The Third Annual Toughest Cat Competition

Long time followers of the Under The Paw blog will be familiar with the Toughest Cat competition (see previous winners Grebo and Rufus Bugcat, above). It's simple: you send in pictures of your cats looking really hard, then my cats and I decide which is the hardest, while you try to (and sometimes do) sway the judging process by getting your friends to post enthusiastic comments like, "Oooh, I wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night!" This year the drill is the same: post a pic of your hard cat looking hard on the Facebook event page (preferable), or, if you're not on Facebook, send it to underthepaw@tom-cox.com*.

For 2011's toughest cats, there are better prizes than ever before. The winner will not only receive a £100 HAMPER of the addictive Applaws cat food, but a signed copy of Talk To The Tail, including within it an EXCLUSIVE illustration by the brilliant Jackie Morris of Kiffer, her sadly departed hard cat (see below). I met Kiffer in 2009, when I went cat-walking at Jackie's place in Pembrokeshire, formed an instant bond with him, and, upon hearing he had passed away, dedicated Talk To The Tail to him. You can read Jackie's wonderful blog here, and find plenty of pictures celebrating his life. Second and third place tough cats will each both also received a signed copy of Talk To The Tail. Entries close on March 31st, so don't waste any time in forcing your cats down to their local weight room, or perhaps just making them really irritated by withholding their favourite snacks for twenty minutes or so...


* NB: This email isn't in permanent use: I only open it up for comps such as this.