For many families a kitten from the litter born next door, of no particular breed, is quite enough.  Other people like to have a cat of known breed, often because a friend or relative has one and they’ve been won over by its appearance and/or personality.

There is vast range of breeds and families of breeds to choose from. Information on these is not difficult to come by.  Many breeds have societies devoted to them; many have extensive single-breed web sites; and the number of books is legion.

There are many books to help you in your search to find what breed of cat will best suit your personality, and your purse.  A convenient “Kitten Buyers’ Guide” for the UK is published periodically in “Your Cat” magazine, the November 2009 issue being the latest.

An excellent book that I bought recently is Encyclopedia Of Catsby Candida Frith-Macdonald. It is available from Amazon.com by clicking the link above. Described as a “comprehensive guide to all world breeds”, and with more than a 1,000 photographic images, this 384-page book published in 2008 is highly informative and easy to read.

(UK visitors: As of the date of writing this post the British edition of this book appears to be out of print. However, here is a range of alternative cat encyclopediasavailable from Amazon.co.uk).

Tags: cat breeds, cat magazine, kitten buyers guide, your cat

In the UK cat lovers’ magazine “Your Cat” for November 2009 there’s a great story of a cat in the English East Midlands with a serious behaviour problem and risking falling foul of the law. In fact this lad is clearly quite a criminal already.

Jaffa the Siamese has taken to disappearing out through the cat flap and returning with soft toys that he clearly has obtained by entering through other homes’ cat flaps. Quite a crime-prevention problem for the local police station cat to get his claws into.

For more cat stories – and serious cat care articles too – why not buy yourself a subscription to ‘Your Cat‘ magazine, and while you’re at it take another as a gift for a cat-loving friend as well.

Tags: cat story