Are any of your cats caged or enclosed and how is male spray handled? Are kittens at any time not able to freely roam in human company, including pens, gates, or rooms?
We are a no cage cattery except at the vet or cat shows. Caging alone is not a sign of a backyard breeder. It is a controversial way to handle intact males that spray. Many of the top breeders in the world cage so they can have more males and more litters of kittens contained, the more kittens they have, the more volume they have to cull and keep the very best.
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Caged kittens can have litter box troubles. We know this from bringing in our breeding cats from breeders who caged. Some take years to get their litter box troubles under control or never do.
Kittens are raised in regular pet beds in our bedroom. When they start walking out of the bed we have to diligently put them in their training litter box for a few days. This is why most people cage or pen kittens, to save their floors from kitten accidents. We do not want our kittens to have any barriers to human interaction so we don’t even pen kittens.
When people ask what temperament Scottish folds have as a breed I tell them more than breed, caging is going to determine temperament. Cats that are caged have a problem integrating with other pets at a new home. We know because we got some of our breeding cats from some of the top breeders in the world and those that were caged are a bit anti social.
At cat shows caged cats are often violent in the show ring. They don’t like to be handled and bite and hiss at judges and other cats. While it’s true that sometimes even when everything is done right to raise a cat that they can hate showing, if every single cat a breeder has cannot show due to temperament, there is probably something very wrong with either the cat’s health or socialization.
During visits we can tell you how we handle spray, but I won’t put it up here on the website. Spray is the reason most backyard breeders finally stop breeding cats altogether when cats start destroying their home. We do NOT cage our kittens except at the vet or for shows. This does mean that our whole house is centered on how to raise our cats in a healthy and clean environment.