How to start a cattery: registration, foundation cats, licensing and your first litter

Decide the breed before you decide anything else

Everything downstream — which registry, which health tests, which mentors will talk to you, what your kittens are worth — follows from the breed. Choose one, and stay with it long enough to learn it. Breeders who start with two or three breeds usually end up with a house full of cats and a shallow understanding of all of them.

Before you buy anything, spend a season inside the breed: go to shows, read the breed standard, and find someone established who will answer questions. A mentor is not a nicety. Most of what makes a cattery work — which lines cross badly, which stud owners are reliable, when to call the vet at 3 a.m. — is not written down anywhere you can search.

• Read the breed standard from the registry you plan to use, then look at cats in person. Photographs flatter, and you cannot learn structure from a screen.
• Learn the breed's known health burden before you fall in love with a kitten. Every breed has one, and it decides which tests you will be paying for forever.
• Find your market honestly: are people near you buying this breed, and at what level of quality? A breed that sells well two countries away does not help your cash flow.
• Ask breeders what they would do differently. The useful answers are almost never about cats — they are about space, isolation rooms, contracts and time.
• Understand the lifestyle before committing. Breeding is unglamorous, unpredictable and does not pause for holidays, and the nursery weeks are relentless.

Register your cattery name

A cattery name is a prefix registered with a pedigree registry. It goes at the front of the registered name of every cat you breed and follows those cats through their papers for life. Registering one is what makes you a breeder in the registry's eyes: you need it before you can register a litter or issue pedigrees.

You apply directly to the registry in some systems and through a member club in others. Have two or three candidate names ranked before you apply, because names are checked against those already in use and there are character limits. Fees, term lengths and naming rules are set by each registry and change over time — take them from the registry's own current page, not from a forum post.

• Register with the body whose shows and pedigrees your breed circle actually uses. Papers from a registry nobody near you recognises are worth less at sale time.
• A cattery name is not a business licence, a trademark, or permission to sell. It is a naming right inside one registry.
• Rules on transferring or inheriting a cattery name differ by registry. Do not assume you can buy an established name, and do not assume you can sell yours later.
• You can register with more than one body, but that is two sets of rules, fees and litter registrations. Most new breeders start with one.

Foundation cats: breeding rights and health testing

This is where the money goes and where new breeders make the expensive mistake. A pet-priced kitten is almost always sold on a spay/neuter contract without breeding rights; breeding that cat breaks the contract you signed, and the registry may refuse to register the litter. A breeding-quality queen costs more precisely because the rights and the pedigree come with her.

Start with one or two queens and use an outside stud for your first matings. Keeping a stud is not "one more cat" — an intact male needs his own secure space, sprays, and changes how the whole household runs. That decision can wait until your queen line is proven.

• Get breeding rights in writing, and get the registration paperwork transferred into your name. A verbal "yes, you can breed her" is not a right.
• Ask for the parents' health testing results, by test name and testing laboratory, not a general assurance that the line is healthy.
• Which screens apply is breed-specific — cardiac screening and DNA panels are routine in some breeds, kidney or eye screening in others, and blood typing matters where incompatible matings are a known risk. Take the list from your breed club and your veterinarian.
• Test for FeLV and FIV before any cat enters your house, and quarantine new arrivals regardless of what their paperwork says.
• Do not breed a queen just because she is cycling. Physical maturity, completed health testing and your registry's code of ethics all come first, and the decision for a particular cat belongs with your veterinarian.
• Buy from a breeder who will still answer the phone in a year. Your first difficult birth is much easier with someone experienced on the other end.

Licensing, tax and the paperwork nobody warns you about

Registry membership is not permission to trade. Selling kittens is a commercial activity in most jurisdictions, and the rules sit with local government rather than with the cat fancy. What follows are the questions to ask, not answers you can rely on — requirements differ by country, state and city and are revised regularly. Confirm each one with the relevant authority. This is not legal advice.

Two rules of thumb. First, thresholds matter: many licensing regimes are triggered by the number of breeding females you keep, the number of litters you produce in a year, or whether you sell to buyers who never see the animal first. Second, ask before you scale, not after — retrofitting compliance onto a cattery that has already grown is the expensive way to find out.

• Business licensing: in the United States, federal APHIS rules can require a licence for breeders above a small threshold of breeding females who sell sight-unseen, and a number of states license breeders separately. Confirm with USDA APHIS and your state department of agriculture.
• Local licensing elsewhere: in England, selling animals as pets is a licensable activity and councils apply a business test to breeders; other countries and states run their own permit systems. Ask your local authority how they classify what you plan to do.
• Zoning and animal limits: many municipalities cap the number of cats per household or restrict animal-related businesses in residential areas. This one catches people after they have already bought the cats.
• Tax: kitten income is usually taxable income, and how a cattery is treated (business versus hobby) changes what you can deduct. Speak to an accountant in your own country.
• Transport paperwork: interstate and international movement typically needs a veterinary health certificate issued shortly before travel, plus rabies documentation and airline-specific rules. Check per route, per trip.
• Identification: some countries now require pet cats to be microchipped and the details kept current. Register the chip properly and record the number in the cat's file.
• Contracts: a written sales contract, a health guarantee and a spay/neuter agreement are standard practice. Have yours reviewed by a lawyer in your jurisdiction — again, this page is not legal advice.

What it costs and how long it takes

From bringing home a foundation kitten to sending your first kittens to their homes is usually about a year, and often longer. That is the number to plan cash around: for the whole of that period money goes out and nothing comes in. Buying an adult queen shortens the front of the timeline but not the back.

Nobody can give you a single startup figure, and any guide that does is selling something. Costs swing enormously with country, breed, veterinary prices and whether you are converting a spare room or building out a cattery. What is stable is the shape of the spending, so build your own budget from the categories below using quotes from your own suppliers and clinic.

Two things new breeders underestimate every time. The first is recurring cost: food, litter, routine veterinary care and testing all multiply by the number of cats, and cat numbers grow faster than expected. The second is the emergency fund. A caesarean, a sick litter or an unexpected hospital stay arrives without warning, and having to make a medical decision based on your bank balance is the worst position in this hobby.

• Foundation cats — the largest single line, and the one not to economise on.
• Registry costs — cattery name registration, membership, and a fee per litter and per kitten registered.
• Health testing — DNA panels and screening for the breeding cats, repeated on the schedule your breed requires.
• Routine veterinary care — vaccination, deworming, pre-breeding checks, pregnancy confirmation, post-natal checks.
• Housing and equipment — isolation and nursery space, nesting boxes, an accurate gram scale, air handling, secure stud housing if you go that way.
• Recurring supplies — food (including kitten and queen nutrition), litter, cleaning and disinfection consumables.
• Selling costs — microchips, contracts, go-home packs, photography, website or listing costs, transport.
• An emergency medical fund held separately and not spent on more cats.

Set up your records before the first litter, not after

The habit that separates catteries that last from those that quietly close is unglamorous: writing things down from day one. Pedigrees, health test results, mating dates, daily kitten weights, vaccination entries, buyer contracts and deposits. Reconstructing any of it a year later, from photos and chat threads, is miserable and often impossible — and it is exactly what a buyer, a new veterinarian or a registry query will ask you for.

Start with whatever you will actually use. A ring binder beats software you never open. Once several cats and overlapping litters are in play, a purpose-built system earns its keep, because it keeps every entry attached to a specific cat and can produce a clean record on demand. FanMeowy Cattery Manager does this for pedigrees, litters, weights, vaccination reminders and buyer records, with core record keeping free on the App Store. Whatever you choose, pick it before your first litter — the nursery weeks are the worst possible time to be setting up a filing system.