Political observers were purring Friday with news that a cat connected to the Christy Clark campaign was registered as a BC Liberal, but fellow candidates were not amused.
A cat named Olympia -- the pet of a volunteer on Clark's campaign -- was signed up as new member with the Liberals in a membership drive this winter. Clark claims that a friend of the volunteer filed the registration as a joke.
But leadership hopeful George Abbott says the joke just isn't funny.
"This is, to my mind, not a joke at all," he told CTV News. "This is ascribing a human name to a cat, and there is no way of knowing -- as someone looking at this from the outside -- whether that human name is attached to a real human or to a cat."
Fellow candidate Kevin Falcon agreed.
"When people are signing up animals to a party, that's not actually very funny. I think it's fraudulent and I think it should be taken very seriously by the party," he said.
Despite those protestations, the feline scandal provoked laughs across the province, and even inspired a satirical website: kitties4christy.com.
Abbott says the slip-up is proof that the party needs to audit memberships more closely.
"We want to ensure the party takes every step it possibly can to ensure the legitimacy of all the membership in the BC Liberal party," he said. "It is important that the vote be untainted in this way."
But Chad Pederson, the party's executive director, says that Olympia's membership papers had already been flagged for review because they didn't have complete contact information.
He says the party is conducting daily reviews of new membership applications: "Any abnormalities that come up, we're taking a look at."
Clark says that her campaign only learned about the fishy feline membership through media reports, and officials called the party immediately to ask that Olympia's registration papers be thrown out.
Olympia's $10 membership fee will be deemed an anonymous contribution and refunded to Elections BC.
Leadership hopeful have raked in thousands upon thousands of new memberships in recent weeks in advance of Friday's deadline for new Liberals to be eligible to vote in the leadership poll on Feb. 26.
Falcon announced Friday that he has signed up 17,500 new members, while Mike de Jong says he's responsible for 10,000 new registrations.
Abbott acknowledges that his campaign has been pushing to gather new members, too, but said he trusted his team to be a little more discriminating.
"We've not signed up anything that is not human. Everyone is human, that we know of," he said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Maria Weisgarber
