Hopeful health news

We heart this new feline cardiology drug: Good news for people with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy means good news for cats—and vice versa.

Website under construction

I'm going to be working on SoftKitty.ca so it may be down intermittently this week.

Winter's Coming

And it's been taking its own sweet time. I'm not going to complain. I've thoroughly enjoyed the long autumn. But it was time to give the site and blog a winter makeover. After all, I need to do something while waiting for spring kittens. Sheldon and Satine will make such lovely babies. But for now, all Sheldon is interested in is chilling in laps.

Totally cool cat tree

Now if I can just figure out how to build one of these my kitty's will be so pleased.

Jerry

Bailey needs love

This special boy is looking for someone to give him extra cuddles. He loves to be held and will melt in your arms. He was days away from going home to his new family when a change in circumstance forced them to make the difficult decision to not bring him home. 

 

Attitude issue

Since becoming a cat breeder I've opened myself up to people passing judgement.  There is a school of thought where breeders are a vile evil, pushing more kittens into a world that already has too many, for crass profit.   That may be true in worst case scenarios, but most breeders I've met do what they do for the love of animals, and more often spend money rather than make it.  I read an article today about the the same kind of  breeder shaming occurring to dog breeders and it inspired me to share my thoughts on this.

In a perfect world there are no cats homeless. People don't casually cast off inconvenient animals to become strays, leave their pets unspayed or unneutered to breed randomly, or let them outdoors loose to become lost or injured. I'm not naive. The world is still far from these goals. If people strive for them though, surely we will get there someday, right?  Then where does the next generation of pet cats (or dogs) come from?  If all the breeders have quit and fostered rescues, as I had one lady tell me we should do if we really loved cats, the last rescue kittens would grow up, grow old and be the last generation of domestic cats.  There are between 73 and 43 unique and special varieties of felines that would disappear without breeders to continue their lineages.
  I'm not saying all breeders are perfect, and there are kitten and puppy mills which are a nightmare and do deserve to be shut down.  But I think that carpet condemning all breeders is short sighted. I wouldn't want to give up moments like this.

Hope for feline allergy sufferers

I'm one of the lucky ones.  I only have had one, mild, location specific pollen allergy. But several very nice cat lovers have come over to visit and nearly exploded.  A breeder's home is trial by fire to test feline allergies. Unless the cattery and household are totally separate, there will be pet dander.

Having had one such visit recently I went looking into what can be done for allergies and found Catspire.  This is a product being studied globally, and offers the possibility of curing cat allergies in a course of  four shots. So, to all of the frustrated cat lovers out there,