Cat-lovers of the world–unite!

If you've managed to escape LAPCPADPOUB (or let's all post cat photos and dire poetry on our blogs) day so far, you lead a charmed life, and James A-S will probably appear at your doorstep shortly, begging to know how you managed it. Inaugurated by Happy Mouffetard of The Inelegant Gardener (What is a "mouffetard," anyway? I must ask her), the contest was inspired by James' incautious suggestion that some gardening blogs suffered from a surfeit of cats. Foolish man.

This is our three-legged marauder in the lettuce patch in September.

The result? This contest, for which James had to serve as judge and for which he had to provide the prizes–copies of his own elegant little gardening book, so recently reviewed here. Well, did he think cat-lovers would take his insults lying down?

It appears that he's gotten his, as he all but drowned in treacly poetry and suffocated in cat fur and in photos of Kewt Kitties, as he calls them, while doing the judging. Serves him right. Well, results are in, and barely in time, as it appears from Yolanda Elizabet of Bliss that it was getting a bit nasty. She apparently had a live feed from coverage of a near-riot outside James' house as cat-lovers tried to storm the grounds. I gather they were beaten back, but that James has been forced to leave the country, under the guise of a visit to in-laws. Right.

Yolanda deservedly won the Continental Europe division, and for my money deserves Best in Show, for as James says, "Never have so many fuzzy eared, ickle wickle kitty witties been assembled in one place – except perhaps during the initial casting for Disney’s The Aristocats Her prose style is of a piece with his, for she refers unabashedly to one kitten's "widdle nosey," advises us to "look at those tiny widdle feet and tailsy wailsiesand so on. It's a good thing she hands out buckets. The photos are frankly irresistible.

I just hope the judges checked that she actually owns all the cats, kittens, and cuddle-ables in those photos; there have been some mutterings suggesting that she borrowed–or worse–all the kittens within a ten-mile range. Anyone heard about a rash of cat-nappings in The Netherlands?