Cat agility is a sport in which trained cats are lured through timed obstacle courses by their handlers. Cat agility contests, like similarly themed

dog agility Dog agility is a dog sport in which a handler directs a dog through an obstacle course in a race for both time and accuracy. Dogs run off leash with no food or toys as incentives, and the handler can touch neither dog nor obstacles. The handler ...

contests, are modeled after the

equestrian The word equestrian is a reference to equestrianism, or horseback riding, derived from Latin ' and ', "horse". Horseback riding (or Riding in British English) Examples of this are: * Equestrian sports *Equestrian order, one of the upper classes i ...

sport of show jumping. Under the rules, cats must complete a course in under 270 seconds, completing each obstacle in a prescribed manner. Lures such as

laser pointer A laser pointer or laser pen is a small handheld device with a power source (usually a battery) and a laser diode emitting a very narrow coherent low-powered laser beam of visible light, intended to be used to highlight something of interest by ...

s and toys on string may be used, but food treats are not allowed. The obstacles are arranged in a circle and include tunnels, steps, and poles. For a typical contest there are between six and fourteen obstacles, and the winning cats complete the course in about ten seconds. The first known cat agility contest was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Vickie Shields and three friends in 2003. By the late 2000s, the contests were popular worldwide, with approximately 40 held each year in connection with

cat show A cat show is a judged event where the owners of cats compete to win titles in various cat registering organizations by entering their cats to be judged after a breed standard. Both pedigreed and companion (or moggy) cats are admissible, althoug ...

s. In the US, the two largest cat fancy organizations, The Cat Fanciers Association (CFA), and The International Cat Association (TICA) both have feline agility competitions, which have met with mixed success and popularity. CFA awarded its first National Agility Win in the 2006-07 season, with the top cat in Agility competition being Zehnder's Twyla Mooner of Hitails, a blue Abyssinian female. Twyla was born in 2005 and competed in--and won--her first agility competition as a five-month-old kitten, without ever having any prior training, or practice in, running an obstacle course.

References

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External links

catagility.com
- cat agility page maintained by

The International Cat Association The International Cat Association (TICA) is considered the world's largest genetic cat registry. Originally a North American organization, it now has a worldwide presence. The organization has a genetic registry for pedigreed and household pet ca ...

http://agility.cfa.org/twylas-story.shtml Animals in sport