Exhibiting In Europe Unity in Diversity

After my last CFA cat show in France, in April 2023, I had dinner with a fellow judge from the U.S. and we discussed many different aspects of the show.

- Michael Schleissner

As with any show, anywhere, the cats came first; we talked about our favorites and compared our choices for finals. But this was a Region 9 show, and also an in-conjunction show with a local FIFe club. So the organization of the show was also a topic of conversation, as was the diversity of the exhibitors.

Both of us were impressed by the challenge the club had taken on with this project. Although the number of cats entered was not what those of you in the U.S. would consider a large show, the number of new exhibitors was higher than we generally see, even in Europe. It seemed to us that there might well have been more new exhibitors than experienced ones, which is a pleasant but rare imbalance today in CFA.

Questions, Challenges, Languages

With so many new exhibitors, we knew the entry clerk must have been overwhelmed with questions. Explaining the temporary registration number (TRN) process over and over, checking the pedigrees of the non-registered cats, and providing basic orientation about CFA showing procedure for each of the new exhibitors must have been incredibly taxing. When we considered that it must also have been necessary to use a number of different languages to accommodate these exhibitors, the entry clerk’s job appeared, at least to us, overwhelming!