We had a great day today, a really lovely show - very busy too.

Darwin did us proud again.
He gained his 4th Merit which is fab
He placed 3rd in 3 of his side classes
He then went on to win best assessment
Well done boy xxx

Aww congratulations to you and Darwin. He looks so non-fussed by it all

Hi,
**********WELL DONE**********
I did come over and say hello, (big Ziggi's owner), to say what a wonderfully striking cat he is. As I said, I hope we see more of him as he's just too nice to hide away at home!
Best wishes,
Annie
www.bengalcat.me.uk

What a beautiful cat. Well done

Well done to you too! Good luck for the rest of 2009!

Thanks for all the lovely comments - we are very very proud of him.

We are now in a dilema over what to do with his show career as the silvers are so far away from provisional status.

We have been told be the bengal cat club that he is the 1st Silver Spotted Bengal to gain 4 merits - there is also 1 Silver Marble who has gained 4, but they are 2 different coat patterns so have to have 15 of each.

No one seems to show them even though there are some really good ones out there.

We need to have a good think about where we go from here.

Try showing at a TICA show. They are already at Champion status

Thanks, but we already have

He went to his first TICA show a few weeks ago and earned the title of Double Grand Champion Alter so he is going to do another one just to see how far he can go.

It is more with GCCF we were not sure what to do with him. x

I can remember back to the good days when the brown spotties were at merit status. We all went and showed our cats for several very important reasons

1. For a catty day out, enjoying ourselves, meeting other bengals and their owners and doing cat shopping, ending up with a barrow load of merit rosettes.

For the next stage of progression:

2. To ensure that the brown spotties were seen to be popular and regularly on the show bench.

3. It's not just a set number of cats getting x merits. In the presentation for going up to the next level, they have to be seen to be competing well against the other cats in their category i.e. foreign section in the misc classes.

Just to update you on Darwins progress.

We have decided not to take him off the show bench yet - as he does enjoy his GCCF shows.

He has now gained 5 merits and is placing well in his side classes so we are going to continue to show him for a while longer - as we are going to shows with our Tonk girl anyway, he is nice company for her. I think in a few months time we might put him on exhibition for a few shows too with loads of info around him just so people are a bit more aware.

It is just a shame that so many people are keeping their lovely silvers hidden away because there are some lovely ones out there but they just don't seem to appear on the GCCF show bench. I think the reason so many people don't show them is because they are mostly TICA registered so they don't know how to dual register them, hopefully that will change soon though.

Thanks for listening to my rant xx

it'll be nice to still see him out & about
i didn't realise you guys were at the croydon show...one of these days i will come & say hello!
i think a lot of people don't take silvers out because they don't have championship status yet so they feel there is nothing to gain. it's such a shame because without silvers out there gaining the merits we will never get the championship status. people need to think of the bigger picture & do it for the breed instead of just themselves.
hopefully more will start taking them out

I completely agree.

I think some of the problems does come from a very few breeders - there are some breeders who have on their sites that silvers cannot be shown with GCCF so I do think that as breeders we should all be encouraging new owners to put them on the show bench if we think they are good enough - otherwise like you say they will never progress any further.

Fantastic boy Hazel

I agree more good silvers need to shown

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www.supernova-bengals.co.uk