Lately I've had an influx of people coming to me after either 1. being scammed, 2. attempting to purchase a kitten and finding them all sick, 3. a broker deal gone bad, or 4. A young kitten dying of heart faillure. It's hard to know what you don't know, so here's how to protect yourself.
1. Your first line of defense is checking for literacy. Make sure this person and their website are coherent and make sense. Scammers websites don't make sense, the cattery name doesn't make sense (often a person's name), the price is too good to be true, and you pay a deposit, then never actually get a kitten. Talk to them, FACETIME WITH THEM, and make sure they sound like a normal person. Bad (but real) breeders are often barely literate and uneducated, and if they're barely literate, they're likely not business literate either, and that is bad for you.
2. Make sure the breeder has an obvious first and last name. Beware of anyone online using a fake name or avoiding disclosing their last name. They're doing this for a reason.
3. Bad breeders often breed dogs too. If I had a dollar for every backyard breeder coming to me looking for new breeding cats that also breeds dogs..
4. Ask to see the most recent echocardiogram on the breeding cats. Backyard breeders are not scanning their cats each year, and because of this I hear from people who recently adopted kittens who quickly die of heart failure. Please take the time to read about HCM in cats, and verify that the breeder does echocardiograms and has some sort of guarantee. These backyard breeders charge high prices, but they are doing none of the work to prevent HCM in their lines, and you may end up dealing with the death of a 1-3 year old kitten.
5. Verify the breeder is TICA, CFA, or WCF registered.
6. Verify the breeding cats have been DNA tested for the common feline genetic diseases (ideally through Optimal Selection).
7. Verify the adults are FIV/FELV negative.
8. The TICA code of ethics mandates breeders spay/neuter their kittens before they leave. Any breeder sending kittens home unaltered is cheap and unethical. Period, end of story.
9. Cash only is a big red flag. Do not buy a kitten from anyone who will only take cash.
10. Do not deal with anyone "brokering". These people get large quantities of cheap untested kittens from other countries (often Russia), and they sell them to you sick. When this goes wrong, which it often does, you have no recourse. Additionally these brokers often have a bad reputation and often move to brokering to "hide". Barebottomsphynx in California is brokering for a horrible Russian breeder now forced to hide in the shadows- do NOT get a kitten from them.
11. Make sure you are given a contract before sending any money. And read it.
12. Don't buy outside the country. You have no recourse, and this often goes very wrong. There is no reason to put yourself at added risk, don't do it!
13. There are "Bad Catteries" pages online. Make sure the breeder you're looking at doesn't have a bad reputation both there and anywhere else online. Check google reviews, facebook reviews, Reddit, whatever you can find.
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