Carol’s Cat Chronicles

Volume 1

“Just the Thought of IT”

Last summer, I was watching a talk show on which someone had brought several pairs of kittens.  As the host and the guest were showing and talking about the various breeds, I noticed one breed in particular that I thought was sort of cool.  It was an ocicat with spots and looked like something you would see in the jungle.  I knew nothing about the breed except how it looked to me that day, and honestly had no further interest except in how cute the kittens were.  When I was younger, I had several cats, most of which were not allowed in the house.    In 1999, our family dog had passed away after being part of the family for fourteen years.  We were naturally devastated at losing her and vowed to not get another dog, as no other could replace our “Sugar”.

Around the same time, my stepson had just gotten a kitten from the animal shelter after losing his Siamese cat to some mysterious ailment.  He had not intended to replace the cat, but his daughter came for her bi-weekly visitation and spent the entire weekend asking where the “titty” was (she is only 2 ½ years old).  So after consoling her for 2 days, he decided to get her another kitty.  He was telling his dad (my husband, Darrell) on the phone about his new kitten.  Darrell then started to relay the news to me, and I mentioned to him the kittens I had seen on the talk show earlier that week. He looked at me with surprise, because he had been looking on the Internet at various cat sites, investigating different breeds, etc.  He then asked me if I had ever heard of a ragdoll cat.  My answer was “No”, so he took me to the computer and showed me what he had found out about the breed. 

When we began looking, that is all it was….looking.  We learned about their “layed back” disposition, their size (they are supposed to be one of, if not the largest breed of domestic cat, some weighing up to 30 lbs), their “dog-like qualities (very attentive, following you around) their rabbit-like fur and their blue eyes.  All this I thought was very interesting, but I was still just in the looking phase.  Darrell, however, was thinking in a somewhat different direction.  In his searches for websites showing the ragdolls, he discovered that this particular breed was rather new to the cat world, having only been accepted by the cat societies as a registered breed for about the last thirty years.  He was intrigued by the origin of the breed and by the look of the cat in general. 

It was not long before I found out just where his mind was going!  He kept talking about how many sites he had seen on the net, and he even began making a few phone calls to find out more about the cats from people who were raising them to sell as pets.  After several of these conversations, he also found out that although several people were indeed selling ragdoll kittens, many times your name had to go on a waiting list to purchase a kitten.  The demand was so high that breeders could not keep up!

That was when he approached me with the idea of actually purchasing some ragdolls.  I have to admit, I was not too keen on the idea at first.  He was not thinking of just getting some pets – he was thinking of going into the breeding business.  It seemed like a hot business.  After all, there were waiting lists!   Personally, I have not had any experience with breeding, and it sounded just a little scary to me.  I pictured hundreds of cats running around my house, and worse than that was how I imagined my house would smell.  I have known some people who had just one cat in the house, and you knew it before you went in!  We are just average folks, with an average house, but I have put a lot of my time and effort into the house to make it comfortable and livable.  The idea of filling it up with cats, not knowing what they would do to it put me in a panic state! 

The more Darrell showed me about the ragdolls, and the more people (he kept calling!) he talked to, the more information he passed along to me.  He found that when you inquired about purchasing breeders, the conversations took a change in tone.  You practically had to supply the breeder with a police background check and a urine sample to get them to discuss selling to you a cat that you were intending to breed!  If you asked questions about the kittens as pets, people were as friendly as could be.  But when you mentioned that you might want to breed them yourself, you became “the enemy”. 

Now we were curious about this attitude.  The only logical reasons we could come up with were economical.  These people saw us as competition, even though in many instances, we lived thousands of miles from them.  But then, we realized that distance is voided when you market on the Internet, just as these people were doing.  They may live in California, but these little kitties can be shipped anywhere in the world from California, right?  And we could do the same thing from Kentucky.  All we needed was a website.

Back to my feelings of reservation….We (he) eventually found a lady in Minnesota who was willing to talk freely about her cattery business.  She was friendly and informative and more than willing to answer your questions.  But most of all you could tell by her conversations that she truly loved her cats.  To this day, we still cannot get her to admit just how many she actually has, but we are guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 30.  Darrell had been doing most of the talking, but one day I took a call she was returning.  He had discussed buying 3 kittens, to be purchased as breeders.  She offered us a great price for the three, one male and two females.  I finally caved in and agreed to give it a try.  I told myself, after all, I do enjoy animals and I had not had a cat in the house for many years   I told myself that cats do pretty much take care of themselves, and although I knew nothing about breeding, how bad could it be!?  If I chickened out before it was time to breed, we could always neuter the cats and just have 3 really cool pets.  No biggie!

In the following accounts of “Carol’s Cat Chronicles”, I will tell you about our adventures in cat ownership, from the day we received our kittens to the present.  This will be an ongoing diary of how we are getting along with our “babies”.  Hope you will follow along with my “cat tales”.