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P.T. Barnum
(1810-1891) once volunteered a $10,000 prize to anyone who
could make him the butt of his own famous phrase, "There's
a sucker born every minute." Not long afterward Barnum received
a letter from a gentleman in Maine who claimed to have a cherry-colored
cat that would be just right for exhibition in Barnum's circus.
Barnum replied that he would be happy to exhibit the cat if
it were, indeed, cherry-colored, and he asked the gentleman
to send the cat to him. Several days later a crate marked
"live animal" arrived at Barnum's office. When he opened the
crate, there was a frightened black cat inside, accompanied
by a note that read, "Maine cherries are black. There's a
sucker born every minute." Barnum cheerfully remitted the
ten grand.
Fish
to Fry
Had Barnum
lived in the present century, his $10,000 prize might have
gone to the purveyors of another kind of cat, the Singapura,
alleged to have been discovered on the streets of Singapore
- 244 square miles of high population density comprising one
main island and 50 adjacent islands off the southern tip of
the Malay Peninsula. Singapore's 3.4 million inhabitants live
13,934 to the square mile in a wet, tropical climate that
averages 81 degrees and a quarter of an inch of rain each
day.
The Singapura
was said to have been discovered in the summer of 1974 by
two Americans - Tommy Meadow and her husband Hal - who lived
on the island at the time. According to their story, Hal Meadow,
a geophysicist who worked for an oil company, had been transferred
to Singapore on business in 1972. Some time after he and Tommy
had arrived there, Tommy, a former Cat Fancier's Federation
allbreed judge, became involved with the Singapore Feline
Society, for which she served as registrar.
In a conversation
with a British pilot and his wife who were members of the
cat society, Tommy first learned about a small, brown-ticked
feral cat with large eyes. Known as the "drain cat" after
its habit of taking refuge in the island's drains, this cat
"had been seen in the streets by people who know cats by at
least 1965," said Meadow. She pointed out, however, that the
drain cat, "which exists in small pockets on the island, is
not the typical Singapore street cat. The predominant cats
over there look like Japanese bobtails or like magnificently
colored ruddy Abyssinians."
Curiosity,
which affects cat people as much as it does cats, led Tommy
and Hal Meadow to spend "a bunch of time going behind restaurants
with fish in our smelly pockets because that's where you usually
found the street cats," said Tommy. At last in June 1974 the
Meadows spied their first Singapura, outside a Thai restaurant.
"Hal rushed
back into the restaurant to get some fish," said Tommy, "and
I tried to hold the cat's attention." After lengthy negotiations
the Meadows were about to retire defeated when a small, brown-ticked
kitten emerged from a nearby drain.
"That
was our first Singapura," said Meadow. "We named her Pussé,
with an accent mark over the e. She was about six weeks old
when we found her."
Tommy
and Hal were walking near the waterfront one evening about
a month later when they heard "some squeaking." They followed
the sound to a nest of four kittens. A female and a male from
that litter, whom they named Tes and Ticle, became their second
and third Singapuras.
At the
time the Meadows didn't plan to make any big deal or even
a special breed out of their new cats. "We just liked their
looks," said Tommy.
Home
Cooking
The fall
of Saigon in April 1975 had a domino effect on the oil-exploration
industry in Singapore, so the Meadows returned to the United
States with Tes, Ticle, and Pussé, and two of Pussé's
kittens - the more primly named Gladys and George, who had
been sired by Ticle. "Hal had decided to bring this breed
back [to the United States] and perpetuate it," said Tommy.
"I asked him, 'Do you know what you're getting into?' But
he finally convinced me."
Encouraged
by a cat fancier in Houston, where they were living at the
time, the Meadows showed two of their Singapuras in the new-breed-and-color
class in an American Cat Fanciers Association show in Colorado.
After Hal Meadow had been transferred to California in 1976,
he and Tommy showed a few of their cats in Los Angeles. They
were well received, and before long Singapuras had been granted
registration status in four cat associations in this country.
Finally, in 1979 The International Cat Association and the
Cat Fanciers' Federation became the first cat registries to
recognize the Singapura for championship competition.
The
Straits Skinny
The story
of their encounters with the drain cats was told and retold
by the Meadows, who might still be telling it today were it
not for a reporter for The Straits Times in Singapore
named Sandra Davie; a longtime official of the Singapore Cat
Club named Lucy Koh; and an American Singapura fancier from
Georgia named Jerry Mayes.
Mayes,
who is now deceased, went to Singapore in 1987 to look for
street cats like the ones the Meadows had brought home a dozen
years earlier; but people on the island looked at him as though
he had a third eye when he started asking about little, brown-ticked
street cats that lived in drains. One question led to others
and those led to the Primary Production Department of the
Ministry of National Development. That's where Mayes discovered
importation papers for six cats that the Meadows had with
them when they entered Singapore on November 1, 1974. Three
of those cats went by the unforgettable names of Tes, Ticle,
and Pussé.
Mayes'
friend Lucy Koh was not particularly surprised by his discovery.
Koh told Cats & Kittens in a telephone interview
last October that she suspected "from the beginning that Tommy
hadn't found Tes, Ticle, and Pussé on the streets of
Singapore." What's more, said Koh, she was in possession of
a copy of a personal letter that Tommy Meadow had written
to the editor of Cat World magazine in March 1975,
a month before leaving Singapore.
"I'm trying
to get some of these people out of their ruts," wrote Meadow,
"and the only way I know how to do it is to appeal to their
pride through notoriety because the place is wide open and
anyone could make a killing in fame as well as money by importing
a pair of any one of the more spectacular cats." Or, perhaps,
by passing off a cat made in the USA as Singapore's national
mascot.
Lucy Koh
had written to cat magazines in the United States and England
from time to time seeking to correct misinformation in some
of the articles Tommy Meadows had written, but this effort
might have gone unnoticed by the world at large if the tourist
board of Singapore hadn't decided to anoint the Singapura
as the island's national mascot. The tourist board, envisioning
a full-monty promotion, had plastered the Singapura's image
all over posters, and had commissioned sculptors to produce
two dozen cat statues that were to be set out along the river
way.
"The tourist
board called me about it first," said Koh, "and I told them
the truth: 'This is not a natural breed of island cat. It's
a hybrid.' They didn't want to hear that, so they reached
Tommy and then came up with this Singapura promotion. One
woman from the tourist board said to me, 'Don't give us problems.
We can do this without you.' So I went straight to Sandra
Davie and let her know what was going on. I gave her all my
papers, then she wrote the article, and I had a good laugh
on the tourist promotion board."
Red
Carpet Treatment
Davie's
article convinced some cat fanciers in the United States that
the Singapura ought to have been Houston's mascot because
Tommy Meadow had cooked the cats up in her basement there,
using Burmese and Abyssinians in her recipe. Before long a
protest was filed against the Meadows with the Cat Fanciers'
Association (CFA), and the couple was issued a nonbinding
invitation to explain themselves at a CFA board meeting in
February 1991.
What happened
next was enough to send P.T. Barnum reaching for his checkbook.
"We had to lie," said the Meadows cheerfully because Hal Meadow
had been sent to Singapore in 1971 on work of such a sensitive
nature, "involving data acquisition for an oil company," that
no one was supposed to know he had been there. While Hal was
busy acquiring data, he had also acquired three, brown-ticked
cats. He paid a crewman on a ship that was bound for the United
States to transport these cats to his friend Tommy (the Meadows
weren't married at the time), who was living in Houston. There
were no import or export papers sent with the cats, said the
Meadows; nor was there any other record of their origin, but
the Meadows did have passports and visas to prove that Hal
Meadow had been in Singapore in 1971.
Tommy
went on to explain that she was so intrigued by the appearance
of the kittens Hal had sent her, she allowed them to reproduce.
She kept no records of these breedings because she didn't
intend to seek recognition for the kittens. When Hal Meadow
was sent back to Singapore in the fall of 1974, she went with
him. Expecting to be there for "as long as 10 years," the
Meadows took six cats to Singapore, including three grandchildren
of the cats that Hal Meadow had shipped to this country in
1971. Those grandchildren, about four months old, were the
aforementioned Tes, Ticle, and Pussé. According to
their import papers they were the products of an Abyssinian-
Burmese cross.
Tommy
Meadow further claimed that someone in the Singapore Feline
Society (SFS), which later became the Singapore Cat Club,
suggested that because these brown-ticked cats resembled a
variety seen on the streets in Singapore, they would make
a swell new breed. As a result her cats were given initial
registration status by the SFS, which called them Singapuras.
Lucy Koh
maintains, however, that Tommy Meadow, while serving as registrar
of SFS, had "[drawn] up a standard for her 'new breed'" by
herself and had "revised and made alterations to registration
procedures."
After
hearing only the Meadows' testimony, CFA chose not to censure,
much less to suspend them. Nor did the organization feel obliged
to change the Singapura's description from "naturally occurring"
to "hybrid" cat. One CFA official went so far as to say, "Everyone
generally agrees that the gene pool that created the Singapura
has always been in southeast Asia. Naturally it came from
the Burmese gene pool, the Copper Cat has been there since
1350 that we know of, and the Abyssinian. Whether they mated
on the streets of Singapore or whether they mated in Michigan,
it doesn't really matter. In addition, there is at least one
documented cat that is behind many Singapura pedigrees, and
it was picked up at the pound [in Singapore]. Even with none
of the cats the Meadows brought in, we still have a legitimate
cat from Singapore behind our Singapuras."
There's
an argument P.T. Barnum would have loved. Bill Clinton, ruminating
in his study late at night about the precise meaning of the
word is, would no doubt love it, too. Some people, however,
want more proof than Tommy Meadow was able to provide that
her revisionist Singapura history is the truth. They argue
that Meadow's second coming was not strengthened by her lack
of recall.
"Here
is this woman who started a whole new breed," said Sandra
Davie, "and she doesn't even remember the names of the first
cats her husband sent her. That's quite strange."
Also strange
is the lack of any records, veterinary or otherwise, to indicate
that those cats ever existed; but Tommy Meadow, who claimed
to be a member of MENSA, brushed that sort of technicality
aside.
"You're
talking 20 years ago," she said in 1991. "I don't even remember
what vet I was using then."
Quick
now, do you remember who your vet was 20 years ago? I don't
recall his name, but I can tell you where his office was,
and I remember distinctly that he wore an altogether unconvincing
rug.
The
Building Code
The Singapura
is a small-to-medium-sized, muscular cat with a sparkling
appearance and strikingly large eyes. Its fine, short, close-lying
coat embraces alternating bands of color: a warm, old-ivory
tone occupies the band closest to the skin and all the odd-numbered
bands, while dark brown ticking occupies the even-numbered
bands and must be in evidence at the tip of the hair shaft.
Each hair in the coat should accommodate at least two, dark
brown bands.
Commanding,
large, almond-shaped eyes, set not less than an eye-width
apart dominate the Singapura's expression. These yellow, green,
or hazel jewels are mounted in a small, appealing face with
a rounded skull, definite whisker break, medium-short, broad
muzzle, and a blunt nose with a slight stop well below eye
level. Large ears–slightly pointed, wide open at the
base, and deeply cupped–are positioned with their outer
lines extending upward at an angle just wide of parallel.
The largeness
displayed in the Singapura's shimmering color and its generous
eyes and ears stands in contrast to its small-to-medium-sized,
moderately stocky frame. Often referred to as the smallest
recognized breed, the Singapura is well-muscled and balanced
for its size.
Personality
Profile
The Singapura
combines, as one suspects that it would, the sweetness of
the Burmese with the playful and inquisitive nature of the
Abyssinian. "These cats are tuned into people's moods," said
the breed's co-founder, Tommy Meadow. "They're gentle; they're
very, very curious; and they stay playful when they're grown."
Phil Maggitti
is a freelance writer living happily ever after in the
land of virtual reality. His forwarding address is http://home.ptd.net/~heyphil/
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