I stopped at a pet supply store I’d never been in before because I needed cat food quick while I was in town. As I was waiting at the till, I heard someone ask about a small cat in one of the cages. The cashier answered, “That one’s not for sale. She’s a silver point Bengal kitten and I’m keeping her. I’m going to breed her.”

This store does satellite adoptions for the SPCA and I know the SPCA spays/neuters their cats prior to adoption and I know that the SPCA still has to put down cats, especially those that have been abandoned and are unadoptable (which can include pure-bred cats).  As all animal-welfarists know, these abandoned cats quickly become feral until there are hundreds of them in colonies, sickening and dying, but not before breeding and rebreeding. Those who make money by breeding more cats aren’t the ones paying the money to try to save as many cats as they can. I wondered if the SPCA knew that this bad example was being promoted in a store where it tries to set a good example.

I was struck speechless at that moment though, and though fuming, I asked where the Bengal kitten came from. She came from a breeder in New Jersey! When I expressed my dismay about imported cats and cat breeding in general, the clerk blew me away with this statement:

“Some people are rescue people and some people are breeder people and there’s room for everybody in this world”.

I was told that it’s not just about breeding, it’s a hobby with her, her way to relax.

She breeds cats and takes them to shows. I tried to talk further with her, but it wasn’t going anywhere, so I told her I was distressed that anyone would not only import cats from the States, but breed them, particularly when we have so many homeless cats….it was the best I could do.

Just a few yards away are SPCA cats for adoption – beautiful, ordinary, garden variety cats. I hate to think that these homeless cats will be overlooked for a purebred kitten, but some of them will be.

And I question the morality of a store that increases it profits by displaying SPCA cats yet allows its staff to have their unaltered breeding cats in the store.

- Lyn MacDonald, Coombs, BC

We are having tea when she tells me she had 17 puppies last summer. “From where?” I choked. “Oh from these guys” she says, waving her hand at her 1 male, 2 female standard poodles. “But I’m not going to do that anymore, it’s getting to be too much work.”

Breeding birds and “donating” them to the Parrot Refuge isn’t rescue, it’s insanity. It’s offensive breeding of birds who should be flying freely, profiting from this trade in sentient beings, and dumping what you can’t use in the lap of someone else and counting on them to take care of your mess for the rest of time. And then boasting about it.

What is it that some people are not understanding? Is it the mentality that you are the only one who understands the breed, or the species, so that it is up to you to propagate it? It’s most certainly about money but why boast of being a “rescuer” when you are, in fact, a breeder? Perhaps it’s a way of deluding yourself so that you get both the cash from breeding, and that lovely feeling of being a do-gooder by dumping your birds/animals into a rescue facility rather than the garbage can.

She asked me if I could help out with some pet sitting, but I’m busy. Maybe her friend, the cockatoo breeder, can help her out…

- Lyn MacDonald, Coombs, BC