by Janet Warner LouisvillePetPals.com Staff

Event Column Hogwarts crew charms American Cat Fanciers Championship Show

LOUISVILLE, September 3, 2006 -- Hermione beat her brother Hagrid again at the American Cat Fanciers Association show Click to view full-size images

in Louisville. He seemed unconcerned, rolling on his back in his exhibition cage. The feline siblings have been competing since birth, first for survival in a dramatic kitten-hood and later for championship titles. Last year, Hermione of Hogwarts, a beautiful patched brown tabby cat, captured the American Cat Fanciers Top Household cat title. This year, Hagrid, a big handsome grey tabby earned the title. Although he lost to his sister in the ring at the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, Hagrid received his 2006 trophy and accolades at this event sponsored by the Kentuckiana Cat Club. Hermione’s win will be counted towards next year’s championship.

This brother and sister act have come a long way since being rescued at less than two weeks old, seemingly abandoned by their feral mother. Their salvation (and of their five other littermates) came in the person of Dr. Linda Hannah. The Hogwarts IV, as they are now known, were found in a laundry basket in Philadelphia’s historic Veterans Stadium the night before it was to be imploded in March of 2004.

“I got the call about the kittens in the stadium and I was there the next day,” said Hannah, an education professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. “Their eyes weren’t even open. They were so sick and so little. I went through a bottle of amoxicillin and triamcine a day.” At the time, Hannah was in the middle of a semester at the university. She employed heroic tactics to save the kittens, all named for Harry Potter characters. “Minerva (McGonagall) didn’t make it”, said Hannah sadly. A tenuous round-the-clock feeding schedule and a little ingenuity brought the remaining Hogwarts kittens through their rough start. “Colin Creevey wouldn’t eat. He had no sucking instinct and with that cold he couldn’t smell, so he didn’t want to eat,” said Hannah. The professor was determined not to lose Colin and cleverly coaxed him to eat. Hannah created a soupy paste of food in a pie pan and placed the fragile little Colin Creevey in the middle. “He ate every time he tried to get that stuff off of himself!” said Hannah. Colin survived, and resides as a non-competition cat with his sister Ginny Weasley in a private home. Hannah does show the other siblings: Harry Potter, Madame Hooch, Hermione, and Hagrid. Four of the seven rescued kittens had extra toes. “Hagrid had eight toes on the front, seven on the back, and even claws between his toes!” Hanna said. Removal of useless dew claws has the remarkable champion down to the usual four in back, and a polydactyl set of six in the front.

“It is my ultimate joy to take these cats from the gutter and give them a better life,“ said Hannah, who has been showing household cats for 15 years. All of her 40 show cats over the years have been strays. “I spend thousands a year rescuing cats from un-godly situations. I would never do it for purposes of showing them in the ring. I take a handful of them [to shows] because they enjoy people and like being handled,” said Hannah. “I also take them to schools for education and take them to visit old people. I often adopt them out to old people, because besides giving the cat a good home, sometimes it gives that person a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” Hannah, like so many pet lovers, is frustrated with the pet overpopulation. “It’s like we take two steps forward, then 15 back. We think we are gaining, but yet the cats keep coming.”

Like Dr. Hannah, many of the ACFA championship show exhibitors work with rescues, some sharing their lives with purebreds and shelter cats. Joe Pitt attended the show and exhibited “Adventure Beach Alastar Snowstorm” a.k.a. Storm. Pitt recently relocated with Storm, a purebred Bengal, to Maryland from Florida because of a job. Pitt continues his rescue work with RAIN (Rescuing Animals In Need- www.rain.org ) from his new home because he could not find anyone to replace him as president and webmaster. It is important work and he continues to be disturbed by their local euthanasia statistics. “The animal control in Seminole and Orange Counties puts down a thousand cats and kittens a month. That number doesn’t even include dogs. Something is really wrong.” He admits that he loves helping from a distance, but it is not the same. “I don’t get to play with the kitties!”

An actual rescue with a happy ending took place during the 2006 ACFA show. Steve Arnold and his sister Micki White came from Milwaukee to the show as both vendors/exhibitors and stayed at a nearby hotel. One evening, an exhibitor frantically contacted the others in the hotel, reporting a missing cat. As Arnold and White drove through the parking lot, he saw a cat run between a row of cars. With the aid of a youngster in the parking lot, Arnold rounded up the cat. It was not the missing cat (who had merely retired under the hotel bed) but a sweet unaltered orange and white boy from the streets. Another exhibitor housed the cat in their room’s bathroom. “He was a hungry boy,” said Arnold. “He just ate and pooped. The more dry food he ate, the more he pooped!” The next morning, show organizers announced the rescue and asked for assistance with the cat. People provided much needed flea treatment, a cat bed and numerous toys. A collection raised $66 to go towards his medical bills and one person stepped forward to offer a home, household cat exhibitor Pam Boyles of Oldham County, Kentucky. “It was very simple, really. I couldn’t go home and not have him have a place to go to!” Boyles has named the cat Encore, because he reminds her of another dear departed cat.

For more information about the American Cat Fanciers Association and showing household cats visit their webpage at: www.acfacats.com or contact the Kentuckiana Cat Club at mythmkr@bellsouth.net