Check the Breeder Out
by Linda
(California)
Maggie after 3 months
Always check out the breeder, including seeing the cats and kittens in person! If you are new to cats, take someone who knows something about cats and preferably breeding.
From what I have read and been able to piece together, I adopted a 6 year-old cat who was used as breeding stock for a backyard breeder of teacup Persians. I got her at all of 3.2 lbs, with an URI, shaved to the bones in spots, and unspayed. She could barely walk she was so thin. She was spayed and her uterus was on the very edge of rupturing because of infection.
That was in Oct. It's now late Jan. In that time, she has had the spaying surgery, a dental to remove 3 infected teeth, surgery to remove one eye that ruptured due to herpes, an eye graft on the remaining eye, another eye graft on that eye when the first graft failed, 3 different upper respiratory infections, pneumonia, and she still won't eat on her own. She is now more than a bag of bones, but only weighs 5.1 lbs and is tiny.
This cat has had to suffer all this because the breeder nearly starved her to death and then threw her over a fence when she no longer could produce teacup kittens. I'm sure he made a bundle of money off his teacup kittens -- I've spent a bundle on trying to fix the mess he made of this poor little girl. If people would take the time to check out the breeders, jerks like this one would be out of business!
I love her and will do what I can to give her a life of luxury.
Linda
Hi Linda.. thanks for sharing. I know that some breeders abuse or at least treat their breeding cats with less than the care required - callously or in an overly commercial manner - but your story has horrified me, to be honest.
It is a case of cat abuse, nothing less, and there is no place in the world for cat breeders like this.
They give cat breeders a bad name and in the modern world, with a feral cat problem and unwanted cats the only sort of cat breeder that can possibly be justified is an excellent one that really takes care of their cats. There has to be a high level of morality in breeding because of the underlying problems.
Here are a few selected links to pages on this subject:
