06/14/2025
WHY WE WAIT TO RESERVE OUR BABIES (and don't have a waiting list)
1. Death. Let’s start off with the biggest one. We don’t let families give their heart to a newborn kitten because we can’t guarantee the odd chance that the kitten will succumb to a hidden birth defect or fading kitten syndrome. We can’t think of anything worse than to have to call a family and tell them their baby passed away.
2. Growth. Kittens can grow at different rates and socialize differently. One kitten may need a couple more weeks to learn to stop biting. The runt may need another month to be big and confident like their littermates. By reserving kittens, the families have a loose expectation of “go home” date and we don’t want to disappoint but rather have a family ecstatic over the social skills their kitten goes home with in the end.
3. Quality. Would you buy a car without looking at it first? Let’s be real, adopting a kitten from a breeder is buying a kitten of your choosing based on their individual characteristics. After birth and in the first several months, the kittens change drastically. Would you pay the same amount asked for the lowest quality kitten just to “grab” one? Or do you want a good idea of what you’ll be bringing home when you send your deposit? Maybe you want to show but you spoke for the kitten that never grows a coat. Maybe you want a large ear beauty like the one you seen a photo of that made you fall in love with the breed. Don’t speak for a kitten before or at birth. Your breeder shouldn’t ask you to.
4. Health. HUGE ONE. You don’t want to send money for a kitten with a heart defect or severe food allergy unless it was disclosed and you chose that, do you?! What if the kitten your children already named and you already love, has a serious health issue that was uncovered 8 weeks after you reserved it, at their first vet visit? Is that the experience you were hoping for or the situation you want to make a choice in? As breeders, it’s our job to investigate and vet our kittens for health issues and fully disclose this BEFORE people make the choice to adopt. Were you given that choice if you sent money asap to hold your dream cat?
5. Future breed quality. If your breeder isn’t assessing and keeping back the best of the best for breeding, what are they doing to better the breed? If a Cattery’s cats are better every year and you see progress, you know their goal. You win if you wait for that breeder and adopt under those ethics. If your breeder always has kittens available, reserving at birth, no assessment needed, and their breeding cats aren’t some of the best you’ve seen, but all kittens look the same over the years, what do you think their goal was?
6. Everyone is different. Perhaps a breeder that makes these choices is terrified they won’t sell their kittens and have to care for them a little longer than expected. Perhaps they are new and don’t know how to make improvements to their program. Maybe they need the money upfront to afford vet costs later because breeding is expensive and they didn’t anticipate that. Maybe their previous buyers didn’t care what they ended up with on go home day.
We choose to wait. We choose to grow and assess our babies and know who and what they are before they leave us. We choose to work with other breeders so their cats improve too and share progress with them, for the breed. We know it’s torturous to see photos and not be able to reserve the kitten you know you want. We get it. Trust our process. We hope you care about the future of the breed as much as we do, and we can’t wait to work with you, if you do. ❤️
(Written by Prairieheart Cattery, feel free to share if you agree)
