The Poor Vet: Cat show

I vetted a cat show the other day for the first time.
It was a very new experience for me.
It was a rainy day. My boyfriend and I turned up to the community hall that the show was being held in. There were lots of cars there,so we figured we were in the right place. We got out of the car and walked into the foyer only to be confronted by snowmen, Santas and Christmas lights. ??? Umm, thought this was a cat show. Maybe I'm in the wrong place? So I walked decided to just walk into the hall anyway just incase and luckily I did as this was in fact the place that the cat show was being held. It just for some reason had a Christmas display in the foyer at the wrong time of year. I eventually realised that maybe they were getting ready to celebrate Mid-winter Christmas, a tradition some countries in lower hemisphere do, because we are greedy and one Christmas isn't enough.
SO I popped in and wandered around looking lost until someone asked if I was the vet and then informed me that the club manager hadn't arrived yet.
Basically when I vet the cats for the show I need to have a club manager with me to protect me from any grumpy breeders who are not happy with my decision.Sounds....exciting, maybe I should have backed out then. But then I reminded myself I needed the money and I was also doing this as a favour for one of my favourite breeding clients.
So while I waited for the club manager I had a look around the stalls at all the gorgeous kitties. Talked to them, tried to tell them it would be ok (they didn't believe me). My boyfriend got snaffled by a breeder that saw the only young man in the room and wanted to tell him about her breed. (She was pretty cool actually). I skulked off and looked at adorable kittens.

Eventually the club manager turned up and went through what I had to do. He told me that while vetting at a cat show you do a mainly visual exam and only if you decide that you are worried about the cat do you get it out and you feel it's lymph nodes and examine it more closely.
This was completely alien to me.
Whenever I see an animal to vet normally, I do a complete nose to tail examination, including temperature and auscultation (listening with a stethoscope) of the heart and lungs, before declaring it healthy.
It felt really strange declaring a cat healthy just by looking at it.
Plus, I like to cuddle the kitties, so not touching them wasn't as cool. However the lighting was crappy, which gave me a good excuse to get them out under the guise of looking at them better and cuddle them.
So anyway I got to grips with not touching as many kitties as I liked and was pretty happy with most of them. Most of the breeders were really cool and their cats were awesome.
However there was one kitty that gave me a bit of grief. The kitty was nice, but the owner not so much. I decided to vet this cat out, as its eyelids were all inflamed, it had blepharospasm (squinting) of the right eye, bilateral epiphora (excess tear production) and generally looked like he was feeling pretty crap.
These signs that I have listed are common clinical signs for feline respiratory problems, such as feline herpes virus, chlamydophila and rhinotracheitis virus (cat flu basically). This is a lovely disease complex that can be passed on through sneezing, fomites, coughing and contact. A fomite is something that they touch that carries the germs to another animal if they touch it e.g. a brush or food bowl etc.
Upon informing the owner of how her sick kitty will be vetted out she was adamant that he was just fine and I was stupid. She also uttered a few other grumpy words in my general direction.
I tried to remain as calm as possible and I think I did a pretty good job, until it got a bit scary with the woman yelling "Is that the vet!?" and charging towards me. Luckily the club manager stepped in and convinced her to drop it. Another club official talked to her and calmed her down, so I did not get assaulted. Yay.
What was awesome was that my lovely man was standing beside me the whole time being my bodyguard which really helped. Without him it would have been a whole lot scarier.

But that's not the end of it. What made the whole procedure worse, was that the cat I decided to vet out was brought by a Judge!!! So she was grumpy not because I denied her of earning a potential ribbon and prize but because my ruling might mean she couldn't judge. She was lucky though, as I decided to rule it as a precautionary measure, which meant the cat could be removed from the show but the lady could still judge, and I could go home alive.

Everyone else was so lovely though. They all came up to me and apologised for the debacle and then started telling me some cool stories about turtle surgeries and neat things like that.
I also got to meet some old breeder friends and have a catch up as well, so all in all I generally had a great time, and I got paid for it! Not much, but every little bit helps at a time like this.

Here are some of the cool breeds I got to meet:
American Curl: