I Like Torturing Myself By Staring at Cats With More Expensive Clothes Than Me For Entire Saturday Afternoons.

Believe me, I have no idea what possessed me to ask Devra to go to ANOTHER cat show. At least this one did not require me to get up at the crack of dawn in the middle of November and take a train up to White Plains. However, it should be noted that I was mentally/physically/emotionally exhausted from the night before, during which Brando and I made an excursion through Queens (without a map) to catch game 2 of the NLCS between the Mets and the Cardinals. I have A LOT of opinions about why the Mets will not win the World Series this year, and one of them involves overpaying Billy Wagner to blow entirely winnable games against a St. Louis lineup that has, like, one legitimate hitter, when you could be spending that money on starting pitching that doesn't pull calf muscles a day before the playoffs start. Just saying. It was enormously entertaining just the same, but I feel bad that Drunk Erin has attended two Mets games this season and Bily Wagner blew both games. This is what happens in the era of five-man rotations and coddling starting pitching so that you're forced to go to your bullpen by the 5th inning. Next year.

And I totally lied about the physical exhaustion aspect. I am in tiptop shape and whatnot.

Anyway, Devra and I decided to go to the CFA-Iams Cat Championship at MSG this Saturday. For the record, this was my third time at MSG. These were my previous two reasons for going:

and

Ah, the day my father infuriated 40,000 teeny boppers by reading On the Road during La Vida Loca. <3.

At the last minute, Ingrid decided to go too, I suspect out of boredom more than anything else. It appears that she has a huge dog bias too, so her appearance at the cat show is confusing, to say the least. Also, it probably would have been beneficial if I had had her number on me, but I did not, so she undoubtedly spent a good half an hour or so wandering around the first floor of MSG. A trooper, none the less.

If you will recall from my last cat show excursion, I fell in love with the Scottish Fold no-eared weird cat. My primary objective at this show was to find more of those strange creatures, as well as giggle at the Sphinx kitties and sneer at the Russian Blues, which are ALWAYS giving me these looks like...the non-cat Russian I know.


After purchasing our tickets (with no sign of Ingrid), Devra and I had to navigate up two flights of escalator goodness, at which point we were ushered through a doorway guarded by...THE MEOWCITY DANCERS. Unreal. For those of you too lazy to remember slash click on the link about the previous cat show, the Meowcity Dancers were these horrible prepubescent danskin-wearing freakshows who did robotic dancing at the Westchester Cat Show that had NOTHING to do with cats - except for their cat facepaint. It's like having a screening of Cruel Intentions at a horse show because of the one scene where Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe's aunt are riding horses on Long Island. Beyond illogical. We gave them suspicious/horrifed looks and continued in.

best. show. ever.

Before we went over to the cat cages, i.e., miniature palaces of purebreed spoils that I could only dream of possessing if I "accidentally" became impregnated with David Wright's love child, we passed this mother IAMS booth where workers were milling around and asking if anyone wanted a free sample bag of cat food. I am ALWAYS about free cat food, chiefly because there's no disadvantage to getting it, and if it tastes bad, Olivia's the one who has to deal. So I wandered over and an obsequious IAMS employee whipped out a pad of kitty info and started asking me questions about my cat - what's its name, how old is it, does it get hairballs rarely, occasionally or frequently, is it a famous cat from the Meow Mix House, etc. To his credit, he didn't bat an eye when I calmly and clearly stated that my cat's name was Olivia Benson. I'm sure they've heard it all, especially since after I got my specially-designed IAMS bag, Devra decided to get some cat food for Sparky, the raggedy stuffed cat that used to stare at me in Alumni. Since stuffed animals cannot eat food (a theory I never officially acknowledged until the 1994 Big Bear Applesauce Experiment), Olivia received two giant plastic bags of IAMS.

At this point, there was still no sign of Ingrid. She eventually turned up at the concession stand, where the morbidly obese cliche cat people were salivating over corn dogs and other cholesterol-ridden substances. The food area happened to be right next to the stage where IAMS had decided to conduct a series of discussions/forums with cat experts, and we were just in time to watch the cat tricks. In fact, not only did we get to see cats jump through hoops designed to look like "rings of fire," but we saw a FAMOUS cat - more famous than Olivia, if you can believe that. He was an orange tabby named Tyler who had appeared on CSI. I think CSI is a really dumb show that stays up at night WISHING it was SVU or another crime drama with initials, but it was still neat to see a quasi-celebrity that no one would ever take a second glance at unless specifically directed to do so - like the time I saw Bob Saget on 14th St.

Apparently, if you look up at the sky, you can see the reason why Jodie Sweetin took crystal meth and why Mary Kate is completely batshit now and dresses in rags she clearly found in the dumpster behind the Strand.

After the cat tricks, we stuck around for a talk called "The Secret Sex Life of Dogs and Cats," because how could that NOT be good? It turned out to be obscenely misleading, as a Jeanine Pirro lookalike who wrote a book by the same name discussed random trivia about cats that had nothing to do with kitty orgasms or bestiality.

Remember when you looked like a monkey and thought you could beat Hill? Pfft.

Now the cat cages of grandeur beckoned, and they NEVER disappoint. Hairless cats, manx douches, devon rexes - they ALL thought they were better than me, and as they smirked at me on their leopard-print mini-couches within the safety of their specially designed holding pens, I couldn't argue with them. AND, I found the coolest cat ever. It looked like a sheep caught in an electric fire who then jumped into water and the water froze, and the fur curdled or something. It was a nightmare, and I LOVED it. The sign on it's cage said "Woolybaar," which I assumed was the name of the breed, but I can't find that breed or any other cat online that looks like it, so I'm now under the impression that someone illegally sneaked a sheep cat hybrid into the show, which is probably something that the guys who invented Zack Vank would do.
Although I cannot show you the amazingness that is the possibly fictitious catsheep breed, I CAN show you the Singapura, which looks like Peter Lorre.



Then I got bored and mildly depressed at seeing obsessed cat people for an extended period of time, so I went home and read Henry James. The end.

It looks like the beautiful Blue Abyssinian is about to get spanked.