Tribute to Jane Tackley
9 May 1949 – 5 September 2010
I met Jane many years ago when our mutual love of the Birman cat first brought us into contact. She was a successful breeder of Birmans - she originally wanted a Blue Point but her real passion and success on the show bench was with the beautiful Red Series Birmans) and more recently she has also been successfully breeding and showing Turkish Vans. She worked tirelessly for the Birman Rescue, setting up a network of safe houses, and spending many hours organising rescues and transportation, nursing cats back to health and finding them loving, permanent homes. She was passionate about all aspects of the cat world, working quietly behind the scenes for a number of cat clubs.
Jane bred the first Any Other Colour Grand Champion Birman Female, a Seal Tortie who became Grand Champion Klassyklogs Krafty Karess of whom she was inordinately proud. Karess subsequently went on to achieve UK, Imperial and International Grand Premier titles. Jane bred many other highly titled (mainly Red series) Birmans, some of whom could be quite vocal on the show bench!
She spent several years as a steward before applying to become a probationer judge of the Birman breed and she quickly gained promotion to full judge – her reports were extremely detailed and it was very easy to picture the cat she was describing – in fact her reports were often held up as an example to other, less literate, probationers. Jane’s first judging engagement as a probationer judge was at the National Cat Club Show in Olympia, and naturally we couldn’t let the occasion go unnoticed, so the Committee decorated her trolley with ‘L’ plates, tinsel and Christmas decorations and a soft toy cat – I don’t think there was much room for the real cats she was going to have to judge that day.
Jane had an instinctive eye for a good cat, and was a popular judge in the Semi Long Haired Section, she always made herself available after judging to talk to exhibitors and explain her placings.
Jane usually wore her hair long and loose, but pulled back from her face - I once complemented her on her ‘new look’, her blonde hair was still quite long, but it had clearly been trimmed by several inches. She became somewhat embarrassed and then laughingly admitted that her hair had somehow become caught in the vacuum cleaner and she’d had to cut herself free! To this day I can’t imagine what she’d been doing to get so entangled!
Jane was a woman of many talents - I really don’t know how she packed so much into her day!– an excellent web designer, she took over the National Cat Club’s web-site, updating it on a regular basis; an experienced computer programmer she produced the paperwork for several cat club shows, including the Seal & Blue Point Birman Cat Club supplying judges books, checklists, catalogues and all the other computer generated paperwork which goes towards running a successful cat show, and she was there on Show Day running table for us to make sure that everything ran smoothly.
Jane was also an accomplished decorator, an enthusiastic gardener - fuschias being a particular favourite - a devoted wife, mother and grandmother.
Jane was a woman who told it as she saw it and she didn’t suffer fools gladly but once you got to know her, she was a real friend! She is sadly missed by all her friends in the Cat Fancy.
Celia Langford
Hon Secretary
22 September 2010