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I'm sorry for any confusion; I was not referring to you but rather some "friends" who feel that providing food and water satisfies the requirement of "taking care" of their pets!Originally posted by Billie
Dear Pete,
I hope you don't mean me by talking about such people
I've never been irresponsible towards a pet and i love my baby, and indeed all cats, dogs and whatever animals one can imagine, and I can never harm any of them let alone dump an animal that has been loved.
Please tell me isn't it difficult for your to part with your kittens?? And how do you make sure their homes are good enough for them? I'm sure I would miss them immensely....
And thanks once again for all your support and advice
That's where Donna has problems as well; she treats everything as a pet and tries to find excuses for not letting the kittens go. At that rate we would have a house full of cats and we would be living in a tent! I certainly don't mean to sound cold but as a breeder you need to keep what meets your breeding program and sell the rest. The whole goal of breeding, in my opinion, is to produce cats which fit the standard as closely as possible. Obviously not all will and those are the ones you sell as pets or breeders to someone starting out or to another breeder who needs certain characteristics your cat has that theirs don't. Sometimes you can breed a fault out of the line if you have good stock and patience! Many times the difference between a Grand Champion and a pet quality cat comes down to a slight dip in the nose or ears too close/too far apart. To someone who likes the breed and wants a pet this makes no difference and in a lot of cases only a trained eye could see the fault. That does not mean these cats are not as wonderful and loving, only that in appearance they are not quite what the standard call for. Many times a breeder has a hard time deciding what to keep and what to sell, only to have a cat they sold become a Grand Champion because it was a little slower developing and the breeder either didn't recognize the potential or didn't have the patience to hold onto it for a while longer. I am not going to tell you it doesn't bother me to sell a cat because it is never an easy thing to part with a kitten you brought into the world, fed, loved and played with, that slept in your lap or climbed your pant leg when you walked into the room, etc. We screen our potential buyers and I will be the first to tell you we turn down more people than we sell to based on the information they provide and a gut feeling I get from their email or phone calls. If I have any doubt about their sincerity our kittens do not go. I would rather be wrong 100 times by not selling to someone wonderful than to be wrong 1 time and have one of our babies mistreated, abused or worse. Sorry that I got off on a rant here but this is one area of breeding I am very passionate about. As for our cats, we breed a relatively new breed called the LaPerm, a curly coated cat which has only been in existence since 1982 and which there are only a few hundred in the world at present (a natural mutation and unlike the other Rexed breeds). We also breed Norwegian Forest Cats, a wonderful cat with a very loving personality and disposition (as is the LaPerm). We show in CFA, TICA, ACFA and possibly AACE this September if all goes well.Originally posted by Billie
Dear Pete,
Breeding sounds fascinating but I don't think I can do such a thing. I can be so mothering at times and treat even stray cats and dogs as my own children and often scold people for mistreating them
I don't think I'll have the power to part with any of my kittens.
But still it should be such a great experience watching those little babies being born and growing.
And what kind of cats do you breed?
Billie,Originally posted by Billie
That sounds really intriguing!!!!
So as far as I get it you sell all kittens that do not meet breed standards and you keep the rest, is that so?
Then you must have a lot of furbabies!!!! That's so nice
And do you show all of them?