Bringing home an older kitten/cat

[5thnonblonde]

DH and I have been considering a cat for a while. We have 3DC and 1 DDog all of whom are cat friendly.

DH’s parents used to breed cats and one of this breed is left from a litter a colleague’s mother bred. It’s older at 5 months- should this ting any alarm bells?

Although his parents bred them his DF is passed and DM has dementia so we can’t really ask them and DH was a child do doesn’t remember these sorts of details.

While we’d like a cat and feel more comfortable taking one from someone we know isn’t a kitten farm style breeder I don’t want to rush in if this isn’t right. Part of the reason we haven’t got one yet is how hard it is to find genuine breeders right now- so many kittens out there on dodgy gumtree ads!

What breed is the cat? There are some breed experts here who can tell you what you need to check for in the way of health screening.

She’s a Bengal. She’s (apparently) TICA registered and she sent a list of stuff it had been screened for which matched up with the Bengal cat club page info.

They certainly are lookers- I hadn’t really seen one before and I remember DMIL speaking so fondly of them, see what she meant now!

^^the second ‘she’ there is the breeder obv. Haven’t communicated directly with the cat so far!

I had a Bengal until a few years ago and they are quite high maintenance cats. Mine was outside a lot of the time which helped but I would read up on the breed before you commit. I know a lot of posters on here live them but I wouldn't have another.

Sorry that should say love them

Thanks @EmmaC78 that’s really helpful- what do you mean specifically by high maintenance?

We live in a town but are directly surrounded by a park and woodland so I imagine they’d go outside although have read conflicting things about this and is one of our first questions for the breeder as she’s in our town. DH’s parents kept theirs indoors but lived in a busy city.

Mine was incredibly noisy and also difficult to handle so the annual trip to the vet was traumatic for both of us. I have a siamese so am used to noisy cats but the Bengal was on another level and was often really vocal during the night. She was definitely not a docile lap cat if that's what you are looking for. As I say I do read a lot of posts on here where people say how good they are but maybe I was unlucky.

@EmmaC78 thanks- I’ll see how approachable the cat and it’s parents are and it’s another thing to ask about