A North Holland fair is not complete without a traditional cat-cudgel competition: a tradition that, as the name suggests, was once very cruel. The animal-friendly cat bat variant has now been established for years. Actually, only the name is still a tradition, but that is what we are sticking to.
“It was horrific, of course, it used to happen opposite the café in the village,” says Harrie Vredevoort, board member of the Rijperijsclub and organizer of the annual cat club competition during the Rijper fair.
He tells how a cat was locked in a barrel that was hung on a rope between two poles. The participants were then allowed to pound the barrel with heavy wooden clubs until the barrel burst and the cat could escape in death. A horrific scene that the cat often did not survive.
Cat cuddling 2.0
At the end of the nineteenth century, the realization grew that animal suffering cannot be entertainment and an alternative was invented for the living cat in the barrel, Vredevoort explains. Instead of a live cat, a small block of wood was hidden in a wooden barrel.
Whoever managed to swing his club against the barrel from some distance so hard that the barrel burst and the wooden cat fell to the floor, received a cash prize. Participants who do not crack the barrel, but manage to break one or more of the rings loose, receive a lower cash prize.
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The fact that the cat-battle tradition has been transformed into an accepted, well-behaved version of the whole is illustrated by the fact that even the Royal family, led by Máxima, played a round of clubbing.
Vredevoort shows that the bats are already ready in the clubhouse of the Ice Club and the scaffolding is also at hand because it will happen again in September. Then on the village field near the Flour Bag, the cat bat rack is rebuilt and the villagers can go free. Harrie is looking forward to it, because traditions have to be honored, he believes.