As anybody who has been stiffed and sniffed and dissed and hissed and purred into a fine putty by one can tell you, it's a kitty-cat's world.
They just allow us to live in it, open the food tins and change the litter boxes.
"What is it they say — 'a dog will come when you call; a cat will take a number and get back to you'?" said Jim Furr of Sugar House, the aptly named director of the Cat Fanciers Association show sponsored by the Utah Cat Fanciers and Salt Lake Long Hair Cat Club on Saturday and Sunday at the Utah Fairpark's Promontory Building.
"You'd have to say a cat is slightly attitudinal," Furr added.
You'd have to say most feline-ophiles truly appreciate those qualities and partake of the same exquisite pie baked with equal parts admiration and masochism.
It is the very look-I'm-busy-over-here solitariness and Morris-style pickiness that often calls a person to breed, train and show the Greta Garbo of the animal kingdom — a critter who vants to be left alone but licks the limelight when the mood strikes.
"We love them because of their independence. You can train a cat, but so often they train you," said Suzi Beedy, San Jose, Calif., one of eight international judges at the show. "Look, Bast, the Egyptian god of love, had a cat's head. The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats — and today's cat has never let us forget it."
"I can accept their stubbornness because when a cat comes, they come because they want to," said Marjie Higgins, Pleasant View, who has raised "hundreds of cats all my life" at her rescue facilities and whose red tabby domestic shorthair, Johnny P, won the household pets competition.
"Cats are my children, and Johnny P's my baby."
Must've been a beautiful baby for Beedy to pick him No. 1. "He has a wonderful, loving, clean personality," Beedy said. "I started the day a perfect stranger and when he began purring for me, I just turned into a puddle — awwww."
Higgins proudly displayed the spoils of victory: the winner's rosette and tassels.
Finding that rare gem among cats is part of the attraction for Ginger and Paul Meeker, Caldwell, Idaho, who travel the country showing cats, especially with their latest star in 15 years of breeding, a British Short Hair named Castlkatz Royalscots Gray — Scotty for short.
"He's named after a regiment of British soldiers who protect the queen," said Ginger Meeker, spoon-feeding Scotty Gerber's beef and gravy baby food, the equivalent of feline Turkish delight.
Scotty, sporting a gray coloring known as "blue" in cat lingo, was in regal repose in a small Marriott of a cage, festooned with eight ribbons he'd won in the show — hardly a bolt from gray-blue heaven for him.
He's ranked the ninth-best British Short Hair, the Meekers said, in Cat Fanciers Association Region 2, comprising Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Utah, Montana, Idaho, parts of Nevada and British Columbia.
Ultimately, it's about the cats.
It's the thing that happened to Karin Jackson, Salt Lake, who's "over 80" and does "70, 80 shows a year." Her "tortie" — an 81/2-year-old tortoise-shell named Sabrina, who placed second among household pets — was an abandoned cat who showed up at the food dish Jackson keeps on her back step.
It took weeks for the stray to let her pick him up. "Two hours later he was purring for me," she said.
"That," said Jackson, reaching for Sabrina beneath a sign that read, "You Can Always Tell a German, but You Can't Tell Him Much," over the cage door, "is why I'm a cat person."
You can reach Gib Twyman by e-mail at gtwyman@desnews.com