Advice on where to buy kittens

[Whatevertheweather]

Hi, we are looking to get my daughter 2 kittens for her 7th birthday at beginning of March. She has been desperate for a cat since she could talk and for various reasons now is the right time so we are going to coincide getting them with her birthday. We do also have an 18 month old DD.

I have tried our local RSPCA and cats protection league and neither have any suitable. Pets 4 Homes local site only seem to have the £300+ pedigree cats, gorgeous but out of our budget! There are some on free ads/gumtree but am wary to get them from there.

Presume we need to start looking now to collect end of Feb/beginning of March?

We live in a semi detached house on a quiet residential street with a large enclosed back garden and will get a catflap fitted. I work from home most days so they will have plenty of company There's a vet around the corner and we will arrange insurance and micro chipping.

Any advice gratefully received - we had kittens/cats when I was growing up but that was a fair while ago now!

TIA

My preference is for adult cats. Twice the fun and half the work of kittens. But that's a personal thing.

Awww the 6 yr old cats sound lovely....go on, you know you want them really

For years I had the same 2 cats (from kittens) and as they got older we had always said we would definitely have another cat or 2 but absolutely no kittens - they are such a lot of work, can be very destructive and I don't think they are the best animals for very young children (my kids are still young)

however this year we ended up having to take in a tiny kitten a few weeks old who was found cowering under our car bonnet. He is 6 months old now and an absolute delight but my goodness he is very very lively, claws the furniture/carpets (completely ignores scratching post), has spent the last 3 weeks removing as many decorations off the tree as he can reach (and attempting to chew the flex of the tree lights ) and he needs a lot of our time still, as he needs to be played with A LOT. Fortunately he is an easygoing creature and we have trained the kids from a young age to be gentle with the animals and we are very firm with them about giving the cats plenty of time & space to themselves - so luckily the kitten has fitted in just fine, but it could have been a different story if he'd had a different temperament.

Compare that with our 1 remaining old cat who mooches around, snoozes a lot and presents himself for cuddles/strokes several times a day & the adult cat is far far less bother than the kitten (he is very very old now though, but at 6 or 7 he had completely calmed down from kitten behaviour although still enjoyed a good play session & was a very active outdoors-y cat )

Another vote for adult cats - our latest girl was about two when we got her. My neighbour got a kitten about the same time.
Whilst the kitten is adorable I think we have had the much easier deal, our girl is young, so she is still lots of fun but we haven't had to deal with things like litter training etc
and at the end of the day we both have a lovely new cat. mine is obviously cuter