"Well, plastic has to come from somewhere", Alexa told me, displaying a philosophical resignation far beyond her years.

I'd been complaining about the location of the cat show we attended this weekend. Instead of a cute town like Annecy or even Lyon, we had to go to Oyonnax- an obscure little town that bears the proud nickname "The Valley of Plastic".


Luckily, we were there for cat action and not charming tourist photos.
And cat action is what we found:











When my pal Nat had initially suggested that the girls and I accompany her to a show, the idea was that we would enter our housecat, Cleo, in a competition. I thought it would be fun for the twins and they would enjoy showing off their sweet little cat.

Sadly, she was hit by a car on Sept 5th and died.
I won't go into details, but it was bad.
Very bad.

We ended up going to the show anyway, but just to help out Nat, who is a big-time breeder of short-haired orientals, siamese and Cornish Rex. They are all sort of strange and thin and don't have much hair...but they have their fans and are very, very valuable.
And they aren't too ugly, once you get used to them.
In fact, over the course of the two-day show, I went from finding them vaguely repellant to actually finding them rather handsome.
They sort of look like bats and I have nothing against bats, really.....

At any rate, those little bat-cats managed to beat out the competion and come home with no less than five trophies.

And it was an interesting opportunity, anthropologically-speaking. The cat show circuit has its own culture and definitely bears exploring. I look forward to finding out more when we go to the next big show at the end of November. ...