Hi,

Over the pre-Christmas period I have been inundated with enquiries for female kittens. After speaking at length with these potential ‘pet’ owners it becomes apparent that they want to breed from their ‘pet’ in the future. Tell-tale signs are usually the person being very specific on the colour/pattern/eye colour etc… rather than asking about the temperament. These are not your typical ‘backyard breeder type’ either; they are intelligent and articulate people who want to buy a female Bengal kitten pet to breed from or let her have ‘Just one or two litters before we neuter her’.

Please, for any potential Bengal owners who may be reading this and thinking of breeding from their Bengal pet, breeders sell kittens as pets for justifiable reasons. The kitten may have genetic faults, it may have had health issues or it typically doesn’t meet the breed standard.
Females can also spray (Most of mine do!) sometimes more so than males, so you will end up with a cat peeing all over your house, as well as an extremely noisy cat! Letting a female Bengal wander outside in the hope that she mates with the local tom cat is just irresponsible and down right stupid. The Bengal could pick up any number of health issues and then you could find yourself in a nightmare scenario. You could end up with kittens that need expensive veterinary treatment or the kittens don’t survive. Or indeed the Mother may have contracted health problems/disease or worse….

I have lost count of the number of kitten enquiries I have turned down over the past few months. Even enquiries from people who want ‘a female friend for my un-neutered 12 month old male Bengal’ (Hmmm!)
Leave Bengal breeding to registered breeders with experience. Breeding is HARD work, very expensive, time-consuming and sometimes heartbreaking too. Pet Bengal kittens should stay as pets unless there is a later agreement between breeder and owner.
We don’t want to see more and more unwanted ‘Bengal crosses’. We should all be striving for the healthy progression of this beautiful and unique breed and not ruining it

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Best Wishes,
Maddy

This is why we should try to educate our vets in the UK to neuture/spay all kittens before they are sold, this would stop all this instantly. It is a shame there are people out their who want to make money just for greed.

Early neutering does seem to be the only way to ensure that our pets can't be bred from.

Interesting:

http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/qs.htm

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Best Wishes,
Maddy

well put tally, i totally agree.

when can kittens be safely neutered? it is a worry. you sell a pet as a pet not to be breed from, we thought about breeding for a long time before we got our queen.

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Best Wishes,
Maddy

I get our male kittens 'done' at 12 wks.. our vet would like to do girls at 14 or 15 weeks which is a bit off putting for customers who are desparate for the kittens to come home..
Lets just hope we can spot the idiots who think there is 'easy money' to be made in breeding Healthy kittens... trust me its bloody hard work and costs a fortune to do it right..[/b]

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Best Wishes,
Maddy

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