DK Belmarie Felis Audax

09.14.08 HCM: Normal on 07.11.07 PKD: Normal on 07.11.07

Dana, as she's called, came to our house in May 2007 to be mated to one of our studs. In fact Carli brought her home from England when she was there to deliver Quil, Ukulele and Rosie we had sold to two breeders. Carli had been corresponding with Dana’s owner for several years regarding Dana coming to visit one of our studs, ever since David had been living in the England for a short while with one of our breeder friends. It therefore seemed natural to offer that Carli would bring Dana with her back in her car to Denmark for the mating.

Dana was given a contraceptive injection to prevent her from coming into heat in February 2007 so we didn't know exactly when she could be mated, but finally in July she went into heat! We wrote to her owner that "Dana's in heat!", but instead of receiving an email stating "hooray that's great" we were asked not to let Dana be mated at that time but to wait and have her mated later. Since we are not unreasonable when it comes to the wishes from any owner that has a queen visiting one of our studs, we agreed to put Dana on birth control pills and have her mated later. After a while her owner asked us to take her of the pill again, which we did and in September she was finally mated.

It wasn't long after Dana had been mated that we got word from her owner that she "unfortunately couldn't afford to come for Dana", she even suggested that the litter should be born in our cattery and then we could "just" save the best female of the litter for Danas owner, and the owner would come for mother and daughter when the daughter was old enough to come to England! We strongly objected to this idea because it would mean that, because of the pets' passport rules, Dana and her daughter wouldn't be able to leave our house until the end of 2008!

After some writing back and forth with some of the exchanges becoming a bit "heated" at times, we could see that Dana hadn't conceived and that she wasn't pregnant after all. We asked Dana's owner to come to our house and take her home. As mentioned we try to work with the owner of any female visiting our cattery in such a way that both parties are satisfied with the result and due to the long journey Dana had taken to be mated to one of our studs, we agreed that she could stay until she was mated, again, and then her owner promised that she would come for Dana once she had been bred.

And then we waited. In February 2008 Dana finally went into heat and was mated once again with Hunter. We immediately wrote to Dana's owner and became very surprised when she wrote that she would come for Dana in April. That wasn't the agreement! After a lot of writing back and forth, again, we were told by Dana's owner that "we could just keep her and have the litter in our cattery" and that "she couldn't afford to pay us the money she owed us for Dana's staying in our home for 10 months!" Besides food and tender love and care for the past 10 months Dana has been living with us, we have also paid to have her scanned for HCM and PKD at the royal veterinarian hospital in Copenhagen, and at NO time have we received ANY money at all from her owner, because the ORIGINAL agreement was that the money would be paid when the owner of Dana came to pick her up at our house. We had even agreed to wait and not get the money for the mating until the kittens were 6 weeks old.

Since we can't afford to "just" pay for Dana's return trip to her owner which would amount to app. 5.000 Danish kroner to have her flown to England, we have "chosen" under protest, to have Dana signed over to us. Her former owner has sent her pedigree and a piece of paper stating that she has given Dana to us, because she no longer belongs to a cat club and therefore she can't buy a transfer which is what one usually does when a cat is transferred from a club in one country to a club in another country. The fact that Dana originally comes from Denmark, could be the reason why we are able to get a pedigree for her even though the proper rules were not followed strictly in this case.

So where are we now? Well we are the owners of a nearly 6 year old female who is due to give birth in app. 3 weeks; a female we haven't chosen ourselves to have in our breeding program but nonetheless will have kittens in our cattery. Our plan is to have Dana neutered and moved to another permanent home once her kittens are 12 weeks or older. Dana’s former owner has asked to be given information about her new owners because she wants to stay in contact with them.

Update 05.20.08

We have made a description about what happened during the birth of Dana's kittens here.

Update 12.14.08

Dana has moved to her new forever home. She's living in Sweden with one of Allans colleagues mother.