Siamese Sweeties

To some people the price of purebred kittens can be a little shocking. It is hard to understand the true cost of breeding ethically and humanely unless you have experience yourself. I thought it would be nice to try to bridge the gap a little. While it would be impossible to cover every possible cost, I figure the basics should give a better understanding of how our prices are made and where the money goes.

First, let me say breeding ethically and humanely is the bare minimum. We, like most reputable breeders, strive for better than this, but for the purposes of this exercise that’s where we will focus.

When starting a breeding program, breeders need to research the lines of each prospective cat. They need to make sure they come from reputable catteries and are of the highest quality. You cannot just randomly contact a reputable cattery and purchase breeding cats. You will have to prove yourself, over time and once you’ve earned enough trust and proven your intention and loyalty in the improving the breed, you may be sold a top-quality registered cat or kitten with the right to breed…at a hefty price tag too. Usually around $3,000 to $5,000 per cat.

You may start with one female and look for stud services. However, stud services are quickly falling out of favor. With diseases like Feline Leukemia/Feline Aids, it is much safer to keep your cattery closed. Most reputable catteries no longer offer this option. More than likely you will need your own stud. Which will bring a new set of problems. For example, a stud will not be satisfied with one queen. It is cruel to keep one and have only one breeding female. You need at least three. So to even think about starting we need four cats of top quality, from a reputable breeder or two (you probably want to use more than one breeder to start your line). We are still a long way from even imagining one kitten and the cost is already at $12,000 to $20,000.

You will have to house your stud. If you don’t want to live in a home filled with cat spray you will need to figure out an option that will work for you. Some will cage their studs to solve the problem of spraying. This is just cruel and a practice that thankfully is becoming less common. No cat should even have to live their life in a cage! Some will house their studs outside in a kennel type set up. This is not ideal either. Cats need protection from the weather, they need to have cooling and heating options. Some breeders will build custom catios or cottages to house the studs. This is a better option, but you still have to socialize them. This means spending a good part of your day in the catio or cottage with the stud or bringing them in for most of the day with some kind of spraying protection like stud pants. Both options require a lot of work. We opted for the stud pants option so our males are still part of the family. This means months of training and even after all that it still means changing out their pants many times a day and taking them for restroom time every few hours. You also have to have these pants specially made and they can be expensive, plus the increase in laundry is costly too, you are looking at probably $500 a year. As far as the cost for your custom catio or cottage, they start at $15,000 and can run upwards to $100,000!

For feeding babies and supporting pregnancies, we need the best, premium cat food. If you feed your cats crap, you will see it reflected in their health. This will increase vet costs and will most likely shorten your cat’s life. Sick cats will produce sick kittens and having sick kittens will sink your reputation pretty quickly. Growing kittens can sometimes eat as much as the adults and pregnant females will double their food intake..nursing moms can triple theirs! A smallish cattery can easily find themselves spending $300 to $500 a month in food!

Kittens also need to use a more expensive non-clumping litter in the beginning, just in case they confuse it for food. They are particularly messy and no matter how hard you try to prevent it, you will find yourself wasting more than you want. A smaller sized cattery will generally spend about $150 to $300 a month in kitty litter.

Every cat must visit the vet a minimum of twice a year and have vaccines at least once a year. In our area, some like rabies are even required by law. The visits and vaccines will run about $300 a year per adult cat. It is also required to test all cats, every year for FeLV and FIV. That is another $80 per adult cat. We also regularly test fecals on routine visits $40 a year and dental cleaning can run $100 a year. Just ordinary, routine vet care will run about $520 a year per adult cat.

Each kitten will have a wellness check and two sets of vaccines. We also run a fecal on every litter and deworm each kitten twice. Just routine care for each kitten generally runs around $85 per kitten.

There are emergencies too. Some commons ones that come up during labor and birth are: failure to progress, a possible obstruction, mastitis, hemorrhaging, uterine infection. With an after-hours emergency visit and treatment, your cost can be anywhere from $600 to $2000 per emergency and $3000 plus if a C-Section is needed. You almost always lose half if not all the kittens too, maybe even Mom. Kittens are also notorious for getting into trouble, no matter how well you kitten proof or how closely you watch them, there will always be that one or two through the years that requires care due to an injury. There will also be kittens born with different defects or deformities. Even with genetic screening, it is impossible to completely prevent this. For emergencies, a general cost will be around $2000 to $3000 a year.

Even for smallish catteries, you will need some specialized equipment. You may want to build a special birthing and nursery area. The Moms are going to want a quiet place of their own to birth and then keep the kittens. We built a special nursery with a Mom only kitty door to gain access. Moms can go in and out of the nursery through the door which works with magnets they wear on their collar, no other cat can gain access. This allows Moms to come and go as they please and feel secure knowing their babies are safe while they are gone. Even this simple set up cost around $2000 to put in place.

You will need newborn kittens supplies. Pet heating pads, scales, kitten milk replacer, towels, blankets, boxes or playpens, bottles, tube feeding equipment, kitten goop, baby wipes, Clorox wipes, paper towels, hand sanitizer, puppy pads, tissues. A reasonable cost for the bare minimum may be around $500 a year.

As the kittens grow they require even more supplies and equipment. They will need toys, cat beds, a climber, an array of medications and supplements, flea treatment (which isn’t cheap at $50 a piece). Litter training equipment, we use self-standing baby gates starting around 4 weeks. You will probably be looking at a cost of $800 per year for older kitten supplies.

Also, don’t forget the adults! They still like toys, cat beds, climbers and other fun stuff you will need to purchase regularly. Although they tend to not wear their stuff out as quickly you can still probably expect to spend around $400 a year on their entertainment needs. We also treat every one of the adults monthly with Revolution in the summer for a cost of around $800. Luckily we get a discount from our vet on this.

You will also need scratchers, our cats love the cardboard ones and we have a large stand-up one as well in our living room for longer stretches and scratching. They aren’t too expensive but will cost around $300 a year. You may also want to take into account ruined furniture, our cats and kittens are usually really good at using the scratchers but mishaps, especially with the kittens who are always learning, will wear down our furniture more quickly than normal. We probably see an increase of about $500 a year in furniture replacement.

So many costs and we haven’t sold one kitten yet! To get started you will need an informative website to share your goals and provide information on your cattery. A custom built professional website can cost upwards of $500. You will also spend anywhere from $100 to $200 a year for hosting depending on size. You can use one of those free website builders but you will end up spending money somewhere either monthly or yearly, plus they can still be a bit tricky to use.

You may have to advertise in the beginning. Once you are a reputable breeder with some experience word of mouth may be enough, but to get started you will probably need to spend some money on advertising. Also, keep in mind you’ll spend at least 2-3 hours a day answering emails, updating your website, taking phone calls and running the social media accounts.

Depending on your policy, you may have to host visits throughout the year. We provide water, sodas, and snacks and give small parting gifts as they leave. It doesn’t come to much maybe $10 extra per visit but we do have around 25 a year so that’s an extra $250.

Our city requires the registration of every pet, this is a yearly charge of $25 for each cat. This comes to $200 a year. We also have a yearly inspection which costs $100. We register our cattery annually through two associations for a total of $50 a year. Each litter born is registered at a cost of $10 apiece. We mail copies of kitten registration to our new families and print copies of every kitten’s vet visit, copies of our kitten contract and copies of kitten info for new parents to take home. We spend probably an extra $150 in printer ink, copy paper, stamps, and envelopes.

We send home every kitten with a going-home package. This includes a week’s worth of our premium cat food, a package of the non-clumping litter, a couple of packets of fortiflora probiotics, a sample of premium cat treats, a sample of premium kitten vitamins, a magazine on kitten nutrition information, an immunization card which we purchase from our vet, a few toys, a stuffed animal that the kittens have been sleeping with to bring them comfort in their new home, a Siamese gift bag and a few extras of what we have on hand, sometimes Siamese greeting cards or calendars, samples of revolution kitten flea treatments. This comes to about $25 per kitten.

There are kitten returns. Although we don’t refund the full amount if the kitten is returned for any reason other than sickness in the health guarantee period or a genetic defect discovered by a vet, it does end up costing us money. Any returned kitten must be isolated from all other cats until they are seen by a vet and cleared. We must have them vet checked, tested for FeLV/FIV, treated with Revolution if they had not received treatment within the last 30 days. We perform a fecal and PCR testing for parasites. This vet visit is $300! We try to recuperate this cost a bit by only refunding any difference remaining after new re-homing has been found, but it still ends up costing us about $300 to $400 a year for returned kittens.

Any new cat or kitten that enters our cattery will also need all the testing mentioned above. This is a $300 extra cost after the already very high cost of another $3000 to $5000 cost for a new a top-quality registered cat or kitten with the right to breed.

With our current Moms and Dads, we average about 60 kittens per year. Each Mom produces about 2 litters a year and we average about 5 kittens per litter. Not every kitten is sold however, our main focus is perfecting our line and contributing to the betterment of the Traditional Siamese Breed. Therefore we hold back quality kittens regularly to watch for special traits for perhaps future breeding. Some of these kittens then go on to become part of our line, some are sold as breeders or traded to only registered catteries we have a working relationship with and some are eventually sold and rehomed to a family on our waitlist at a discounted rate if they are older. Some kittens are just not adoptable, there may be a deformity or behavioral problems. These kittens generally are rehomed with families under our special needs program. Then, sadly some kittens die. Some are stillborn and some die not too long after birth. This just happens sometimes and there is nothing that can be done. Taking all this into account we average about 50 kittens a year that are sold.

If we add up all the costs and put in a modest amount for building and acquiring new cats (very modest I only added $2000 a year for building and $3000 for new cats) and then take the 50 kittens we sell per year multiplied by the average cost of per kitten at $916, and then subtract the cost from the revenue. That leaves a whopping total profit of $98 per kitten!

You may be asking, “Why would anyone want to breed then?” Well, reputable breeders do it for the love of the breed. They breed because they want to contribute, they want to keep the breed secure, and help breed out imperfections. When you buy a kitten from a reputable breeder, you are helping the breeder with some of the expenses of breeding so he or she can keep the breed going. It’s that simple.

A Quick Word on Backyard Breeders

Keep in mind most of these costs were at the bare minimum. The next time you see a so-called purebred kitten on Craigslist or some other quick sell site priced at what seems like a great price, think about how many short cuts that person had to take to sell a kitten at that price. First, it is highly unlikely the kitten is purebred, it was probably bred with cats the so-called breeder picked up that looked close enough to pass for purebreds. Second, it is almost guaranteed those cats and kittens are being neglected. Cruelty to animals can come at many levels. Breeding animals while not understanding their needs and skimping on medical care is just as wrong and intentional as other forms of abuse. They may claim to love them and have them as pets and maybe even seem genuine. However, the fact remains the shortcuts they are taking even if they are from a place of ignorance and not malice are hurting not only the cats they claim to love so much but also hurting the breed they claim to want to protect. Please do not support these people! When you purchase a pet from someone like this you are supporting the abuse of the animal and ultimately hurting the breed.