Online Almanac Users Guide

This guide is intended to help you learn about and navigate the Online Almanac (OLA), CFA’s virtual monthly publication.

You will need a CFA user account in order to access the OLA. There is no charge to set up a user account, which is your access point to take advantage of CFA’s various online secure services. These services include not only the OLA, but also participation in our Cat Breeder Referral Service as well as Online Confirmation of Championship/Premiership and Online Litter Registration. If you do not already have a user account, you can easily set one up free of charge by visiting the following URL: secure.cfa.org

Once you have a user account, simply login to your account and look for the Online Almanac Subscription heading. From here, you can either set up a new subscription to the OLA or extend an existing one through our secure site by using your credit card or the unique code provided to printed Almanac subscribers as credit for remaining subscriber issues. Once your OLA subscription is activated, simply login to your account and under the Online Almanac Subscription heading, follow the link to Online Almanac.

Voila! You are now on the OLA home page! From this point you can access all kinds of information and features. Just under the Almanac masthead at the top of the page, you will notice a series of tabs or sections, all of which have sub-sections accessible through drop-down menus. The OLA home page and each tabbed section feature photos of last season’s Best Cat, Best Kitten, Best Cat in Premiership and highest scoring Breed Winners, and these photos are changed monthly. Let’s take a tour of the OLA’s different sections.

Recent Awards

The first section is called Recent Awards. Click on About Recent Awards for an explanation of what can be found in this section, or click on one of the sub-sections to go directly to grands or DMs. The Grands section lists all cats that achieved Grand Champion or Grand Premier status during the previous calendar month. The DM section lists all cats that achieved the DM title during the previous calendar month. Both lists can be sorted alphabetically by either cat name or breed, and include all the vital information for each cat.

Show Stats

The next section is called Show Stats. Click on About Show Stats for an explanation of what can be found in this section, or click on one of the subsections to go directly to any of them. The first sub-section is Download Files where you can find tab-delimited text files for the weekly National/Regional E-Points updates. Once downloaded, these files may be imported into application programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel. The Download Files page also offers files for Grands, DMs, Show Reports, Monthly Scoreboards and various articles of interest, including the annual show season statistics article and registration statistics. In addition to current files, you can also find archived files and articles from past months and seasons on the Download Files page.

Under the Show Stats heading, you will also find E-Points – Breed/Division (updated weekly), E-Points – National/Regional (attractively formatted points updated only once a month, after the last full weekend’s shows have been scored), Official Show Counts (updated weekly), Scoreboards (PDF files of the show results, updated monthly) and Show Reports (complete lists of CFA shows and their counts, in date order, by show season).

Show Officials

Next is a section called Show Officials. For a description of what you can find in this section, click on About Show Officials. Of course, you can also go directly to one of the subsections for: Agility Ringmasters, for a list of ringmasters by region/division; Clerks, for a list of licensed clerks along with their status, location and contact information; and Judges – Allbreed or Judges – Specialty, for a list of judges along with their status, location and contact information. Note that the list of judges can be sorted alphabetically either by name or by state.

Features

The last section is called Features. Click on Features to access current articles of interest as well as the CFA Timetable for important deadlines and reminders. You can also go directly to one of the subsections under Features if you wish.

The first sub-section is Junior Showmanship. This area is currently under construction, and it will feature the calendar of shows offering Junior Showmanship competition as well as Junior Showmanship Competition Results. Watch for it to be available soon!

Next is the White Pages, which is a PDF file of the annual CFA White Pages that has been traditionally mailed with the print Almanac each year.

The Winn Feline Foundation area is where you can find all recent and archived articles from Winn, including progress reports and breaking news on the latest advances in research and medicine that benefit feline health.

Editor’s Note: If you are an AOL user and are having difficulty accessing the Online Almanac or CFA’s other online secure services, please follow these steps:
1) Use AOL to connect to the Internet, as you normally do.
2) Then, open your web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, etc.
3) Type this into the web address bar exactly as it appears: secure.cfa.org
4) Log in to your CFA online account. From there, you will be able to access the Online Almanac and other CFA services.

To subscribe to the Online Almanac either create an account, or logon to an existing account, here