Latest news with #Meserve
The Age
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
What does it take to be the enfant terrible of the cat world? Meet judge Steven Meserve
W hat 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. 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. Loading 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. 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.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
What does it take to be the enfant terrible of the cat world? Meet judge Steven Meserve
W hat 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. 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. Loading 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. 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.
New York Times
26-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
One Family's Relentless Pursuit Of The Bony, Oily, Elusive Shad
The sun was sinking behind the western bank of the Delaware River, bathing Lewis Island in golden light. From a lifetime of experience, Steve Meserve knew that shad were huddled on the Lambertville, N.J., side of the river, resting in the shadows before resuming their long journey upriver to spawn. 'Let's go,' Mr. Meserve said. With a long rope, three members of his crew towed an old rowboat about a quarter mile upriver. Mr. Meserve climbed in, took the handmade oars and guided the boat into the middle of the river, feeding 200 yards of net into the water from the stern. He then curled the boat back toward shore until the net, called a seine, made a C shape. On the island's southern tip, about a dozen spectators and potential shad customers were waiting to see what the river would yield. Mr. Meserve rowed the boat around the island, tugging the net behind him. Then, hand over hand, the crew hauled it in. As the seine reached the shore, the muddy, green-brown water was still for a moment and then erupted in splashes and flashes of silver, revealing a nice haul of about two dozen wriggling shad. 'It's a magical moment,' said Shawn Douglas, who has been a member of the crew for four years. 'Every haul is like Christmas morning. You never know what you're going to get.' 'It can be 50 fish,' Mr. Meserve said, 'or nothing at all.' Mr. Meserve runs the last licensed haul seine fishery on the Delaware, using the same technique practiced by his grandfather, Fred Lewis, and his great-grandfather, Bill Lewis, over more than a century. Lewis Island is named after the family. Each spring, during the shad's northward migration, Mr. Meserve, his family and a group of volunteers haul shad from the Delaware nearly every evening. Once a commercial operation, haul seining has become a seasonal ritual, performed to honor their forebears and to gather data on the shad population for wildlife biologists and environmental officials. Lambertville celebrates the migration every year with a two-day Shad Fest, which is taking place this weekend. 'We haven't made any money at this for a long time,' said Mr. Meserve, 63, who makes his living as an I.T. professional. 'It's about stewardship and the legacy. It's a way to connect to the river and the environment and the fish.' The crew — which ranges from five to a dozen members on any given evening — offers camaraderie and a community, knit together by the wet, muddy teamwork required for haul seining. 'It does get into your blood,' Mr. Meserve said. 'Every haul is a story, and every season is a story,' said Charlie Groth, a crew member who teaches cultural anthropology at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pa. Two decades ago, she began researching a book on the Lewis fishery, 'Another Haul,' and was so taken with the beauty, the fellowship and the lore that she joined up. 'History,' Ms. Groth said, 'is very thick on Lewis Island.' The island is a narrow, mostly wooded strip of land, about a mile long and separated from Lambertville by an inlet and a wooden footbridge. Lambertville, a 4,000-person community of graceful Victorian homes, has a rich history shaped by the river, ferries, a canal, a railroad and the New Hope-Lambertville Bridge. In pre-colonial times, the Lenape people fished for shad from Lewis Island, and the abundant fish were a staple in their diet. In 1771, a colonist named Richard Holcombe established a commercial fishery on the island. Mr. Meserve's great-grandfather took over the fishery in 1888, and in the peak years hauled in more than 9,000 shad annually. (Today, the annual haul is in the hundreds.) 'Captain Bill' passed the fishery on to his son, who in turn taught Mr. Meserve everything he knew. After Mr. Meserve returned from college, his grandfather fell ill with cancer, and he took over. 'It's our heritage,' said Mr. Meserve, who runs the fishery with the help of his wife, Sue, a theatrical technical director and professional carpenter. 'I felt a responsibility to continue the legacy. Someone had to speak for the shad.' Shad was a popular meal in early America, but its oily, bony flesh does not appeal to many modern American palates. Nearly all of the Lewis fishery's customers are now from India, Bangladesh and China, where a similar fish from the herring family, hilsa, is highly prized. 'We call hilsa the king of the fishes, and shad is very similar in taste,' said Sam Ghosh, a customer for more than a decade, who bought three fish one evening last week. The price, $4 for a male and $6 for a female, hasn't changed for decades. 'We bake it and make curry out of it,' Ghosh said. 'We're crazy about it.' He and other customers are also fond of shad roe, which some call 'poor man's caviar.' The American shad is an anadromous species, meaning it begins its life in freshwater rivers along the East Coast and then migrates to the ocean. Adult shad live in the Atlantic as far south as Florida for three or four years, dining on plankton and tiny shrimp, before returning to their original rivers to spawn. Delaware River shad mostly head for waters near Hancock, N.Y., a heroic swim against the current of more than 300 miles from the mouth of the river in Delaware Bay. Biologists think that shad, like salmon on the West Coast, are guided to their birthplaces by a highly sensitive sense of smell, visual cues and memory. By the mid-20th century, the shad population had shrunk significantly as shipbuilding, industry and sewage fouled the Delaware, which was left with virtually no dissolved oxygen for fish to breathe. The catch on Lewis Island plunged to zero in two years during the 1950s, prompting Bill Lewis to start a campaign to persuade state and federal officials to clean up the river. An interstate commission found that there was a 'pollution block' near Philadelphia that stopped shad from swimming upriver. After decades of legislation and cleanup efforts culminating in the Clean Water Act of 1972, the river's waters cleared, and the shad returned — but in far fewer numbers than a century earlier. No one really knows why. 'From a historical perspective, the river is quite clean,' said Jake Bransky, a biologist at the Delaware River Basin Commission. Since shad populations have dropped in all East Coast rivers, he said, 'there could be something going on in the ocean we don't know about.' Some speculate there may be an environmental reason, while others theorize that shad are being caught in the nets of commercial ocean trawlers before they reach the rivers. Mr. Meserve's meticulous records, which he updates every night, show that the shad population 'is below historical standards, but it's stable.' He's confident that his niece and nephew will pick up the oars and haul the seine when he finally puts them down. 'The next generation has every intention to keep it going,' he said. 'The connection to the legacy is very powerful.'
