Very early on Saturday morning, we drove an hour in the snow to get here:to take these two lazy, yet adorable creatures:

to compete in this cat show held by the Cat Club of Lyon in the city of Aix-les-Bains.

The two green cages belong to our cat breeder pal who took us to our first show last September. The one on the end is ours, lovingly decorated with frilly curtains sewn by yours truly...

It's not well known, but even the fancy cat clubs allow common house cats to compete in a special category... and it's lots of fun.

Our friend, of course, has no common gutter cats. She shows skinny little naked expensive cats... I had to show this one to the judges for her, as she was busy with another cat being judged at a different table...

Here's our Dexter being checked out by the judge. Dex was a good boy and the judge really liked him... "Nice, big, quiet boy" was the final verdict.

Daisy did well, too....sort of.
She was extremely well-groomed, as my girls have been working on her for weeks. And she was nice to the judge....didn't do her strange growling thing that she does when she gets crabby.
The judge's final verdict was "lovely but bizarre".
But he was Polish.
Maybe "bizarre" means "adorable" in Polish?

But despite her bizarreness, our Daisy won, big time!

As did our handsome boy

Here's Mal standing beside our award-bedecked display cage:

Our happiness was only slightly marred by the fact that there were NO other competitors in the class. At all.
This actually kind of ticked Mallory off.
"It would be much better if other people were competing. I'm sure our cats could beat any other ones! I know it!"
She was really ready to bring it, cat-wise.

Her only consolation was that, even in a class with only one entrant, the cat won't be nominated for the prize if it is not up to standard. It needs to be healthy, good-looking, well-groomed and have a good temper. Competing cats have to be handled by judges and their assistants, so difficult, shy or mean cats need not apply.

That made our Mal feel a bit better. ...but she'd still rather see some seriously cut-throat house-cat competition the next time around...