First Contacting a Breeder?

Originally Posted by missymotus

You need to let the breeder know beforehand if you might be showing, so she can give you a show quality cat. Or you will get papers saying pet only, not for showing/breeding.

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Ooops! See, I know nothing about purebreeds and showing!
Do they need to be unaltered to be able to show them? Or are there classes for spayed cats?

There is an alter class, they 'compete' against other alters and the entires are in another class

I plan on putting Cleo in the altered class.
You show your cat also in the altered class.

Sounds interesting. I might consider investing in a show quality pet. Thanks!

Thanks so much for all the help!

Originally Posted by missymotus

There's a breeder here in SA who has stunning black silvers. (Even if one of their neuter girls came 2nd overall for end of year, just beating my Farley putting him into 3rd

) Their cats are just gorgeous, in looks and temperament.

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*UPDATE*
Just found out that the breeder I'd originally been hoping on has left the game. But she reccommended this website to me - is this this the SA breeder you were talking about?

http://www.vivacesomalis.net/home.html

Yes, I was referring to Vivace There are several other Somali breeders in NSW too, though I don't know how many do silvers.

I've checked out the website and I'm quite impressed. She has studs and queens with quite a few well known Somali Breeders and vice versa, as well as imported bloodlines. Beauuuutiful silvers !

This is their old website, with more photos http://www.users.bigpond.com/vivace_cats/

Very nice, hey do you know if the Kitten Enquiry Form on the old website is still valid? Or just email and phoning?

I have no idea if it still works, I'd just email them since it's not on the new site yet.

I don't think that a breeder needs to have a website to be reputable. I know several very successful and ethical breeders who do not have websites (or their websites are not very good.) They sell their kittens through people they meet while showing, or they rely on referrals from partner catteries. Not everybody is HTML literate

I've been making webpages for the last 10 years now, and while my design skills are still rather limited, I am able to do a lot more than most breeders out there.

Don't base your decision on websites alone. They might not even breed enough kittens to need a website.

And before the internet, the breeders only had shows and referrals to rely on to sell their top kittens/cats.