What cattery management software actually is
The category name is loose, and that is why searching for it is frustrating. "Pet management software" can mean a veterinary practice system, a boarding and grooming point of sale, or a shelter intake database. None of those were built for a breeding program, and it takes about twenty minutes of a free trial to find that out.
Cattery management software is the narrower thing: software whose data model knows what a litter is. A queen was mated to a stud on a date, that produced a litter, the litter contains individual kittens, each kitten has its own weight curve and vaccination schedule, and one of them has a deposit on it from a buyer who is waiting for photos. If a tool cannot express that chain, no amount of polish will make it fit.
It also serves two directions at once. Inward, it is your record: what you did, when, and to which animal. Outward, it is what a buyer, a co-breeder, or a registry form needs from you — a readable pedigree, a complete health record at handover, and an honest list of what is available.
The six modules that decide whether a tool fits
Work down this list before you look at pricing. Anything missing two of these six will send you back to a spreadsheet for the gap, and a split system is worse than either half.
| Module | What good looks like | What it costs you when it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Cat profiles | One record per cat: photos, registered name and prefix, registry number, colour and pattern code, DNA and screening results, source | Details live across a phone gallery, a notes app and old chat threads; nothing transfers when someone else has to cover for you |
| Matings and litters | A mating date sets an expected due date; kittens are grouped under their litter instead of floating in one long list | Due dates get worked out by hand, and preparation slips by a few days at the worst possible time |
| Pedigree | Three to five generations upward, with a warning when a planned pair shares ancestors | Line planning runs on memory and screenshots, and repeats of the same pairing go unnoticed |
| Health schedule | Vaccination and deworming due dates held per animal and delivered as reminders, not painted on a wall calendar | Missed boosters, and an incomplete record in front of the buyer at pickup |
| Money | Deposits and balances attached to the individual kitten; cost and revenue rolled up per litter | You know your bank balance but not which litter paid for itself, and deposit disputes come down to memory |
| Buyer-facing page | Available kittens visible on their own, with what you choose to publish and nothing more | Every enquiry restarts from zero: the same photos, the same answers, retyped |
Spreadsheet, general pet software, or breeding-specific?
Most breeders pass through three or four of these before settling. It is quicker to recognise the shape of each category than to trial them one at a time.
- Spreadsheet plus a photo gallery. Genuinely fine for a first year, and free. It breaks on three specific things: pedigree is tree-shaped and rows are flat, recurring per-animal dates have nowhere to live, and photos never sit with the record they belong to.
- Veterinary practice software. Organised around appointments and clinical notes for many different owners. Excellent at what it does; it has no concept of a sire, a dam, or your deposit list.
- Boarding, grooming or retail point of sale. Organised around bookings, runs and payments. Breeding objects are absent, so litters end up recorded in a free-text field.
- Shelter and rescue systems. Organised around intake, foster placement and adoption. The vocabulary is close enough to be tempting and the model is wrong: no mating, no litter lineage, no buyer waitlist.
- Breeding-specific software. The objects match the work. Remaining differences are platform (a desktop back office versus a phone-first app), species coverage, whether buyers ever see anything, and what happens to your data if you leave.
Twelve questions to ask before you commit
Ask these in a trial, with your own cats, not from the feature page. Half of them are about the exit, which is the part nobody checks until it is urgent.
- Can I record a weight or a mating in under a minute, on a phone, with one hand?
- Does a kitten record stay linked to its litter, its dam and its sire, or is the link just a text field?
- How far up does the pedigree go, and can I see shared ancestors between two cats I am considering pairing?
- Are reminders attached to the animal, or is there only a shared calendar I have to read?
- Can I export everything myself — cats, litters, health records, photos — without emailing support?
- If I stop paying, does my account become read-only, do I get an export window, or does it simply close?
- Can an assistant or co-breeder get access without seeing finances?
- Are photos kept at full resolution, and do they come out in the export?
- Does it handle a second species or breed if I ever add one, without a second account?
- Is there a public listing page, and do I control exactly what it shows?
- Where is the data hosted, and how often is it backed up?
- Is the free tier a real tier, or a trial with a countdown?
Moving off spreadsheets without losing history
The migration that fails is the one that starts with "first I will enter everything." Ten years of records is a weekend you will not spend, and the project dies there.
Start narrow instead. Enter only the cats you currently breed from, then the litter in front of you — the one that is pregnant, nursing, or about to be sold. From that point on, record at the moment the event happens: the weight at the scale, the mating on the day, the deposit when the message arrives. Backfilling is optional and can happen in quiet weeks; live capture cannot be recovered later.
Keep the old spreadsheet as a read-only archive for one full season rather than deleting it. It costs nothing and it settles the "did we ever write that down?" question. FanMeowy Cattery Manager is one of the phone-first options in this category, with core records free on the App Store; whatever you pick, do one full export in the first month so you know the exit works before you depend on it.
- Week 1: breeding cats only, with registered name, registry number and colour code copied exactly from the papers.
- Week 1: the current or next litter, including a mating that already happened.
- Week 2: turn on reminders for the two things you actually forget, not for everything.
- Month 1: one full export, stored somewhere that is not the app.
- Quiet season: backfill retired cats and old litters, oldest last.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is cattery management software different from kennel software?
The objects are largely the same — sire, dam, litter, individual animal, buyer — and the vocabulary differs (queening versus whelping, queen and stud versus bitch and sire). Many tools cover both. What matters is whether the fields line up with the paperwork your registry actually asks for.
Do I need software if I only have two queens?
Not necessarily. The usual break point is the first season with two litters overlapping, or the first time a buyer asks for a record you cannot produce on the spot. Until then a disciplined spreadsheet plus a reminder app covers it — the risk is that the discipline, not the tooling, is what quietly stops.
Is free cattery software safe to rely on?
Look at what is free and why. Free core records with paid extras is a normal, durable model. Fully free with no visible business model is the one to question, because your archive depends on the company still existing in five years. FanMeowy Cattery Manager keeps core records free on the App Store and charges for optional extras.
Can software replace registry paperwork?
No. Registration is issued by your registry — TICA, CFA, GCCF, FIFe or another — under their current rules, and most require the litter to be registered before individual kittens are. Good software makes those forms faster to fill because names, numbers and dates are already in one place. Check the registry directly for current requirements.
Can it tell me whether a pairing is safe?
It can surface facts — shared ancestors, screening dates, test results on file, gaps in the record — and that is genuinely useful. It cannot make a health judgement. Interpretation of screening results and the decision to breed a particular pair belong to you and your vet; consult your veterinarian.
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