Pass the Purr-tinis, please.

NEW YORK - The catwalk really was a catwalk Thursday. Show cats in costumes ranging from an Elvis costume to a sequined satin dress strutted their stuff at New York's Algonquin Hotel.

The feline fashion show unfolded in the dining room where Dorothy Parker presided over famously catty Round Table literary luncheons in the 1920s.

The show benefited an animal welfare group and honored Matilda, the Algonquin's resident cat, who just turned 13. She is the hotel's ninth cat since the tradition started in the 1930s, when actor John Barrymore dubbed a bedraggled stray Hamlet.

Early in the day, Matilda, a pedigreed ragdoll breed with long, silky, cream-colored hair, held court on a chaise longue by the entrance.

In her honor, cocktails with names like Purr-tini and Pink Pussycat were served at $20 apiece to guests including representatives of the nonprofit North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, N.Y., on Long Island. The adoption shelter, which was to receive the proceeds of the benefit, offered more than a dozen homeless cats for adoption.

The Westchester Feline Club supplied the show-quality cats, with fashions created by New Jersey pet fashion company Meow Wear.

Matilda has become an Algonquin celebrity, and her birthday is celebrated every year. She also receives about 30 e-mails a month, which are answered by longtime Algonquin employee Alice De Almeida.

"We from Stuttgart in Germany are really your fans," read one such missive. "We've read about you in our newspaper und about the very fine lodge in which you live."

It was signed, in German, "Miau."