d rather hide than fix.