Our cattery is an in home cattery with a small number of breeding cats to keep it manageable. A few of our cats stay inside the house but the majority of them have a habitat we have created for them outside. The studs are in spacious enclosures and the entire habitat is landscaped so that they feel like they are in the jungle. For pictures and more info about their habitat, click on the submenu button "our jungle".
None of our cats are kept in cages. The queens and older kittens are kept in the central area of the habitat that is just outside, attached to our patio. We can see the entire habitat through our back glass door.
The studs are located along the sides of the central area, so they can socialize with the other cats in the habitat, but are prevented from breeding freely with any queen and prevented from fighting from each other (which whole males tend to do).
Our pregnant queens are brought inside a few weeks before their due date and confined to birthing cages so that they do not have kittens in an unsafe place and so that we can be sure we know when they give birth. When they get close to their due dates, we often spend nights in the kitten room, keeping a close watch on the queens 24 hours a day. When they go into labor, they usually talk us into letting them out to have kittens on the bed (on top of a layer of towels of course) or in our laps, but are still confined to the room (although they would love to get out and look for more "suitable" areas to have kittens, like on top of the 8' cat tree)!
We are there for the birth of every litter, many times taking over cleaning the kittens off, cutting cords and warming the kittens while the queen is having the rest of the kittens in the litter.
When the kittens get old enough to start leaving the nest (around 3-5 weeks of age), we let them out of the birthing cages during the day to play and put them up at night so that they cannot get into any trouble and hurt themselves. Confining them at night also helps to train them to sleep, instead of play, during the night. This training is usually appreciated by the new family when they go to their permanent homes.
Once the kittens reach 8 weeks of age, if the time of year is a warm time, we move them outside to the enclosed habitat so that they can start to socialize with the other cats, the dogs, and have lots of room to explore. If the time of year is not warm, we keep them in the kitten room until they reach 12 weeks of age and are ready to go to new homes.
Our whole family spends a large portion of each day playing with and holding each kitten. This helps to socialize them with humans and makes for better pets.
All of the cats are fed three times per day. We collect every bowl three times per day and wash them before feeding. In the morning they get ground raw chicken (they love this and when it's feeding time they run around and meow and act crazily). In the afternoon they get some high quality dry food to hold them over until their dinner feeding of more ground up raw chicken. Some of the adult cats do not get any dry food, only raw meat, but the kittens get one feeding of dry per day so that if the new owners wish to switch them over completely to a commercial diet, the switch will be very easy since they will already be used to eating some commercial food.
Our house is always busy with the cats and the kids but we wouldn't have it any other way. Breeding bengals is truly a labor of love. Never easy but always worth it. The amount of love we receive from our cats and the families we make so happy when they get a lovely, well socialized kitten, makes it all worth it in the end.
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