The scenario:

I have a class Cat, and a subclass PetCat.

I have mapped Cat to a table named "cat" and set up PetCat as a joined-subclass with its overflow fields in "petcat".

The question:

If I pull back a list of cats e.g. Select Cat c from cats and I iterate that list, how can I tell if a *particular* cat is actually a PetCat or a mere Cat?

I understand that if I used a different mapping strategy (one big table), there'd be a discriminator column I could interrogate, but I'm sort of locked into joined-subclass mapping at this point.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.