When money talks...

After a quite a while since latest blog post, I decided to take a moment today and talk about money and breeding.

For most of the breeders breeding is a hobby that is supported by normal job and cats are living as pampered pets in the household. But for some others, cats are seen as a way to make money, they are seen as birthing machines to produce more offspring to sell and studs are seen as matadors to mate all possible females around to gain mating fees - and often not caring of the consequences.

When money begins to talk, things usually start going wrong. When the "breeder" (note the quotation marks, as I do not consider this kind of breeders as real breeders who do this as a passion, not as a cash making way) begins to think how to make more money and how to make profit, shortcuts are often taken to ensure maximizing the cash income. These shortcuts mean sometimes making kittens without registration papers, giving stud for female that the offspring will not be registered, not testing the parents against diseases, skipping vaccinations and kitten microchipping etc. etc. list is long.

When such "breeders" arise, it also affects the ones that are breeding as hobby. The price of the kittens from "breeder" is often smaller than the ones from real breeders, the quality of the kittens are worse and there is no way to control or proof the parentage, how often the female has been used for breeding, what are the diseases that parents might have had etc. As talking about weaker grade kittens, these kittens might suffer from diseases or illnesses that some are caused just by not feeding them with high quality food. And still, there is (and most likely always will be) market for such kittens - often due by the buyers demand. These cheap and weaker grade kittens sell faster, and the hobbyist breeders are left at home with properly bred and taken care of kittens. Money talks...

Educating buyers should be the first step to prevent such "breeders" from rising. When there is no demand for paperless kittens, there would be no such "breeders".  But how to educate the buyers better for this? I do not know an answer to this question unfortunately.

It is wrong to say that you should NOT make money from breeding, sometimes when everything goes as it should, there are no problems with birth or raising the litter, kittens move to their homes at age of 14 weeks etc, yes - if you do not count the working hours spent for caring of the litter and other expenses, you might have something left on the plus side after the litter leaves from home. And unlike popular thought, it is not enough to buy another mercedes on your yard unless you go to Toys R'us and buy a little model car. The latest when this money will vanish is when you make another order for catfood or decide to sign a cat or two for a show.

Breeding is expensive hobby when you want to do things properly and take care of your animals. Not one or two of breeders I know have quit or gone for break when they realized they cannot afford breeding anymore, and this is a great shame. Many of these persons have done great job and worked for the quality of the breed, instead of the quantity, imported cats from abroad and made their breeding selections carefully. And then to reward all this hard work these "breeders" appear and take over the market (which in some breeds is very limited) with their unregistered kittens and often unethical methods.

In general, when hobby turns to way for earning money (and maximizing profit), the ones to suffer from this are often the animals used for it and the innocent bystanders - the Real Breeders, who do this work as their passion, spend countless of hours to ensure every kitten has the best possible starting point for its life and awesome forever home waiting when it leaves the breeders' home. And still, these Real Breeders sit by the new cat owners throughout the life of the cat - through sorrows and joy.