Baudelaire once said that when drowsing, cats “take the noble attitude of a great sphinx”. Sumava’s, Fontemouro, Gic Paragon and Tina Turner De Vill, the four winners of the first day of Expofelina, really did look like beautiful sphinxes on the podium: silent and motionless, aware of the perfection of their breed and well used to the flashlights of the cameras and the admiring stares of onlookers. The Spanish Feline Association (ASFE) has been organising Expofelina for the last 25 years and this year the chosen venue was the Palacio de la Paz in Fuengirola.
To earn their place on the podium these four winners had to prove their superiority out of a total of 156 pedigree competitors of breeds hailing from all corners of the world. The competition included an exhaustive veterinary examination taking in everything from their coats to their pupils and their weight and then the final word was left to the four judges, brought in especially from Austria, Holland and Italy. The Best of the Best award in the end went to the long haired winner, Sumava’s, a Persian cat accompanied by proud owner óscar.
Vice president of the ASFE and one of the organisers of the event, Susana Castaño, pointed out that among the entrants at the show were cats of 25 breeds, some of incalculable value. “They can be worth 400 or 500 euros in the case of kittens and up to 2,000 or more in the case of a champion”. The potential champions in Expofelina were competing in different classes: long hair, medium length hair, short hair and Siamese, being among the most important, not to mention the “Mr. Advance” prize awarded on Sunday by popular vote.
Among the beauties parading on the “catwalk” on Saturday was the Danish cat Gic Paragon (full name Gic Paragon Blue Virtue Lunar Lullaby Junior). “He’s the best”, said proud owner Allan after he had won the short hair prize, “and he’s a very good cat”.
A little more mischievous was the winner of the Siamese class, Tina Turner, who, her owner Nieves explained, loves posing and being picked up. “She’s a mummy’s girl”, added Nieves.
Some of the entrants weighed as much as nine kilos, as was the case of the winner of the medium length hair competition, Fontemouro. His owner Luis had brought him especially from Portugal for the event, his first international competition at just 18 months of age.
On the whole the cats taking part in Expofelina were aged between three months and ten years, although the experts point out that they are at the best age for this type of competition at two or three.
The judging continued throughout Saturday and Sunday. The local councillor for Tourism at Fuengirola Town Hall, José Sánchez, announced at the weekend that he hoped that this would be the first of many competitions of this kind to be held in the municipality.
