You may think that the cat equivalent of Crufts isn’t exactly STARBURST’s type of event. We thought so too. Until we saw this poster:
We were intrigued by the fact that the event is called ‘The Supreme Cat Show’ and is organised by ‘The Governing Council of the Cat Fancy’. We were appalled by the dodgy Photoshopping of a giant cat head opposite Colin Baker. But, more than anything, we were sold by the idea that, this year, Cat Crufts would be taking a sci-fi theme. We had to go.
Taking place in the NEC in Birmingham on October 22nd, the Supreme Cat Show filled up two enormous halls with all things feline. There were vendors selling cat toys, food, and assorted other memorabilia; there was a signing and talk area for the sci-fi guests (more on that later); there was a weirdly clinical judging area (ditto); but what we ran straight towards was, of course, the cats themselves.
And with over six hundred exhibitors entering their pets, there was a whole load of cats to get through. About a third of these had gone along with the theme and decorated their cages in delightful sci-fi fashion. For Trekkies, there was the Starship Enterpaws and a cat hiding among an invasion of Tribbles. For Whovians, there were several cat TARDISes and a nice old lady who offered us jelly babies. But our favourite was Sweetie, who showed absolutely no interest in blasting off. Skip to the end of the article to see our full gallery of sci-fi cats.
The guests present were stars of classic sci-fi telly – Colin Baker, Paul Darrow, Michael Keating, John Leeson, and Peter Purves – who all put on talks and held autograph sessions. As the event was clearly more known among cat-fanciers than K9 aficionados, these weren’t particularly well attended; we’d show off about getting front row seats to see Colin, but there were only two rows.
Nevertheless, the Doctor Who star approached the talk with charm, rattling off anecdotes about both his career and his animals. If you’ve ever wanted to know anything about Colin Baker’s cats, this was the event to be at. We assume the other talks went similarly, but we were too busy looking at cats.
The other job the guests had was to act as judges, and each of the sci-fi stars put rosettes on their favourite cat exhibits. This was the more fun side of the competition; there was also a very serious side, shown above, in which various 1950s monster movie scientists (the nice ones who explain the plot and then get killed, not the nasty ones who turn insane) passed cats to each other and objectively concluded which of them were better. Criteria the cats were tested for included volume, durability, and elasticity. Actually, we’ll be honest, we had no idea what was going on here and aren’t qualified to comment.
We do know, however, that this cat was judged to be the Best Cat. Look how happy it is about that.
So, despite the perhaps inevitable fact that the sci-fi cat show turned out to be much more about the cats than the sci-fi, STARBURST had a thoroughly purr-fect day out, which we won’t fur-get any time soon, and the sci-fi guests put on a paw-some show for those there to see them.
But, let’s be honest, you opened this article for the cat pictures, and so here’s our full gallery of the exhibits:
