They arrive in pairs. Husbands walk arm-in-arm with their wives, migrating through the congested parking lot filled with forty-year old, chrome plated vehicles reflecting mid-afternoon rays of sun that brighten and warm the fairgrounds. The people, the couples, file into a narrow walkway that leads to a large white tent. The herd moves inches at a time, many individuals using sleek wood canes or thick metal walkers that jerk up and down as they mow over small pebbles and cracks in the sidewalk. The daylight glints off the men’s bald heads and the smell of stale hairspray wafts into the crisp ocean air of a 76 degree Southern California day. They wear thick, round glasses and layers of pastel flannels and cotton. While the men look off into the distance towards the Monster Truck Arena or the Gardening Supply convention in an adjacent tent, the women’s feline eyes target the white tent. These superfluous men accompany the women, accessorizing them like the purses, kleenex, hand sanitizer, lotion, and wallets bursting with crumpled receipts and snapshots of well-behaved cats in the I.D. slots, all piled into the baskets attached to the women’s walkers. The clowder-like mass approaches the tent where faint meow’s escape through plastic doors.

The doors of the bustling San Diego Cat Fanciers CFA All-Cat Breed Show open to release a flurry of cats meowing to their owners who coo back in baby voices, and visitors sticking their noses between the thin metal bars of cat cages to marvel at rare Japanese Bobtails or Scottish Folds, letting out high-pitched squeals that fill the room and reverberate off the walls to the top of the room above the convention space. In the center of the room, four people at four tables (two pairs back to back) judge the cats while the owners sit cross-legged, hands clasped, awaiting their cat’s turn. Five rows of tables line either side of the judging area where the cats rest in intricate cages. In the front right corner a woman showcases cats available for adoption, describing each of their individual qualities and tendencies through a hand-free mircrophone. An obstacle course in the back left corner allows the cats to practice their agility before their performance. In the opposite corner, vendors sell every cat toy imaginable, fluffy feathers on the end of plastic sticks and loud bells in rubber bouncy balls. In open spaces throughout the tent, t-shirts featuring images of pensive cats, carpeted clawing structures five feet tall, miniature porcelain statues of kittens painted in pastels, and small coffee stations for exhausted cat owners running on three hours of sleep after restless nights obsessing over an irregular tuft of fur, generate shocking profits.

At the front door, a man sitting at a table collects a seven dollar entrance fee from the attendees, repeating his welcome introduction “we have many top breeds, very exotic, very rare, quite a treat.” Moving past the admission area towards one of the judging tables, a man dressed in a hot-pink striped dress-shirt, pale pink bow-tie, and thin-rimmed glasses holds a hairless cat on the table, checking the tail structure, the tone of his nose, the moisture of his tongue, and the size of his teeth. The cat, obviously a competition veteran, remains motionless. Then the judge nods his head, muttering something under his breath, and puts the cat back in the rows of cages behind him. Following the crowd downstream, thick tweed suits and gaudy sequined scarves and bulky cotton shirts rustle as the women squeeze past each other, trying to get a better view of the speaker amidst the thick smell of old perfume mixing with the aroma of kitty litter and catnip. The speaker appears impeccably groomed with shoulder length straight hair, clean cut clothes, and long, manicured fingers. She shows an Absynian, an energetic breed that loves kids and playing, even at two in the morning. She suggests this cat for families of at least five, with a big house and lots of time. Her helper, ready at the side, squirts the table with disinfectant as the speaker puts the Absynian back in its cage and takes out a fluffy Maine Coon.

Turning the corner to the obstacle course, a woman leads her cat through a tunnel and up some steps. A sign hangs on the netting, stating “please, try not to distract the cats by calling to them or by pulling on the netting! These cats are being timed!”

Threading through the rows of cats waiting in their cages, the packed pathways force people to wiggle past and peek their heads through open spaces to gaze upon the rare breeds. The owners hover as protective mothers, guarding the cages, if they could even be called “cages.” More like shrines, lined with blue, twinkling Christmas lights, pink drapes, jewels, lace ruffles, gold tassels, signs with the cat’s name, and ribbons from previous competitions. Jars of open baby food, clear nail polish, soft blankets lined with satin ribbons. Toothed combs, bottles of coat handler anti-static detangler spray, stacks of business cards for the cats. Baby strollers with plastic covers parked in-front of the tables. Professional portraits of the cat in plastic coverings taped to the side of the dividing walls next to signs that read “please do not touch cat.”

The crazy cat lady, who wears tight fitting t-shirts with fluffy white cats printed on the front with fur sticking to its fabric, emphasizes her cheeks with layers of rosie powder, applies three coats of jet-black mascara onto her meager eyelashes, shapes her lips with a two-shades-too-dark burgundy lip liner, and draws-in her eyebrows with an unnatural arch, drowns herself in five-year old Chanel Number 5, flaunts long fake nails accented with jewels, carries a small cat-comb and a few pieces of catnip in her back pocket, says things like Snuffles has an old soul or Missy thinks that you don’t like her or you can’t sit there because that’s where Chester sits, has more cat climbing structures than places to sit in her house and uses a lint roller on her couch three times a week, falls asleep to the hums of purring, believes herself to be a typical woman who maybe eats a bit too much chocolate or struggles with her shopping budget or spends a tad too much time on Netflix, but whom life labeled the “crazy cat lady,” will always have more than five cats. It’s a rule. A rule that draws a white line on the concrete distinguishing a woman who loves and cares for her animals from a woman who loves and cares for her babies. This woman lives for her cats, lives with her cats, lives like and as her cats for so long that she starts to resemble her cats. But people misunderstand the crazy cat lady. They mistake adoration for insanity and devotion for lack of purpose or ambition. A woman with more that five cats can be called a crazy cat lady because six cats means a life with constant cleaning of litter boxes, repairing of clawed furniture, visits to the vet, hundreds of dollars spent on cat food and cat toys and cat medication and cats. But that doesn’t make her crazy. Would it make you crazy?

You? With the brown leather jacket you wear along with layered undershirts and boot-leg jeans as you comb the curly hair of your Selkirk Rex. Your nouveau Selkirk Rex has textured curly tufts and perfect round eyes. When someone approaches, you turn and look at them with a wide and suspicious stare. They ask you about your cats and you squeak out quiet answers. The inquirer asks if you’d ever been worried about owls, prompting your eyes to grow even larger as you whisper “owls? I didn’t even know there were owls around here.” And you think about the three cats you left at home and picture a massive, man-eating owl smash through your screen door and escape with Mittens and Angel in the grasp of its sharp talons. You’d had the two since their births, raised them like children, learned that Mittens only eats soft food and Angel won’t go to sleep without Tiger in the same room, spent three hundred dollars on Angel to fix his conjunctivitus and four-hundred for Tiger’s diabetes medication. But it would take hours to drive home, and you couldn’t abandon Muffin, your prized show cat, minutes before showtime. You’ll call your neighbor, Betty; that’s what you’ll do, and she’ll scare away the owls and keep your babies safe.

Another cat lady from the row across and down several yards, sits in a white folding chair. She has crunchy white hair so full of hairspray it doesn’t move when she turns, and on top, a plastic tiara perches, bobbypinned in place. She wears a blue sequined top that matches her electric blue eyes and a vest made of patchwork ribbons won by her cats at previous competitions. She spots someone out of the corner of her eye reaching towards her cage and she jumps up and ushers their hand away from her prized white Persian, who eyes the intruder with an icy turquoise glare. The woman returns back to her seat and begins a conversation with another cat-owner.

“So, how many cats do you have?”

“Only three; three show cats. And then just a few male Sphinx. And a couple female Tabbies, you know, just to keep me company, ” the woman counters with confidence, flipping her mass of curls to the back and tilting her head up so that the fluorescent light glints off her diamond crown. She purses her wrinkled lips and shifts away from the nosy competition. She mutters heated remarks under her breath, befuddled by the rival’s audacity to ask how many cats she has? Puh-lease. She is not a hoarder, how dare anyone hint at that. How dare they. They don’t even have a chance against her perfect Persian. Even a dang Tabby could beat that Bengal. Everyone knows the youngin’ with the Tonkinese poses the only real threat.

Circling through the last aisles, a young girl with lanky, ash-colored hair, a matching gray-knit dress, and thick Mary Jane’s walks up to someone looking at a rare Tonkinese. She stands at the corner of the table for a few seconds, tapping her foot and crossing her arms as she waits for the viewer to assess the cat. Behind her chunky rectangular glasses with little metal cat figures on either corner, her eyes track the viewer’s movements. Her lips pull into a thin line and her lenses slip down her nose as her brow creases. After about ten seconds, she swoops onto the scene, startling the elderly woman admiring the cat.

“She’s mine. She’s won a lot of ribbons” pointing to ten or twelve ribbons; “I go with her everywhere and we win ribbons.” The little girl holds out her finger, the nail painted a mature red tone, pointing out different aspects of her presentation. At first, the woman talks to the girl in a small, baby voice, but after their conversation develops, she begins to ask more sophisticated questions about the history, qualities, and maintenance requirements of a typical Tonkinese. The spectator thanks the girl at the end of the presentation, shakes her hand, and moves on to a Norwegian Forest Cat. The kid bends down to look inside the cage, so close that her nose brushes up against the metal bars, and whispers something to her Tonkinese who perks up at the sound, rotates its head, and looks at its owner. The small girl extends one miniature finger into the cage and scratches the bridge of the cat’s nose. She then stands up and grabs the lint roller placed behind the cage, and rolls over her dress picking up any excess hairs. She sets it down and finds her styrofoam cup of lukewarm, straight coffee, and consumes it in five seconds.

At only eight years old, she stuck out from the crowd of old ladies. But as she pointed to the photographs of herself with her cats tacked onto a cork-board behind the cages to her next visitor, the differences between her and the old women vanished. All of a sudden the girl seemed to age fifty years, rushing through fights on the playground, dramatic highschool breakups, job promotions, and dance concerts where little girls in pink tutu’s twirl while elated parents take snapshots. This young girl drank straight coffee, knew how to use a lint roller, and worried about her cat like a mother worries about her child when leaving it alone. She acted like a stressed out, worn out, and tired fifty-eight year old who worries about sending her kids to college, keeping her job, and paying the bills. Almost as if the girl already gave up on life, already weathered so much strain and so many challenges that cats seemed to be the only solution left, the only companionship and comfort available.

And then I realized she was the future crazy cat lady. I never knew that crazy cat ladies start off crazy. I always assumed a traumatic event left them with hoarding problems, trust issues, and misplaced affection. At first, I roamed the convention space disconnected from the cat-lovers, observing them and accepting their benign quirk as a mid-life crisis. But then I saw the future crazy cat lady in the eight-year-old woman and realized they start off as crazy cat girls. The crazy quality lies within them from the very start. Their love of cats is a syndrome, not a passion. I backed away from the little girl, who now flipped through a Modern Cat Magazine, getting lost in the maze of cat paraphernalia and participants, noticing one cat-owner licking her own hand while peering into her cat’s eyes, and another humming soft lullabies to her’s, and yet another strapping her kittens into a stroller before whisking them away to judging tables, and finally the cat lady with the diamond tiara nibbling cat treats to encourage her babies to eat. Leaving the convention hall, past the judges who crown a Turkish Angora best in show, I walk through the plastic doors and a gust of fresh ocean air revives me. I walk away, quicker than when I first arrived, needing to distance myself from the out of focus mind of the obsessive cat lover.