Rick and I have been living in Rotorua for almost eleven years. 

Rick moved to New Zealand eleven years ago from Georgia and we got married that same year.  My son Julian (now 20 years) and I had moved from Auckland to live in Rotorua and we brought our very lovely Charlotte cat with us, but Julian wanted a dog, so along came Saaska a beautiful Border Collie, who unfortunately had pointed ears (no good for the show ring, but a great pet).

We lived on a very busy street and while you can contain dogs with fences, cats are a law unto themselves and our precious Charlotte was killed on the road outside our house which was extremely sad, but then along came Rastas, and as he was older when we got him he and Saaska hit it off straight away and became friends.

After a couple of years we moved to a bigger house and decided to breed a litter of puppies and there started our love affair with breeding.  From Saaska's first litter we kept Tabatha (Tabby) who was the only female in the litter and the prettiest of course.

We continued to breed both Saaska and Tabby, Saaska was a great mother and grand mother and used to look after Tabby's babies when she turned out to be not as good a mother as Saaska.  You could just see the joy in Saaska face when there were new puppies in the house and destroying the gardens.

Saaska lost her hearing quite young for a dog we thought (if you want to give her instructions now you have to wave your arms around in the air until she figures out what you want her to do) and as she had already had several litters we retired her from puppy rearing.  Tabby continued to gain weight so she too was retired from breeding.(much to her delight)

Rick sold Refilled Ink cartridges and traded an ink cartridge for a Green Indian Ring Neck Parrot and Billy entered our lives and made our days less boring and definately less quiet.  He had a mirror into which he gazed lovingly at himself and say "Billy's a Good Boy" at the worst possible times (like in the middle of Coronation Street) and at the top of his voice and he would squawk and whistle, so the mirror got taken away and now he talks to his reflection in his metal food bowl. 

Somewhere along the way Julian Completed a Chef's apprenticeship, Rick and I were very proud when he got into the cooking phase of the Modern Apprentice of the year 2007 which was held in Christchurch and he got to cook off against 5 other Apprentice's, unfortunately he didn't win, but we still took home the best Chef.  He was nominated for Apprentice of the year in Rotorua and received a Bronze Medal in the Culinary Fair Competition in Auckland in 2007. Now he has moved to Auckland to work as a Commis Chef at the Westin Hotel, probably a lucky escape as the animal population continued to grow.

We started a business selling t shirts (www.petteesnmore.co.nz) at dog shows and ventured into cat shows after meeting Jean Tarrant at the Pet Expo one year.  At the Easter Show that year, we met Aliceia Deacon from FoldALots Cattery and there we adopted Hugo a Highland Fold, might I add a very beautiful Highland Fold. As we were at the shows anyway we decided to start showing Hugo he was a lovely cat and did quite well. But just after his first birthday he got very sick and died.

We managed to drag ourselves heartbroken to the CATZ Inc show at the Easter show just after Hugo's death and into our lives came Helen McCaig from Helenca Catteries, she breeds beautiful Persians and Himalayans who had a wonderful new breed called Napoleons and a drop dead gorgeous cat called Anna Nicole who took my breath away and when Helen mentioned that she had some kittens at home that were almost old enough for new homes I had to have one.

After talking to Helen over the next few weeks she asked if we might like to try breeding Napoleon Cats and then came Leo (short legs) and Katie our long legged Napoleon mother cat.

Aliceia very kindly gave us a beautiful little brown tabby Highland Fold we named Sophie and our family was brimming over.

Just when we thought maybe we had enough cats we came across a Himalayan we called Hillary, who will also be part of our breeding programe.

Earlier this year (2008) Katie had a litter of Four short legged kittens and we are adding April and Stacey to our household of much loved cats, dogs and bird.

So now my Sister feels justified calling me CRAZY CAT LADY