CFA Annual Meeting Notes and Results

The meeting started at 9:00 am on Friday, June 20, 2003 at the Adams Mark Hotel in St. Louis, MO. There were 479 delegates, representing the CFA clubs in good standing at the time of the meeting. For the Directors-At-Large election, there were 503 ballots counted. The results of the DAL election are as follows:

• Stan Barnaby - 317 votes - elected
• Michele Cooney - 91 votes
• Scott Cowling - 143 votes
• JoAnn Cummings - 320 votes - elected
• Jody Garrison - 251 votes - elected
• Mark Hannon - 232 votes
• David Mare - 210 votes
• Joan Miller - 337 votes - elected
• Darrell Newkirk - 294 votes - elected
• Paul Patton - 167 votes
• Juergen Steinbrenner - 103 votes
• Wayne Trevathan - 250 votes
• Peter Vanwonterghem - 165 votes
• Gary Veach - 263 votes - elected
• Annette Wilson - 287 votes - elected

Various committees and chairpersons made their annual reports to the delegates and things moved along very quickly. At noon, Iams provided a wonderful lunch and then it was time to vote on the proposals.

To pass a proposed show rule, 2/3 of the delegates (320) would be needed to pass the rule. If only a majority passed the show rule (240), it would go to the Board of Directors in October and then they would decide to pass it or not. The vote on the various proposals went as follows:

Prenoticed Resolutions:

1. Proposed amendment to the Constitution, having to do with insurance paying expenses for someone who slanders another: Ruled out of order.
2. Proposed show rule to remove the need to get winners ribbons, change the number of points needed to become a Grand, allow points to accumulate at Open step: overwhelmingly FAILED. There were almost no "Yes" votes on this issue.
3. Proposed show rule to allow Ch/Pr to transfer to Grand on Saturday of a two-day show (much like Opens can transfer to CH/PR on second day): It was felt by some that it was poorly written, but it was PASSED BY A MAJORITY, so it goes to the board with a favorable recommendation.
4. Proposed show rule to require certain format at a show: WITHDRAWN
5. Proposed show rule to change payment for clerks depending on size of show and license status of clerk: overwhelmingly FAILED.
6. Proposed show rule to require show managers to inform public of correct behavior: FAILED
7. Proposed show rule concerning numerous cancellations of judging contracts by one club: FAILED
8. Proposed show rule limiting to contracting for judges to no more than 3 years in advance: overwhelmingly FAILED.
9. Proposed show rule concerning who sends in judging contracts and when: overwhelmingly FAILED
10. Proposed show rule concerning number of rings counted National and regional points: WITHDRAWN
11. Proposed non-show rule concerning committee for International show: FAILED

Resolutions From the Floor

• Proposed show rule that judges should be paid by status at the time of the show, not when they signed the contract: CARRIED
• Proposed non-show rule concerning who is on breeders listing: FAILED - already taken care of by board
• Proposed show rule concerning wording on who gets which page of judging contract: FAILED
• Proposed show rule to clean up wording so shelters that are allowed to bring in cats to adopt don't bring in kittens younger than 4 months: FAILED - show rule committee will discuss.

Breed Council Secretaries Meeting

During the breed council secretaries meeting with the Board of Directors on Thursday June, 19, 2003 at the St. Louis Annual, the subject of the Cats Ancestors Tracking Service (CATS) came up. After a certain amount of discussion, I summarized the discussion and received concurrence from the Board on the following summary. The Board asked me to publish this summary to the breed council secretaries list.

There is some discussion on this also on Page 74 of the April Almanac.

Observation:
Article IX (International) Section c. of the CFA Constitution says:
"Registration rules for cats in the International Division shall be the same as those adopted for other regions described in Article VIII of this Constitution."

CATS is not a registry!
The purpose of CATS is to allow other International Division people to participate in CFA and have their cats noted in a database. Thus, such cats can be tracked by CFA without having to be registered in another association for the purposes of establishing the requisite number of generations to be able to eventually register the progeny in CFA according to our registration rules.

In addition, CFA would get the revenue for these cats.

Non-registered CATS may be listed and shown in the International Division and specific parts of North America. Listed cats cannot claim a CFA championship unless the cat is registered in CFA.

According to the CFA Constitution Article IX, Section c (See above observation), there CANNOT be special registration rules for the International Division!

The purpose of the discussion was to defuse some of the rumors and speculations about some covert "International Registry" that the Board was working on. The above CATS is what the Board is working on and is still in its preliminary stages. While the mission, purpose, and objectives of such a Cats Ancestors Tracking Service have been laid out, the operational parameters, database design, and how it interfaces with the CFA registry all have yet to be nailed down.

Selkirk Rex Breed Council Meeting

The Selkirk Rex Breed Council met and discussed the CATS that was discussed at the earlier meeting. In addition, a couple of standard changes were suggested and discussed. These will be on the Breed Council ballot. If you want to be a member of the CFA breed council, go to http://www.cfainc.org, click on the "Exhibitors" button and find the forms page. You can down load a copy of the Breed Council application, fill it out and then send it in if you qualify. You must join by August 1, 2003 to be eligible to vote on this year's ballot.

The items discussed were:

• Change the number of generations required for a certified pedigree to 3 from the current 5. The main reason given is that our breed is too young to need the stricter requirements of a 5 generation pedigree when bringing in a cat from another association/country.
• Change the number of points for "color" to something other than 10. 10% of the points for judging is on color and it is felt that that is too much when color means very little in the scheme of things. The options ranged from 1 - 4 points for color. The higher number makes more sense, and the other points would be allocated as Head-32, Body-32, Coat-32 with 4 points for color, including eye color.

Going through my files recently I found an article from the CFA Almanac, September 2000, by Dr. Susan Little DVM. It has some information that might be amusing (and useful) for both experienced breeders and people just entering the "world of kittens".

Feline Reproduction Data:

Well, and then there is my Ariel who had NINE in her first litter. And there's Amelia Curlhart who thinks having 6 or 7 is nooooo problem.

More Data:

That last statistic tickles my funny bone. 16.1 minus 14.3 is 1.8 hours. Amelia Curlhart has babies so fast, neither she nor I can clean them up fast enough. You can imagine what a tangled mess! But, I seem to be the only one stressed out until they are all fluffy and dry.

Obviously Amelia is the perfect Selkirk mom (even tho she doesn't look like much.) She has her babies pretty much on the day you expect her to, she doesn't mind if 10 neighbor kids stick their heads in the closet to watch, she has enough milk for everyone and all her babies are curly! This past March she even adopted a baby Exotic whose mom had no milk. She keeps her babies in the bed in the closet, doesn't move them around, wanders around calling for them when they start to explore, and at 4 months says "Enough now! You're on your own."