It’s very difficult to explain exactly how the sale of a kitten should or could be handled. But one of the things you should observe is the way the kitten buyers act when they come to your house to have a look at the kittens, both the way they interact with the kittens but also the way they interact with the adult cats.

Try to make a list in advance of the things you want to ask them about when they call and ask about your kittens, things that’s important for you to get answers too. You could also make the same rule as we have, that you deliver the kittens in their new homes; that way you will get a good sense of what type of home your kitten will spend its life in.

Nowadays a lot of the contact is through the internet and there’s nothing wrong with that, but remember that it’s very easy for them to hide the kind of person they are when you don’t come into direct contact with the buyers. This is one of the reasons why we want the buyers to come to our home at least once before the kitten moves into their home. If they book the kittens at say age 3 weeks then we demand that they visit us more than one time, depending on the circumstance of course. If the buyer comes from the other side of our country or abroad we don’t ask them to come for a visit that often, but we do try to encourage the buyer to come as often as possible because looking at pictures of the kitten is not the same as meeting it face to face, holding it and playing with it.

Some breeders have a lot of restrictions on their kitten, for instance that they don’t want it to move into a family with children or it can only be let outside if there’s a run for it to be in. Some don’t want the cat to be alone in the new home and ask that the buyer either have a cat in advance or buy two kittens from the same litter, or alternatively get one from the local shelter. We don’t have these restrictions but I’m sure we have other restrictions/reservations that other breeders don’t haveJ

We feel that no two buyers are the same and therefore it’s difficult to give the true picture of how to sell a kitten. We use our homepage to show our kittens to potential buyers and we also take pictures of the kittens we have available when we go to a show, but we NEVER sell our kittens from a show. We have had kittens with us to shows that where for sale but we wouldn’t dream of letting it go directly from the show hall to its new home. Besides the risk involved for a kitten that has been stressed during the show and could potentially also pick up a bug or two, it’s not practical for us to sell the kitten from the show hall, because we always deliver the kitten into it’s new home, and you don’t want to spend that extra time on top of a long day in a show hallJ In case a buyer has shown interest in one of our kittens that was on a show, we have asked them to come home to us, see the parents and then we can make an appointment as to when we can deliver the kitten to its new home.

What we are trying to say is that you should find out what works for you and what’s important for you when you are selling your kittens. Make your own rules and remember to stick to them, even if you haven’t sold your kittens by the time they reach the age of 12 weeks. You should take into consideration that you might have to have the kittens in your home much longer than the normal 12 weeks, and if you are not prepared for this situation we think that you are not equipped to be a breeder at all. Because if you have to change the rules you have set for what you are asking of the buyer, because the kittens are getting older, you will end up regretting that you have sold one or more kittens to not so suitable homes and this is one of the worst situations you as a breeder can be put in.

We have some things that is a given and they are not open for discussion when we are selling a kitten. All kittens sold as pets are neutered and chipped BEFORE they leave our home. And we always deliver the kittens to their new home - that isn’t open for discussion either.

When it comes to the payment for the kittens there are also different ways you as the breeder can choose to handle this aspect. It’s very common for a breeder to take a deposit but we DON’T do that and the reason is that we don’t want the buyer to buy a kitten from us if he/she suddenly regrets booking it. In that case we would rather see that the buyer cancel the sale and not go ahead with the purchase just because they don’t want to lose their deposit. On the other hand we do ask the buyer to put the money for the neutering into our account a week before it’s going to its new home. If they want us to register the kitten in the national cat registration database, with its chip number, we also ask them to pay that fee into our account.