Tess the Japanese Bobtail Wins Cat Fanciers Show

Inside Madison Square Garden yesterday, the audience exploded in frenzied applause, the flashbulbs popped - and the winner swatted a toy mouse.

Tess, a Japanese bobtail from Freehold, N.J., beat more than 300 challengers to win the first-place ribbon, as well as a year's supply of food and litter, in the annual Cat Fanciers' Association-Iams Cat Championship show.

"I wasn't expecting anything like this," said one of Tess' co-owners, teacher Jill Archibald. "To win the Garden is outrageously wonderful."

Tess is a slender 6 pounds of white fur splashed with tan-and-black highlights, with a small pompom pouf of a tail and luminous yellow eyes.

At just 1-1/2 years old, Tess is already a seasoned feline beauty queen: Last year, she won the nation's top award for kittens and took second place in an agility contest.

Her other owners, Archibald and Karen Bishop, have been involved in cat shows for nearly 35 years and breed the bobtails and Egyptian maus. They entered five other cats in this year's show, which waited patiently in their crates while Tess lapped up the glory.

Karen Bishop said she'll display Tess' ribbons at home "so the other kitties have something to work for."

Bishop said they'd invested thousands of dollars in Tess, though she insisted, "It's a labor of love. I don't like to think about it in terms of money."

Second place in the two-day show went to Kissie, an 11-month-old blue-cream Persian from Kansas City. Third prize was awarded to Amber Snow Cayenne, a 7-month-old Scottish fold from Columbia, S.C.