What does it take to be the enfant terrible of the cat world? Meet judge Steven Meserve

What makes someone a cat person?

It’s an elusive question for a seemingly innocuous creature, one that defined the early days of YouTube’s viral videos (see: Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat and many more) and fuelled heated debate between Donald Trump and Taylor Swift, childless cat lady and international superstar.

Mostly, though, you either love them or hate them.

On the day that world-renowned cat judge Steven Meserve visits The Sydney Morning Herald, six award-winning show cats and owners in tow, the divide is similarly obvious. While some staff can barely contain their excitement, others maintain a cautious distance (“The only good cat is a dead cat,” remarks one colleague).

For Meserve, 52, whose name has become inextricably tied to the feline stars he judges, the path to becoming cat person wasn’t obvious.

“I did not grow up with cats, believe it or not,” he says.

It wasn’t until, at 18, he spied an advertisement for a Bengal cat in a local Boston newspaper that his fate was sealed.

“His name was Alex and this is the cat that changed me. You know, for non-cat people to become cat people they have to eventually have this connection with one cat – and they never realised [they were a cat person] until it happens.”

Meserve and Alex did the rounds on the Boston “cat fancy” circuit, but the hobby fell to the wayside when Meserve decided to go to college, later establishing a successful career in PR and marketing.

A young Meserve with his first cat, Alex.Credit: Instagram/@stevenmeserve

His work took him out of his home town of Boston to San Francisco and eventually London, where he lived for more than 10 years working in fashion PR. In his spare time he worked with the International Cat Association (TICA), judging shows and eventually becoming their regional director for Europe.

“Sometimes I was at Paris Fashion Week or London Fashion Week and the next weekend I would go to a leisure centre in, like, South London, judging cats.”

But cats have only recently become his bread and butter, in what he refers to as his “second act”.

Loving Cats Worldwide (LCWW), the organisation he founded in 2015 (which took off during the pandemic) and dedicated to cat events and expos, has made Meserve an internet sensation.

On Instagram and TikTok he’s amassed a combined half a million followers, and his most-watched TikTok video, of a fluffy grey Siberian, has more than 11.4 million views. Today, his work takes him around the world, from Tokyo to Amsterdam, Jakarta to Bogota.

Meserve is speaking to this masthead in Sydney, ahead of a six-week tour of Australia headlining the inaugural Oz Feline Fair.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes Meserve’s videos so captivating – adorable cats are, after all, a dime a dozen online these days.

But Meserve is not one to be upstaged. He commands the stage with a swagger, lithely recounting his feline expertise while calmly stretching, stroking and lifting the cat for the audience to behold its full glory.

There’s an absurdity to the whole charade, too: Meserve’s earnest and serious commentary at odds with the placid and bemused-looking cat.

Meserve says it wasn’t always this way.

“I was always a little awkward as a child. I mean, I really didn’t come into myself until later on,” he says.

But on stage, a cat by his side, he is in his element.

“Animals have always felt safe with me,” he says.

“I was that person at the party who couldn’t care less about the people and would always go hang out with the dog or the cat.”

The work isn’t for everyone. Judges must obtain formal qualifications, learning the unique characteristics of more than 70 breeds that shows acknowledge.

Cats are judged according to a standard of points that correspond to their breed, which include everything from body length to nostril size, health and temperament. Judges must assess all this while putting on a show for the crowd and ensuring the cat stays calm and comfortable.

“We are talking for eight, 10 hours a day, and with zero breaks, with a cat on the table. And we’re entertaining you but you’re going to sit with me for 10 minutes, and then someone else is going to come, and I’m doing the same thing over and over again. We don’t even ask stage actors to work that long. Never mind movie actors, right?” says Meserve.

Founding LCWW and breaking out of the traditional cat fancy circuit hasn’t been without controversy.

Historically, Meserve says, cat competitions have been conducted in private and focused on pedigrees.

Meserve (holding Wild Valley Snow Khione, a seal lynx tabby point Snow) with cat owners Barbie Farrugia, left, holding her brown tabby clouded Bengal, Friday, Colleen Blair with her Cornish rex, Sage, and Meredith White with her Scottish fold, Damewood Octavia.Credit: Louise Kennerley

With LCWW, his goal is to bring the cat fancy world to a new, younger audience and shine a light on rescue and mixed breed cats.

Half of his “CATstravaganza” show’s categories are regularly devoted to non-pedigree cats, which includes rescues and household cats, while Meserve campaigns for rescue cats through his work with local shelters and a podcast, Everyone Can Have One More Cat.

Criticism has come from both cat welfare advocates (who criticise the continued use of pedigree cats) and traditional show aficionados.

“You can say I’m like Vegemite, right? You either love me or you hate me.

“But we’re disrupting an industry that’s never been disrupted, and that is great because that needs to happen.”

Outside of the spotlight, Meserve spends his time in Portugal, where he lives with his long-term partner Thiago Pellizaro, a Brazilian he met in London.

The pair live in an “old, 10-bedroom pink mansion in a little village south of Porto that hadn’t been lived in for 20 years” with their six cats (including his “heart cat”, Stone, who has his own Instagram page) and two King Charles cavaliers.

Pellizaro is now training to be a cat judge himself – evidence that no one in Meserve’s orbit is immune to the allure of cats.

The inaugural Oz Feline Fair will come to Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. Tickets are on sale now.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.