Area breeders are getting top dollar and more than a little pride raising cats and seeing them preen for international acclaim
The news took the cat world by surprise. A kitten, albeit a cute and extraordinarily furry kitten, sold for $35,000. You heard right. Thirty-five grand. For a kitten. But this wasn’t just any kitten. He was a nine-month-old, copper-eyed, purebred black Persian kitten, with perfect physical traits, a small snub nose and most important a lineage rich with Grand Champions, Regional Winners and Best in Shows.
Confused? You’re not alone. Cat breeding and competitive showing can be a highly complicated endeavor. It can also be surprisingly lucrative.
Marti Semans has been breeding and showing purebred Chinchilla Persians since 1986.
Semans is secretary of the Malibu Cat Club, which is sponsoring next month’s prestigious 2001 annual CFA Cat Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds, where more than 350 fancy felines will compete for top cat status.
Though none of Semans’ cats will compete, she said she has high hopes for some of her kittens, which she may show next spring. For now, Semans is busy breeding some of her past Grand Champions.
Marmew’s Flashdance a regal, green-eyed silver Persian is a recent Grand Champion and two-time Regional Winner. Semans said she and her husband traveled to cat shows around the country with Flashdance in his quest to be named “Cat of the Year.”
Though not all felines like to be shown, Semans said Flashdance loved the thrill of competition.
“Flashdance thought all the lights and excitement were just for him,” she said. “But what he really loved where those glass-mirrored doors in the hotel rooms. He’d play with his reflection for hours, thinking it was another kitty.”
Bursts of playfulness aside, Flashdance took his career seriously, Semens insists.
“Sometimes in the mornings before the shows while we were having coffee, Flashdance would go sit in his carrier and stare at us, like he was saying, “Uhhh, I have to be in Ring 8 in 15 minutes, could you hurry up please?'”
Flashdance is no longer competing, though Semans said he is “getting married” a lot and parenting lots of kittens, which is where the big bucks are.
Purebred Persian kittens, sold with valuable contractual breeding and showing rights, typically fetch between $2,500 and $3,000 apiece. But prices can soar as high as a $15,000 for a well-pedigreed specimen.
Semans said she recently got wind of the $35,000 sale.
“He was a young black purebred Persian. … I heard someone from Japan bought him,” she said.
Show time
Like all major shows, next month’s competition in Orange County can make or break a young cat’s career. If a kitty wins top honors, it not only builds his reputation as a serious competitor but could even catapult him onto the cover of the prestigious Cat Fancy magazine, the official monthly digest of the Cat Fanciers Association, which is the world’s largest registry of pedigreed cats.
The shows are also important for the CFA’s annual national rankings, a cumulative numerical point system that determines which fancy feline will be named “Cat of the Year,” according to Carolyn Osier, an official CFA all-breed judge.
This year’s current point leader is a puffy white cumulus cloud of a cat named Wishes Lyric, a purebred white female Persian.
“I heard she’s coming,” Semans said, “but you never know until about a week before the show.”
For the past three years, a Persian has been named “Cat of the Year.” But you don’t have to be a Persian to win, Osier said. All kinds of purebreds compete for the coveted title from Siamese, Burmese, Manx and Maine Coons to Japanese Bobtails, Scottish Folds, Abyssinians and Ragdolls.
Ragdolls, the newest of the 37 official CFA breeds, originated in California in the 1960s when a white Persian named Josephine got together with a Seal Point Burmese named Daddy Warbucks.
Ragdolls so named because they go limp in your hand when you pick them up are growing rapidly in popularity and frequently fetch up to $5,000.
Osier’s love of cats began 30 years ago when she bought a $10 Siamese. Since then, her tastes have expanded and she now breeds and shows purebred Abyssinians.
One of her cats, Wilo-Glen’s Martha Stewart, is currently ranked fourth in the nation for the 2000-2001 season, which ends April 30.
Osier recently sold one of her Grand Champion Abyssinians, Wilo-Glen’s Tarzan, for $2,500.
Cash cows
In the cat world, the money is not only in breeding. Big bucks can also be made in the kitty emporiums of every cat show, where entrepreneurs hawk every kind of cat item imaginable, including five-story kitty castles, long peacock play feathers, sparkly tinsel Teaser-Toys and, of course, catnip mice.
Even cat psychologists are on hand to counsel stressed-out show cats and kittens for an hourly fee.
“You can make a lot of money, but you can also spend a lot,” said Gerri Peak, a cat show groupie who recently purchased two purebred Persian kittens Chloe du Bois and Kendall Jackson (named after two popular brands of Chardonnay) at local cat shows for about $500 each.
Semans agrees. She said it’s easy to spend $20,000 a year when showing a cat. Not to mention the investment in time.
Semans spent more than four hours bathing and blowdrying Flashdance before every competition. “There can’t be a single hair out of place when you show, so you have to brush every single piece of hair, even between their toes,” she says.
Although many would consider anyone willing to spend more than $1,000 on a cat a bit loopy, Semans says cat breeding isn’t much different than other hobbies.
“Some people throw their time and money into golf. I thrown mine into cats,” she says.
And, who knows, one of her Persian kittens might just fetch $35,000 one day. That’s far more than a titanium driver could deliver.
