The 2015 Cat Fanciers' Association / Dr. Elsey's Precious Cat Litter International Championship Cat Show was held at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pennsylvania on November 21-22, 2015.

CFA’s largest show returned to the Philly Expo Center for a second year.  The event was again split into two shows.  This year each show had eight rings.  Judges were selected by CFA clubs and assigned to either the Red Show or Purple Show alphabetically.  Exhibitors were permitted to select which show they wished to enter. 

A Truly International Affair

The judging panel included at least one judge from each of CFA’s nine Regions which included North America, Japan and Europe. 

Cats and their owners traveled from 42 states, Canada, 12 European countries, six Asian nations, and one South American country to compete.  This truly was an “international” cat show.

Savvy Marketing Results in Visitors up by 75%

The weekend prior to our cat show there is a large dog show in the same facility.  This is the Kennel Club of Philadelphia National Dog Show that is televised Thanksgiving Day on NBC.  We had a booth at the dog show in an attempt to entice some of the huge gate to return the following weekend for a cat show.  We also approached many of the vendors at the dog show to join us the following weekend.  We were successful in bringing quite a few of their visitors and vendors to our cat show.  We, of course, learned from experience having used the same showhall the previous year.  We knew which advertising avenues worked and which didn’t so we were able to advertise smarter this year.  We expanded our online advertising to supplement our ads on the radio, newspapers, and even billboards on a busy highway near the showhall.  While not increasing our advertising budget, the show saw a dramatic 75% increase in gate which delighted our sponsors and vendors as well as introduced the public to our exciting hobby. 

Extras

The show had a number of extras to entertain our visitors.  We again had a terrific Education Ring, Agility, breed booths, Pet Me Cats and Ambassador Cats, walking tours of the show, and for the first time we held a Kitten Bowl which featured kittens from the three shelters present with cats for adoption.  Many of the competing kittens found forever homes thanks to this exposure. This year we also had a local radio station doing a live feed from our showhall which helped the locals know there was a big cat show in town.

With Many Thanks

A show of this magnitude takes a lot of planning.  We have already started working on next year’s show.  We want to continue what went well and tweak areas for improvement.  It also takes a lot of money to produce this show so we are grateful to our many corporate sponsors, in particular Dr. Elsey’s.  Many within the cat fancy sponsored rings and other aspects of the show. Without their financial support we could not produce this extravaganza.  Thanks also to the incredible number of people from all over who pitched in to take on tasks for this show.  This event is a labor of love for many throughout the cat fancy and its success is due to their tremendous efforts.

Make plans to join us next year.  Same facility and same date, the weekend prior to Thanksgiving.  Hope to see you there.

Assistant Show Managers Mary Kolencik, Mark Hannon, Debbie Kusy and Show Manager Rich Mastin
Photo by L. Johnson

One of the billboards advertising the show

A local radio station, BEN FM, had a live feed from the showhall

Photo by Mark Hannon
The Household Pets were awarded the Best Breed Booth

Exhibitors from Asia ... (left to right) Danny Tai (Hong Kong), Gavin Cao (China), Kit Fung (Hong Kong)

Judge Kayoko Koizumi from Japan
Photo by L. Johnson

Best In Show Judges and the Winning Cats & Owners
From left to right: Omar Gonzalez, Best of the Best Winner GC, RW Briar-Mar's Good To Be Me (Manx), Gary Veach, Judge Kayoko Koizumi, Debbie Rosas,
2nd Runner Up Astral Charm 5th Element. (Persian), Nancy Brown, First Runner Up DotDotDot's Sam I Am (Ocicat), Roger Brown, &  judges Hope Gonano and Sharon Roy.