The Cat Fanciers Web Site

A "Mecca" for Ailurophiles!

by Karen Lawrence and Dan Petty
Technical assistance by Orca Starbuck

Reprinted with permission, Cat Fanciers' Almanac, May 1996

For anyone who is involved with pedigreed cats and the Internet, the Cat Fanciers Web Site is a definite "must" place to visit.

Not to be confused with the Cat Fanciers' Association web site, this site was originally put together in 1994 by Marie Lamb and Orca Starbuck as the Web site for the Cat Fanciers Mailing List. Marie and Orca were both members of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, so the initial site was hosted at the AI Lab Web server, like the Fanciers List.

From the beginning, Marie and Orca worked to keep other Fanciers list members involved in contributing to the articles and information at the site. Their intent was to provide a reflection on the Web of the diversity and depth of information available on the Fanciers List, and to publicize the work of Fanciers List members. Publicity worked! Not long after the new site was announced, it received a "Cool Site of the Week" award from the NCSA What's New Page, and Web surfers began to visit the site in droves.

Over the years, Marie handled much of the hard work involved in day-to-day Web site maintenance and correspondence, and helped many other Fanciers List members to set up their homepages. Marie has now retired from the Fanciers List and Web site to concentrate on raising her new two-legged baby, Mallika Ann, born in February.

Marie has now turned the site entirely over to Orca, who did a complete visual and structural redesign of the site, and then moved the site to its new server and address. The revised site boasts a spiffy new headline banner, combining the Fanciers List logo (an "@" sign with ears) with a digitized 1912 painting of a woman with a cat by German surrealist painter Franz Marc. Smaller headline banners tie together the secondary pages, and all information has been reorganized and cross-referenced for easy navigation.

The site itself is a virtual plethora of facts pertaining to pedigreed cats and the different registering associations, and is a valuable feline information resource on the Web. It contains many original articles written and reviewed by Fanciers members, as well as links to articles elsewhere.

Some of the topics and links on the site include:

• general information, including how to find a breeder, basic cat care, color names, a full glossary and a bibliography
• veterinary articles and links to sites like NetVet
• breed rescue information, welfare groups and shelters
• information on associations, shows, and clubs all over the world, with links to their online web sites
• links to commercial web sites, cat picture sites, and other assorted feline homepages

You have Frequently Asked Questions about Cats?

One important part of the site is the section on Breed FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Breed FAQs are written by experienced breeders, and answer those questions we always get at shows about our breeds, such as "How can I tell if my cat is a Russian Blue" and "Do you use a curling iron on your American Curl's ears"! They also include each breed's history, appearance, temperament, and any concerns that buyers should be aware of when picking out a kitten. From "About the Breed FAQs," an article at the Web site: "The Breed FAQs are intended to give a balanced and informative picture of each breed and its distinctive characteristics. The main purpose is to help people make informed decisions when they are thinking about acquiring a purebred kitten. ... The bottom line is that owners that understand the breed will be more satisfied and have better relationships with their pets."

Fanciers Breeder Referral List

Another very popular area is the Fanciers Breeder Referral List, originated and maintained by Barbara French, a Fanciers List member. This set of pages is arranged by breed and geographical area, and lists over 350 breeders with email addresses, linking also to cattery Web sites for those that have them. Also included with each breed are photos of that breed, links to the CFA breed profile and breed standard, and links to any other breed specific articles on the Web, such as the Breed FAQs. There is even a special section that has a listing of "Retired Friends" (adult cats that are looking for homes). The Fanciers Breeder Referral List is working well to connect online breeders with potential kitten buyers -- a much needed and valued service!

The Cat Fanciers Web Site is an evolving site, constantly being updated with new information. For example, one area that will be added soon is the new home page for the National Pet Alliance, hosted by the Fanciers site. The Cat Fanciers site is well worth a bookmark on your browser, so be sure to check in again and again to see what's new.

Fanciers Mailing List

One of the major features of the Fanciers website is the Fanciers Mailing List. Susbcription requests for addition to this mailing list should be sent to majordomo@fanciers.com with "subscribe fanciers" in the body of the message. Just why is information about a mailing list - on the Internet and about pedigreed cat issues that affect all associations - such a valuable commodity to breeders? The following answer is taken verbatim from the Fanciers website and is used here because it explains the gist of Fanciers so well:

What is the Fanciers List?

Founded in 1993, the Fanciers mailing list is a private, unmoderated list, intended for discussions or announcements specifically relating to showing and breeding pedigreed cats. This includes such topics as feline veterinary medicine and home care, cattery management, the politics of cat shows and cat fancy associations, and the history and evolution of cat breeds. The list also serves as a social group for breeders and exhibitors.

Who are the members?

The Fanciers list maintains a steady membership of around 500 people. Most of us are involved in the cat fancy to some extent, but we're involved in many ways, representing every major cat related association, nearly every breed of cat, and many countries around the world. Some of the most reknowned feline experts are among our ranks, including many cat show judges, board members of cat registries, cat geneticists, cat book authors, and the like. Some members breed and/or show pedigreed cats, or show household pets (nonpedigreed cats); some put on cat shows and other events that educate and entertain, or produce publications about cats and the cat fancy; some work with breed rescue groups and other organizations devoted to animal welfare; some practice veterinary medicine, or participate in feline health research... and some of us aren't involved in the "fancy" at all, but join to learn and share our thoughts about our beloved feline friends.

What is Valuable About the Fanciers List?

The cat fancy is filled with caring, responsible people, who believe at heart in lofty goals such as bettering the lives of all cats, improving the health and quality of our breeds, and brightening up people's lives through the love of animals. However, it is easy in any competitive hobby to form opposing groups and lose track of what we are really here for. The Fanciers list helps us transcend the barriers of status and competition so that we can work towards our real goals, for the benefit of all cats and the people who love them.

We are committed to providing an open forum for all cat fanciers to discuss the issues that concern them. Strong emotions can sometimes surface in email, especially when difficult topics strike close to home. Yet these emotions tell us that we are dealing with issues, not ignoring them. We remain firm believers in the power of the Internet to open channels of communication and foster understanding between people with different backgrounds.

We have found the Internet useful as an aid to world-wide research, improving both our medical and genetic knowledge and our animal husbandry practices. Talking about our concerns and problems in a wide forum has helped us to find practical solutions, as well as the sympathy we sometimes need. We have found this particularly powerful in sharing our experiences with dreaded diseases such as FIP, but it has also touched our lives in countless smaller ways.

We also use the Internet to make our collective expertise available to the public at large, and to present a balanced picture of ourselves and our pursuits in a time when animal husbandry itself is under attack from radical movements. Good factual information helps individuals to make better choices and take better care of their animal companions. It is our best method for improving the lives of people and animals.

And discuss items of interest in the pedigree cat world is exactly what its worldwide members do! This is an exceptionally busy mailing list, and can generate upwards of 80-100 email messages a day. Topics are discussed in depth, opinions are rendered, and sometimes tempers flare. We take our cats (and our associations) very seriously! Recent discussions have centered around CFA's intention to define a breed, breeder reactions to a suggestion that a breed rescue group is "taking away their market for retired breeding cats", health issues such as cardiomyopathy, a long discussion on the causes, effects and treatments of eye ulcers, and on the campaigning of a cat - as well as the usual show brags and show announcements, and discussion of the various registering bodies.

CONSTRUCTION AREA

Remember, the address for your cattery website is called a URL, short for Universal Resource Locator. Web pages have URLs that start with the characters "http://" (for HyperText Transfer Protocol), followed by the name of the Web server where the page is physically located, followed by the directory where the page is located and the name of the page itself.

Here's an example:

http://www.fanciers.com/people/tailsend.html

In this example, the Web server is "www.fanciers.com" which is the server that handles the Cat Fanciers website. On that server, there is a directory called "people" which contains individual cattery websites for some of the people on the Fanciers mailing list. In the "people" directory, there is a file called "tailsend.html" which is the HTML file for the Tailsend Cattery website.

The pages on the World Wide Web are formatted for viewing through a language known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language). It consists of "tags" that surround your text to format it, and then basically disappear when your document is viewed through a web browser, such as Netscape.

All tags (with a few exceptions) are started with a command within brackets <> and must be closed with a slash command </>. Tags must also be closed in the reverse order to which they were opened, e.g. HTML is opened first and closed last as in the example below. All documents MUST start with the following tags:

<HTML>
<TITLE> title of document</TITLE>
<BODY>

Your text will be in this area

The document MUST end with

</BODY>
</HTML>

The text in the body of your document should be broken down into paragraphs. The tags for a new paragraph is <P> and this is one of two tags that does not require a closing tag. Therefore the above sample would look like:

<HTML>
<TITLE> title of document</TITLE>
<BODY>

<p>Your text will be in this area

</BODY>
</HTML>

On a web browser, this would simply appear as:

Your text will be in this area

Headings

Headings with larger bold font can be used for organizational purposes, and are available in six sizes, with <H1></H1> being the largest and <H6></H6> being the smallest.

You do not need a special program to write a document for the WWW - any word processor will do, as long as the document is saved in ASCII text. There are, however, a number of editor programs that will automatically add the basic HTML tags to a document. Many of these have evaluation versions which can be downloaded directly from the WWW, and come in versions for either Window or Macintosh. You can find these through any search engine, or at:

WINDOWS VERSIONS: