Why should I buy from a Registered Breeder?
Would you believe, this is a question I get all the time?? There are so many reasons I could give you, but often nothing teaches you like previous experience! Even I have been the victim of buying from a shonky breeder in my earlier years. In my 14 years experience as a vet nurse, I've seen proud new owners arrive with their 'bargain' pet, only to find it had terrible subclinical conditions, infectious diseases, debilitating physical abnormalities and behavioural or social problems. These result in dreadfully unhappy endings, unnecessary costs and broken hearts......
So what do I get??
Your kitten comes with....
neutering, average cost $80-90 boys, $150-175 girls
vaccination (two of) $~90-100
microchipping $50-75
worming $~10-15
registration papers $~50
6 weeks pet illness and accident insurance $~50
kitten pack (includes info, collar, a week's dry food and playtoy) $~25
handling from day one, including handling by kids and social contact with other animals
6 weeks of weaning and raising on ultra premium cat foods, plus access to a wide variety of other foods $~100
Altogether, you can see that upwards of $300-400 is already personally spent on your kitten before you even get it!
This doesn't include several other essential things...
research and time spent procuring quality breeding cats, thousands of kilometres travelled, airline flights and transport, cat shows, many hundreds of phone calls....
nearly 20 years of cat breeding experience...personal knowledge of pedigrees, histories behind each cat, careful selection for type and temperament through more than 7 generations and hundreds of kittens personally bred....
all my pet kittens are neutered. This means they will have a long happy life without the stresses involved with breeding....it also means pet owners won't be turfing their kittens out the door if they are screaming on season or peeing on the furniture with pungent tomcat pee...
the sleep I personally lose stressing over the satisfactory placement of each and every kitten I raise...
upkeep of my breeding cats, ranging into the thousands of dollars per year, this includes blood tests, premium foods, and as I am a vet nurse, availability to the best toys (I'm a sucker when toys come in.....I have to buy them!)....
my cats are kept in a safe environment. All the girls spend time indoors, all kittens are indoors fulltime from birth, the adults have day access in a safe, fully enclosed and fully fenced day yard...
all my cats are FIV & FeLV negative, and are regularly vaccinated and wormed...
all my cats get daily cuddles...
only the cats I personally choose to retain for my breeding program, or allow to go to another breeder by arrangement, are left unneutered. These cats are selected on the basis of type as stated on the Show Standard, excellent markings and only the best of temperament. For the latter, no cat of doubtful temperament would EVER be bred from here (luckily I haven't ever had to make that decision......)
Why you shouldn't buy a kitten from an unregistered breeder.....
backyard breeders buy the cheapest animals they can...and I've even seen some of them try to acquire pet quality kittens from registered breeders, undesexed, through subterfuge. I've even had one ring me and claim she had some of my breeding cats but 'lost' the papers and wanted me to provide some. Interestingly enough, she couldn't quote the cats' names, and at the time, I hadn't even produced a litter of Ragdolls yet.....
backyard breeders don't care about resting their cats between litters, and cats owned by these people are often bred to death....
backyard breeders don't care about the temperament of their breeding cats....and seeing temperament in Ragdolls is inherited, they couldn't care less if their ill tempered cats turn out 'feral' kittens, and they don't even care if these 'feral' kittens go on to other people to be bred from.....this is truly destructive for the breed....
backyard breeders often know very little about the Ragdoll breed. Any registered breeder worth their salt should be able to quote the names of the founding breeders, and the first few generations of the founding cats at short notice, plus be able to supply facts about the origins of the breed and recite at least the initial generations on their cat pedigrees.
backyard breeders tend to spend very little on their cats. They use the cheapest food, tend not to vaccinate, rarely worm, offer no post sale support. If their cats develop breeding difficulties or need medical attention, they'd sooner slam a spade on their head rather than take them to a vet. Generally once you've handed over the cash for a kitten and walk out the door, they wash their hands of you...
backyard breeders sometimes let their cats roam at large. Since FIV (AIDS) and Feline Leukaemia are so common nowadays in the feral population, this shows little care or respect for the wellbeing of their own cats....not only that, I've personally seen cases where buyers were sold black and white kittens with yellow eyes, sold to them as 'Ragdolls'.....
generally, backyard breeders don't give a rat's ass about kittens, proper breeding ethics or morals. All they care about is making a buck the cheapest way possible.
the difference dollarwise between buying a kitten from a backyard breeder and buying from a registered breeder is often not a great deal. If you buy from a backyard breeder, consider all the costs (above) that are invested by responsible breeders, that a new buyer would have to fork out if they bought from a backyard breeder....
Tell me, if you take all this into consideration, why would anyone consider not buying from a Registered Ragdoll Breeder?