Taking my girls to a show this weekend in Phoenix

The Saturday and Sunday shows are billed as two separate shows because different clubs are sponsoring them. However, it will work basically the same way as a two-day show. There are six rings each day. My benching assignment will stay the same so I can leave the cages set up over night.

I'm taking all four ladies on Saturday and two on Sunday. I have a friend coming to help me wrangle cats on Saturday, but he was planning to go out of town on Sunday. He told me yesterday that his plans had changed and he won't be leaving until Monday, so he could help on Sunday if I needed him. Far too late to change my entries, of course.

I won't be showing Cali, she was terrified at the first show in June. She's entered for exhibition only. She'll be sharing a cage with one of the other kitties and I'll have a sign up "available for adoption".

Iris did very well at her first show and I'm hoping she'll do at least as well this time. It will be the first show for Shareena and Miss Patchwillow. I'm not at all confident that they'll behave themselves, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

According the the unofficial show count, there are 15 HHP's on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. Not as many as the last show I entered, but enough to make it an interesting competition.

Thanks, Everybody. I've got to get to bed now so I won't sleep through the show tomorrow. I'm coming home in between the two shows so should be able to give you a report tomorrow evening.

I think I jinxed myself at the start. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to wear the team t-shirt from a 200 mile relay I ran in last February. The team name: UTTER CHAOS!

My plan was to leave at 5:45 AM, pick up my friend who was helping wrangle cats, and get to the show hall to check in by 7:30. All four ladies were sitting by the door while I was loading stuff into the car. Then the second it was time to round up cats, Cali decided to play hide and seek. It took me another 15 minutes to catch her. I was still on track because I had allowed an extra 20 minutes in my timetable.

Then 2 or 3 miles from my friend's apartment, I had a flat! While I was waiting for him to come pick me up, a fellow came along and helped me change the tire. Unfortunately, the little spare tire didn't have a lot of air in it, but it was good enough to get me to my friend's apartment. We switched all the cats and show paraphernalia over to his car and managed to get there by about 8:15. We really had to scramble to get the cages set up by show time.

A lot of the cats at the show today were restless or skittish. There was a huge storm outside with thunder loud enough to hear in the show hall. I imagine the kitties could hear it a lot more than we could. My kitties did fairly well even though they all started out looking a little shell-shocked. Miss Patchwillow was the most timid at first, but she relaxed around the middle of the day. Then by the time she got to the last ring she was ready to be done with the whole deal. She hissed at the judge. Of course, this was more than an hour after the show should have ended. I guess the judging was slower than anticipated, but it was really frustrating because we had almost an hour and a half wait between the 5th and 6th rings.

For those of you who are still reading, here are today's results {drum roll}

Ring 1:
Iris 9th best
Shareena 6th best

Ring 2:
Iris 4th best
Miss Patchwillow 5th best
Shareena 7th best

Ring 3:
Miss Patchwillow 8th best
Shareena 10th best

Ring 4:
Iris 8th best
Shareena 9th best

Ring 5:
Shareena 7th best

Ring 6:
Iris 3rd best
Shareena 5th best

Tomorrow I'm taking only Shareena and Iris. There will be six rings again with all different judges.

There were 15 entered for today, but one must have canceled. We started out with 14, but one kitten was pulled after the first two rings because she was acting up. I think the count is still officially 14 even though only 13 were shown for most of the day. There are 12 entered for tomorrow.

I took only Shareena and Iris to the show today since I didn't have a helper. They were both more relaxed, although Shareena still has a way to go to be a really good show cat. Everybody loves her color, but she mostly just crouches down on the judges' tables instead of showing off. Shareena did slightly better the yesterday and Iris did better today.

There were 11 HHP's in the show today, so they gave rosettes to the top 10 and a toy to the 11th place cat.

Ring 1:
Iris 4th best
Shareena 9th best

Ring 2:
Iris 10th best
Shareena 8th best

Ring 3:
Iris Best Cat
Shareena 11th

Ring 4:
Iris 6th best
Shareena 9th best

Ring 5:
Iris 2nd best
Shareena 3rd best

Ring 6:
Iris 10th best
Shareena 9th best

There were 15 HHP's entered on Saturday and 12 on Sunday, but one cat was absent both days so we ended up with 14 and 11. I don't know what the final count was for the whole show. They announced quite a few as absent at the beginning of the show.

According to the catalog there were only two sphynx there, one cat and one kitten. I saw both of them in passing but couldn't stop to chat because I was carrying one of my kitties either to or from a judging ring. I did watch two of the AB kitten finals and the sphynx got Best Kitten in both of them--a beautiful little black and white girl.

The show catalog says that Dee Dee is the breeder for the adult cat and co-owner of the kitten.