10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a Cat Breeder

So you’ve decided to become a cat breeder.

You love cats. Especially kittens.

How wonderful it would be to have the odd litter of kittens now and again. Unlike with children, you can even sell your kittens as they get older. You get to play with them while they’re really cute, then sell them on to their new families.

A genuine win-win situation . . .

The thing is, it’s not really like that in real life.

(Pop)

Sorry, that was me bursting your balloon.

There is actually a lot more to becoming a cat breeder. But as you’re reading this article, I’d like to congratulate you on passing the first test.

You recognised that you needed to do some research. (Seriously, I mean it. Well done.)

Here are ten questions you need to ask yourself before you take the plunge. Be honest with your answers. Nobody’s watching.

👇 Skip to the 8 things every aspiring breeder needs to know

1. Why Do You Actually Want to Breed Cats?

This is the question that matters more than all the others put together.

Be honest with yourself. Is it a hobby? Is it because you love the breed? Have you always owned cats and see breeding as a natural progression? Are you hoping to breed the next show stopper — a cat that champions your prefix and you as a breeder?

Maybe you just love kittens and want to surround yourself with them for years to come.

It’s not for me to tell you which are good reasons and which aren’t. That’s something you need to decide for yourself.

But here’s what I will tell you — whatever your reason is, write it down. Stick it on the fridge. Because there will come a day — probably at 2am with a sick kitten in your hands, vomit on your dressing gown, and a credit card bill that would make your accountant weep — when you’ll need to remember why you started.

Is your reason strong enough to see you through the tough times? The emotional rollercoaster? The financial burden?

If not, save yourself some pain, heartache, and money.

2. Which Breed?

There’s a lot to consider here, and most first-timers don’t think beyond “I like the look of them.”

You need to ask yourself some practical questions. Which breed do you find attractive in both looks and temperament? How easy is it to find somebody willing to sell you your first breeding girl? (Harder than you think — breeders are protective of their lines and won’t sell an active-register queen to just anyone.) Are there suitable stud cats available within a reasonable travelling distance? Is the breed popular enough that you’ll be able to find homes for the kittens?

How many other breeders are there, and are they struggling to rehome their kittens? What are the major health issues in the breed? Would you be able to find a mentor — someone experienced who’ll answer the phone at midnight when you’re panicking?

If I’m being honest, the most important question is the first one. You need to be able to say, hand on heart: “Yes, I find this breed attractive in both looks and temperament.”

Because if you don’t genuinely love the breed, you won’t stick with it when things get hard.

And they will get hard.

▶ The Reality of Becoming a Cat Breeder

3. Can You Actually Afford This?

Just in case you’re under any illusions about cat breeding being a way to make money, let me explain a few of the harsh financial realities.

The quick version? Making money by breeding cats is just never going to happen.

Here’s why.

On top of the usual expenses of owning cats — food, cat litter, damage to furniture, enough cleaning materials to stock a small supermarket — you’re now going to need to budget for stud fees (starting at £500 per mating), blood tests (£40–100 each time), increased vet bills, potential caesarean sections, and poorly kittens. Then there are the kitten inoculations, which run to approximately £50 per kitten. Factor in the cost of advertising — your own website, cat show entry fees, social media promotion — and the financial burden is significant.

One cat alone will cost you roughly £700 a year in basic care. Over a lifetime, that’s close to £12,000. And that’s before you’ve spent a penny on breeding.

Make no mistake — cat breeding is a money pit. Best case scenario: you pile in loads of cash, work like a dog, and if everything goes to plan, you get some money back when you sell the kittens. Accept the fact you’re likely to make a loss.

Treat cat breeding as an expensive hobby and you won’t be disappointed. Treat it as a money-maker and you’re in for a rude awakening.

(Have your credit card ready. You’ll be using it a lot.)

4. Do You Have the Time?

Cat breeding takes over your life. Those might seem like strong words, but you need to hear them because they’re the facts.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what your diary looks like once you start breeding: cuddles, stroking and play (the nice bit). Litter tray cleaning (the not-so-nice bit). Preparing for cat shows. Going to cat shows. Learning about the breed and cats in general. Visits to the vet. Taking your girl to stud. Taking time off work when kittens are due. Potentially hand-feeding kittens round the clock if mum can’t cope. Weaning kittens. Cleaning up after kittens. Litter training kittens. Advertising kittens. Maintaining your website. Running your social media. Interviewing potential kitten families. And giving a lifetime of support to every single family that takes one of your kittens home.

That last one isn’t optional, by the way. If someone rings you in three years because the cat you bred has a problem, you answer the phone. That’s what responsible breeders do.

The good news? The majority of those tasks are genuinely pleasurable. There are just a lot of them.

5. Do You Need to Become an Expert?

I suppose it depends on what you want out of the hobby and what you think it takes to be an expert.

If you want to breed show-winning cats that are beautiful examples of the breed and contribute to furthering the breed — yes.

If you just want to breed the odd litter of kittens purely for the enjoyment of watching them grow — also yes.

Sorry about the two yeses. Let me explain.

To consistently breed quality, show-winning cats, you’re not going to do it by accident. You need to know your standard of points inside out. You need to be able to assess a kitten yourself without piling them in a basket and driving fifty miles for a second opinion. You need to know your pedigrees — what works together, what doesn’t. Not just your own lines, but other people’s too.

These aren’t skills you pick up in five minutes. They take years of dedication.

But the biggest reason you need to become an expert? The families that take your kittens rely on you. If they ring you at midnight because their kitten is breathing funny, or has stopped eating, or is doing something they’ve never seen before — you need to have the answers. Or at the very least, you need to know enough to tell them whether it’s an emergency vet job or a wait-till-morning situation.

That’s why expertise isn’t optional. Those families trusted you with their kitten’s start in life. You owe them knowledge.

6. Can You Cope With Calling Girls?

Have you ever heard a female cat “calling”? I use the term calling because that’s the polite term we cat breeders use when describing the noise a female cat makes while announcing to the world she’s ready to become a mother.

A better description would be screaming like a deranged banshee.

A noise, once heard, never forgotten.

The best of it . . .

It doesn’t end with the screaming.

Once a girl decides she wants a boy, if calling doesn’t attract a mate, she’ll try a few extra-special seductive techniques. If anyone tells you that only the boys spray, then they are either lying or deluded. Trust me when I say that girls will quite happily leave their scent around the house to attract a male.

And when they have “the urge” to reproduce . . . they’re not that fussy who with, either.

If they don’t get their heart’s desire and get taken off to meet the boy of their dreams, they will do their level best to escape and go for “a bit of rough.” Any tom cat will do — in fact, the more the merrier. So be prepared to batten down the hatches and make sure your girl doesn’t elope with the nearest tom.

With hormones rushing around the body, this often gives your girl a delicate tummy. Never fear though — the vast majority of girls are not shy and will let you know they’re feeling a bit icky by throwing up all over the house.

(Read my rant about cat vomit further down. Oh, you’re going to love that bit.)

If you have a multi-cat household — as most breeders do — then you’ll also have to contend with hormone-induced, sexually frustrated, squabbling girls.

Oh yes, one last thing. One girl usually follows the other, assuming of course they’re not already in chorus. So if you’re going to breed cats, get yourself some earplugs, forget being house proud, and enjoy the new order of things.

7. Have You Thought About Going to Stud?

I’ve written about what’s involved with taking your cat to stud in detail before, but it’s important enough to mention again.

Keeping a stud cat is expensive. So unless you’re going to run your own stud — which is a whole other level of commitment — you’ll need to find a stud owner willing to accept your queen. Be prepared to pay a stud fee, typically starting at £500 for Siamese (more for proven, titled boys).

Before you can take your queen, she needs to be blood tested for feline leukaemia (FeLV) and feline AIDS (FIV). Both are fatal to cats. Any responsible stud owner will insist on your queen being tested — and rightly so.

When you take a girl to stud, be prepared to leave her for a few days — sometimes up to a week. There’s no guarantee they’ll mate. And even if they do, there’s no guarantee your girl will be pregnant.

If the stud owner witnesses matings, the boy’s done his job, a mating certificate is issued, and the stud fee is payable. If your girl doesn’t fall pregnant, most stud owners will allow one free return mating. But that means another blood test, another set of travelling expenses, and another round trip of dropping her off and picking her up.

Sound like hard work?

It is.

8. Are You Prepared for the Destruction?

I think it’s only fair to let you know that from time to time your cats are going to trash your home.

If you’re particularly house proud and can’t bear the thought of any damage happening . . .

Then perhaps cat breeding is not for you. In fact, I’d go further and suggest that perhaps owning a cat is not for you.

If you’re still reading, I’m guessing you’re not too terrified of a bit of damage. But how much is “a bit”?

Get used to your house being covered in cat hair. Your clothes too — even with shorthair cats. Hope you don’t have any problems cleaning up the odd bit of cat poo when they miss the tray. Same goes for cat urine, except in the case of urine they didn’t miss the tray. Oh no . . .

They deliberately chose not to use the tray in favour of your bed — to claim ownership of their human, or spraying to mark territory, or attracting a mate. It’s always deliberate. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Now here is one little chestnut that I must share with you. Forgive me if I start to rant, but I need to get this off my chest.

My cats sometimes like to vomit. I think they do this to show me they’re feeling hormonal and in the mood for “some lovin.” Or perhaps it’s because they’re unwell, pregnant, stressed — and sometimes I’m sure they do it just for the hell of it.

Now the thing is, I soon cottoned on to the fact that part of owning cats and being a breeder was accepting that they occasionally share the contents of their stomach with the floor. So I got rid of all my carpets and now have laminate floors.

I thought I was rather smart here. Feeling rather smug, I decided that cleaning their offerings up would be much easier in future.

How wrong I was . . .

They no longer like vomiting on the floor. It no longer gives them the same sense of satisfaction. It’s okay though — my Siamese are very clever. They adapted.

They now hunt out any type of soft furnishing and make their deposits there. Oh yes, I said deposits. They never do less than three piles. Each offering on a separate cushion, bed, item of clothing, or any other type of material that is difficult to clean.

They are truly talented in this endeavour.

(Rant about cat vomit over. But can I ask any cat breeders out there a quick question? Do your cats always throw up in three separate piles and hunt out soft furnishings, or is it just mine?)

And let’s not neglect to mention your wallpaper, curtains, and upholstery. They’re all fair game. Upholstery and wallpaper share the dubious honour of being scratch-post substitutes. Your curtains are for swinging off and occasionally peeing on.

Living with breeding cats is like living with a team of naughty four-year-old hooligans who are hell-bent on mischief and mayhem.

▶ The Truth About Living With Breeding Cats

9. How Will You Find Homes for Your Kittens?

So you’ve got your first litter. Presuming all went well with the birth, weaning, and litter training, you now need to find homes for your kittens.

It is a lot harder than you think.

You’ll need a cat breeder’s website — a proper one, with regular photos and updates. It’s not a case of setting it up and forgetting about it. There is a lot of work involved in running a successful breeder’s website. You also need to be on social media, particularly Facebook. This is where your kitten buyers hang out.

Once the enquiries start coming in, you need to vet the people as best you can and get rid of the obvious lunatics. Believe me, you’re going to speak to quite a few. You also need to watch out for crooks, scam artists, and backyard breeders who want to use your kittens to breed from for financial gain. Trust me — that is not where you want to see your kittens end up.

Vetting kitten buyers is hard. You get better at it with experience. Ask all the right questions. But also ask yourself — are they asking you the right questions? A buyer who doesn’t ask about health tests, vaccinations, or the parents is a buyer who doesn’t care enough. Follow your gut instinct.

And one final thing about finding homes for your kittens. When it comes to them actually leaving . . . will you be able to go through with saying goodbye?

Many people can’t.

10. Are You Ready for the Emotional Rollercoaster?

The sad fact about breeding cats is that alongside the huge amount of fun, you are in for a lot of heartache.

Breeding and showing will hopefully give you the respect of your peers, new friends, a social life (admittedly, only with other cat breeders), pride, a sense of achievement, and the daily joy of living with cats.

On the downside, you’ll have to live with the financial burden, the squabbling cats, the stress, the worry, the illness — and ultimately, your cats and kittens dying.

I wish I could dress that up. I can’t.

You will lose kittens. You will lose cats you’ve had for years. You will sit in a vet’s office and hear news that breaks your heart. And then you’ll go home and feed the others, clean the trays, and carry on. Because that’s what breeders do.

All of the bad parts of cat breeding take their toll. It’s not all sunshine and roses.

But here’s what I’ll say — the highs are extraordinary. Watching a kitten you bred take Best of Breed at a show. Getting a message from a family telling you their cat is the best thing that ever happened to them. Sitting on the sofa at 11pm with a purring queen and a litter of healthy, wriggling kittens.

Those moments make the rest of it bearable. More than bearable. They make it worth it.

So What Now?

Now you know which questions to ask yourself. It’s time to find some of the answers.

Much of the information you need can be found right here on this site — start with my cat breeding pillar, which covers the whole journey from first thoughts to settling kittens into their new homes.

But before you dive into the reading, look to yourself for the answers first.

Look deep inside and be honest.

Are you breeding cats for the right reasons, and are you up to the challenge?

And if you decide you are going to start breeding cats . . .

Enjoy the highs. Keep your chin up when you hit the lows.

Most of all, never forget your reason — the reason you started.

Hang on to it.

Because if you ever forget it, or let go of it . . .

It’s time to stop breeding.