With the deadline passed for BC Liberal leadership candidates to join new members to the party, could a fluff involving the party membership of a cat and a website pledging feline support to Christy Clark signal the claws are coming out?

With the party expecting new memberships to total at least 35,000 by the 5 p.m. Friday deadline, candidates were anxious to embark on the second phase of their campaigns -- convincing new and existing members they're the best replacement for Premier Gordon Campbell in the vote Feb. 26.

But even before time was up, some candidates were in a scurry over the registration of a pet belonging to a senior member of Clark's campaign team for the voting privilege.

The party quickly neutered the membership, while Clark's camp denounced the act as a joke by someone's friend that they took no part in. And yet, before the matter had been swept under the mat, a new frenzy had begun over a website and Twitter account called "Kitties4Christy."

The playfully-designed site features photos of cuddly creatures giving their animal allegiance to the candidate, a former radio host.

While the cat membership only came to the attention of the party and the news media Friday, the website mocking the incident was registered three days earlier. The anonymous creator used a special website to register Kitties4Christy, one that masks any information about who's responsible.

Clark suggested the fact someone went to great lengths to hide their identity means that along with the shift in campaign focus, strategies may be turning dog-eat-dog.

"There probably will be more heat and more negative campaigning," she said Friday, minutes after finishing a final day of working the phones to sign up supporters. "Having said that, though ... I'm not going to play that game."

She noted George Abbott has singled her out in recent weeks, saying "I don't see him slowing down in that."

Earlier in the day, Abbott sent out a news release saying the cat-membership-incident raises "key questions not just about the practices of that particular team, but also about the integrity of the BC Liberal Party's entire system."

He said the attempt to register an animal was fraud, can't be downplayed as a joke and "may very well be the tip of the iceberg."

The Kitties4Christy website also prominently displays a photo of Abbott speaking from a podium, with spliced photos of cats starring daggers at him over each of his shoulders.

Calls to Abbott's campaign were not returned.

The party didn't release it's final membership tally on Friday, but some candidates were boasting about their pull.

Kevin Falcon announced his team had persuaded 17,500 people to join the party, while Mike de Jong's team said he'd generated somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 by day's end.

Clark said she wouldn't be announcing her total. A spokesman for Moira Stilwell said they didn't have the figures yet, while neither Abbott or Ed Mayne could be reached.

After publicly announcing his massive intake, Falcon said in an interview he had a "high-degree of confidence" the members his team signed up would vote for him, and he saw no reason candidates should have to take the gloves off.

"I know the media's been desperately awaiting there to be a big fight in this leadership race, and it's unlikely to happen because we actually all get along as individuals," he said.

A spokesman for de Jong echoed the sentiments, saying that with lots of young and tech-savvy people involved in the campaigns, he was sure the cat fiasco was nothing more than "a joke gone wrong."

"Mike takes a much more conciliatory approach, and there's certainly no plans to change that," Doug McClelland said.

Stilwell agreed the tone shouldn't change in the next few weeks, but she hopes there's an even greater exchange of ideas.

Party members will vote on whether to adopt a new voting system at a Feb. 12 convention that alters the weight of members to ensure rural and urban leadership votes have the same influence.

The party hasn't yet said how many new members have actually signed up, but candidates have repeated the prevailing view that new membership have doubled the party membership to about 70,000.

The changes to Liberal leadership rules also include preferential voting, in which members would rank the candidates rather than just picking one, and a telephone and Internet voting system.

Campbell announced his resignation last November following more than a year of constant criticism over the harmonized sales tax.

The Opposition New Democrats are also preparing for a leadership vote, set for April.