The Club History page has been updated by a article taken from a booklet by the late Mrs J F Paddon, written circa 1966.
One Summer day back in the year 1931, a group of Cat Fanciers gathered together in a room at St. Luke's College, Exeter, with the object of forming a Cat Club for the South West peninsula and the title selected was The South Western Counties Cat Club. Officers and Committee were elected and the new Club was launched.
During the thirties several Championship Shows were held, always at the old Drill Hall, Exeter. Then came 1939 and the war, during the blitz on Exeter in 1942, the Drill Hall was one of the casualties.
After the War the Club almost went into liquidation, as no subscriptions had been paid over the war years and funds were very low, but in 1949 the mere handful of those left - exactly three, of whom Mrs Paddon was one - decided to advertise and try to arouse enough interest among cat breeders in the South West to resuscitate the Club. This led to a number of enquires, new members joined, and from this nucleus the Club was reborn.
A small non Championship Show was held in Torquay the same year which netted about £80 (quite a sum in those days) and from then the Club went from strength to strength. The Show eventually regained Championship status, but in those days was held bi-annually, at various venues. In 1960 it returned to the city of its birth, Exeter, and held a successful Show in the Civic Hall.
By 1970 the Show had become an annual event, but a crisis occurred when an the news came that the Civic Hall was to be closed, demolished and the site redeveloped.
The Show Manager at the Time was the late Mrs Frankie Paddon, one of our founders. In her day she was a well-known judge and breeder of quality Brown Tabby Persains with the Trelyston prefix. Through a contact (her hairdresser, as a matter of fact) she was put in touch with the Manager of the Racecourse at Newton Abbot where a new building had been erected, which turned out to be an ideal venue.
We stayed there for many years until we first moved to the Riviera Centre, Torquay, in 1989.
The Club is, of course, affiliated to the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy and sends two delegates to the meetings of this body.
In 2001, we celebrated our 70th birthday and so have a history to be proud of.
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