What a cattery website actually has to do
A breeder website has three jobs. It has to be findable when someone searches your breed plus their region, it has to prove you are a real and careful breeder before anyone messages you, and it has to make the next step obvious. Anything on the page that does not serve one of those three is decoration, and decoration is the part that ages worst.
This matters because most enquiries arrive after a buyer has already read your site quietly for a while. They are not looking for animation. They are checking whether the cats pictured are your own, whether your litters are real and recent, and whether your process — waitlist, deposit, contract, go-home age — is stated plainly instead of being negotiated later in a chat window.
So the build order is: get the facts on the page first, then make it look good. A plain site with dated litters and a clear buying process outperforms a beautiful site whose availability page has not moved since last spring.
Four routes to a cattery site, compared
There is no single right platform, only the one you will still be updating in six months. Compare the four common routes on effort and control, then pick the lowest-effort option that gives you the control you actually need.
Two decisions outlast whichever route you pick. First, register your own domain name, in your own account, and point the platform at it — if you move later, your links, your bookmarks and your accumulated search history move with you, whereas a site living only on a builder’s subdomain starts from zero every time you change your mind.
Second, decide who maintains it. If that person is you, choose the route you can edit from your phone between litters. If a designer builds it, agree in writing who holds the domain, the hosting login and the backups before the first invoice. Breeders lose sites to expired domains and unreachable designers far more often than to bad design.
| Route | Setup effort | What you control | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosted site builder (drag and drop) | Low — a weekend | Layout and content; the platform owns the stack | Most catteries, and almost every first site |
| Self-hosted CMS such as WordPress | Medium, plus ongoing maintenance | Everything: structure, plugins, page templates | Breeders who publish regularly and want full control |
| Breeder-specific website product | Low | Templates already shaped around litters and pedigrees | Breeders who want litter pages without building them |
| Profile on a breeder directory | Very low — a form | Your listing only, inside someone else’s site | A supplement while your own site is new |
The pages every cattery website needs
Start with eight pages. Add more later, but a site missing any of these forces the buyer to ask by message what they could have read in thirty seconds — and every avoidable message is an enquiry you answer instead of an enquiry you convert.
- Home — breed, location, registry affiliation, and one honest line on what you breed for.
- Kings — one card or page per stud, with registered name, colour and pattern, date of birth, and health testing.
- Queens — the same, plus retirement status so buyers are not asking about a cat who no longer breeds.
- Available kittens — dated listings with litter reference, expected go-home date, and reservation status.
- Past litters — parents, birth date and photos. Old litters are evidence of a history, not clutter.
- Health testing and registry — which tests you run on which cats, and which registry you register with (TICA, CFA, or your national body).
- How buying works — waitlist, deposit, contract, go-home age, and what travels home with the kitten.
- Contact — one channel you genuinely monitor, plus a short form that asks about the buyer’s timeline and household.
Keeping it accurate is the real work
Building the site takes a weekend. Keeping it true takes the next three years, and this is where most breeder sites quietly die: the availability page still shows a litter that sold in spring, the queens page lists a cat who has been retired, and the buyer who notices assumes the entire site is stale.
The fix is to treat your records as the source and the website as an export of them. Whatever holds your matings, litters and placements — a spreadsheet, a notebook, or a breeding app such as FanMeowy Cattery Manager, whose core record keeping is free on the App Store — the site should be updated from that record on a fixed schedule rather than from memory. Twice a month is enough, if you actually do it.
Set a dating rule and never break it. Every kitten listing carries a birth date and a status of available, reserved or placed. Every litter page carries the mating or birth date. Undated pages are the fastest way to look inactive to both buyers and search engines, and they are the first thing an experienced buyer checks.
SEO basics that matter for breeder sites
Breeder search traffic is local and specific: people search a breed plus a place, or a breed plus a question. So write one page per intent instead of one long homepage — a breed page, a location clearly stated in your title and address block, and short answers to the questions you find yourself retyping by message week after week.
Expect months rather than days. A new domain has no history, and search engines are cautious with this category because it attracts scams. That is also why a directory profile or an active social account is worth keeping alongside the site: they get found while your own domain is still earning trust.
- One page per search intent — a breed page, an availability page and a short FAQ beat one long homepage.
- City or region in the page title, the main heading, and visible body text — not only inside an image.
- Real filenames and alt text on photos of your own cats; never stock photos of the breed.
- A visible address block with city and country, which reads as a trust signal to buyers and a location signal to search engines.
- Internal links from each kitten listing back to the parents’ pages, so a visitor can verify the pedigree without asking.
What not to publish
Do not publish buyers’ names, addresses, or the update photos they send you after go-home without asking first. Do not publish a price you are unwilling to honour to a stranger: either state a range and hold it, or say prices are quoted with each litter announcement, and apply whichever you chose to everyone.
Contract and deposit pages need care. Summarising your terms is helpful; offering a downloadable contract that has never been reviewed for your jurisdiction is not. Have your sales contract checked where you live before it goes on the internet — this is not legal advice, and rules on animal sales, deposits and health guarantees differ by country and by state.
Avoid health claims you cannot support. Phrases such as “fully vaccinated” and “vet checked” mean different things in different countries. State exactly which vaccines were given, on what dates, and by which clinic, and leave interpretation to the buyer’s own vet — consult your veterinarian about the schedule appropriate for your region before describing it publicly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I still need a website if I have an active social account?
Yes, for one reason: you do not control search on a social platform, and a buyer who looks up your cattery name months later may find nothing. Social is where people follow you; the website is where people verify you. The site also holds what social posts handle badly — pedigree pages, health testing, buying terms, and a dated availability list.
How much should a cattery website cost?
Costs vary by country and platform, so treat any single figure with suspicion. The unavoidable items are an annual domain registration plus hosting or a builder subscription; a template you set up yourself keeps you near the floor, while a custom-designed site is an order of magnitude above. Budget for renewals, not just the build — an expired domain loses every link pointing at you.
Should I list kitten prices on the site?
Both approaches work; mixing them does not. Publishing a range filters out enquiries that were never going to convert and saves you the same conversation every week. Withholding prices leaves room to price by quality grade and to talk before quoting. Decide, state your choice on the buying page, and apply it consistently.
What domain name should I register?
Use your registered cattery name if it is available, with a common extension. Avoid breed-plus-city domains you may outgrow, long hyphen chains, and anything you cannot spell over the phone. Register it in your own account rather than your designer’s, and leave the renewal on auto-pay.
Is a breeder directory listing enough on its own?
A directory profile is a fast way to be found while your own site is new, and directories often rank for the breed-plus-city searches you cannot win yet. But the listing sits on someone else’s domain and follows their rules. Use both: a public cattery profile — FanMeowy Cattery Manager can publish one for your cattery — for reach, and your own domain as the page buyers finally land on.
Not using FanMeowy Cattery Manager yet?See what the app does for breeders