So the decision is made – you are purchasing a kitten! A beautiful one. Like the one you have seen in advertisement
on TV recently. A highbred, with passport, sorry, with rather ancestry of 5 generations. And, of course, a healthy
one, with a veterinary passport, with vaccination marks. You dial the advertised number of the nursery and find out
the price of a kitten; and…
Well, it’s not that you’re sparing money, but it’s just not understandable, what you pay
such money for?. Let’s start with the point that you haven’t gone to a pet shop or a pet market for your kitten, you
haven’t bought it in a subway passage. You have called a nursery. You’ve applied to professionals, the people, who
know what, how, when and how much to buy, give, do in order to let you enjoy beauty, harm, tenderness and affection
of your pet. You may often hear that yard cats get rarely ill and live long. It is possible. Possible, but:
- you shouldn’t forget that it can be said only about cats, older than one year old; only these cats have passed
terrible natural selection; but if a kitten younger than 2 months (and they are sold at pet markets and in the
subway at this age), it is unknown, whether it would live more than a year; - purchasing a kitten in the unknown
place, you would never know, whether it’s a pure breed, what character it might have; - you wouldn’t get a
certificate of your kitten’s health, veterinary passport or any data of previous vaccination.
People, who are engaged
in breeding (note: in breeding, but not in multiplication), are also called “breeders”. In my opinion, it is correct.
A nursery is some kind of a factory. The factory with its own production, laboratories, economy and accountancy. The
factory with its rules of work, which are called “The International Standard of the Breed”. Every breeder is obliged
to know his breed’s standard, only than we might speak of breeding, but not multiplying. If you don’t know the standard,
you don’t know disadvantages of your own kittens, and you don’t know how to improve them. Accurate plan of mating,
laborious selection of breeders, careful study of ancestries, advantages and disadvantages, selection of genetic
lines – all of this reminds of researches in factory laboratories.
The next component of the price is tightly connected with the first one, it can be even said that it results from
the first component – the level of breeder’s professionalism. This is the breeding quality. The level of breeding
quality depends on phenotype and genotype. The phenotype reflects the accordance of an animal to the international
breed standard. If we speak about price formation, all animals can be conditionally divided into three types:
- show-class – animals, which mostly correspond the requirements of the breed standard;
- breed-class – cats (only female!), which have several very insignificant disadvantages, which wouldn’t let get the
highest qualification at exhibitions, but they would be able to deliver wonderful offspring;
- pet-class – “a cat for a pillow”, just a pet. Usually pet-class includes male cats, which can’t be defined as
show-class, and that is why wouldn’t make a successful exhibition career, as judges are always very strict in
estimation of male cats – breeders.
So the price for a kitten depends on the class, it refers to. A genotype shows pure bred in kittens ancestry, which
ancestors it has, which new blood and in which generation were added. The main item which needs to be mentioned is
that “the price of the question" depends on kitten’s genotype as well, so at purchasing it wouldn’t be odd to study
carefully the kitten’s ancestry, although it wouldn’t be very useful among beginners in breeding.
The next component of the price directly depends on what was mentioned earlier – gaining breeders for the nursery.
I hope that our discussion about breeding quality, which we performed earlier, would let not speak long about the
influence of the breeders’ cost on kittens’ price. They cost a lot. And as the Canadian market of breeders doesn’t
always satisfy experienced breeders because of various reasons, they have to buy breeders abroad, that naturally
increases the expenses on the purchase greatly (tickets, visa, hotel, etc.). Growing breeders (as well as growing
kittens) is another price component. In order to have a healthy and fit kitten, proper food is necessary. This
feeding can be gained in two ways: professional or natural food. In the aim of good growth of our pet we need dry
and canned food. Food of super-premium class (Royal Canin, Hills, Yams, Eukanuba) cost very expensive..........
Exhibitions. That’s the only place where you can get objective estimation of what you have purchased and grown.
Only there you may get the breeding quality of your pets estimated. Exhibitions are titles, ranks. This is an
important part in your pet’s ancestry. Exhibitions include financial expenses, another component of the kitten’s
price. It includes the cost of veterinarian conclusion, the cost of expertise at an exhibition, the cost of
veterinarian control. If an exhibition is in another city, then add the cost of train or plane tickets, hotel room.
Health of a kitten is one of the main reasons, why you attend a nursery, but not a pet market. And this is the next
component of kitten’s price. The term “health” includes many components. First of all, vaccination. A kitten gets
the first set of vaccines (twice) at the age of 8-12 weeks. Mature cats need vaccination once a year. Secondly,
regular veterinary examination. It includes not only regular procedures (for example, antihelminthic arrangement),
but also emergencies (for example, the caesarean section at delivery).Health requires expenses.
Separately, I’d like to say about nursery equipment. In a good nursery there are plenty of things – from a mouse till
a scratching post. … Even in case when a nursery has its own cat-breeder, sometimes for the sake of selection you
have to take your female cats to another nurseries for mating. The cost of mating is another component of kitten’s
price. You can’t avoid another point of expenses – advertisement. Unfortunately, we all are the children of our era,
and a nowadays advertisement is a trade motor. Not a cheap one. I tried to list very briefly the main components,
which influence the kitten’s price. And the approach of price formation is, in my opinion, similar everywhere.
The magazine "Cats_info" 1, 2006, Kurchevskaya E.V.