HARLINGEN — On Jackson Avenue, behind a nondescript office façade, purrs the pulsating nerve center of the world of cats.
The International Cat Association, known as TICA, registers cat breeds and pure-bred and household cats, and sanctions cat shows and records judges’ scoring from each show.
“What we do with breeds is we register them genetically,” said Fate Mays, president of the cat organization who lives in Corpus Christi. “In other words, if there is a Persian bred to an exotic and it has four kittens, two are shorthair and two are longhair, we could register the two longhairs as Persian and the two shorthairs as exotic.”
In Harlingen, Leslie Bowers serves as office manager for TICA.
“There are 56 breeds recognized for Championship,” Bowers said. “We have other breeds that are on their way to Championship … and we have others you can register as an Experimental breed.
“We have to be careful because people will call and say, ‘Well, I have a thus and so’ and I go, ‘That’s an experimental thus and so.’”
Today the organization truly has a global reach.
Just looking at the TICA-sanctioned cat show schedule for October takes us from Moscow to Tokyo to Bogota, Colombia, the Netherlands, Wuhan, China, and Montevideo, Uruguay. It sanctions hundreds of cat shows a year in 104 countries.
“We may not have a language or culture in common,” Mays said, “but we do have the feline companion in common.”
The International Cat Association moved to Harlingen from Burbank, California, in 1982, mostly due to legendary cat show judge and former TICA president Georgia Morgan, who lives in Harlingen.
“When I came to interview in 1983, the office was three rooms,” Bowers said. “Now we’ve got the whole first floor.”
TICA employs 18 people in Harlingen now.
The role of TICA is sophisticated and complex in how it sanctions cat shows worldwide, its genetic registry, its breed recognition and how it guides its members around the world.
There are 56 Championship breeds recognized, but 63 total breeds which TICA has sanctioned.
But in the end, it’s the cats that count, whether they’re a $1,500 Bengal or a stray that wandered into your yard.
“I love the Maine coons, and I always have,” Bowers said. “The Bengals are gorgeous, and the Savannahs are to die for, they really are — the Savannahs came from the serval.”
But if you had to pick one breed?
“I’m not going to tell you the ones I don’t love, or I’ll tell you but you can’t write ‘em down,” she said.
Take the Toygers, for instance.
“What they’re trying to do is get the look of a wildcat,” Bowers said. “Of course that’s what the Bengals were about and the Savannahs,” which were originally bred using stock from wild Asian leopard cats in the case of the Bengal, and the wild African serval in the Savannah cat.
The Toyger is, as you probably guessed, being bred to look like a tiger. Instead of the mackerel tabby stripes or rounded rosettes we see all the time on cats, the Toyger has bold vertical stripes just like its bigger namesake.
The good news is, unlike a 300-pound tiger, the Toyger is a pretty friendly character who likes being around people.
“The Toygers are coming pretty close to it, and they’re getting the stripes on the face, which none of our domestics have,” she said of the purely domestic breed which isn’t linked to a wildcat ancestor. “They’re getting, I believe it’s down the back, the stripes start that way, and that’s not a domestic trait.”
Does she own any of these exotics?
“I have rescues that I really didn’t want but I couldn’t leave them on the street,” she said. “That’s just the way it is.
“I have six cats. It’s too, too much, it really, really is.”
