We've been super busy here at the cattery over the last few months! We’ve not only had the privilege to attend a bunch of really great TICA hosted cat shows all over the South East Region, but we’ve also taken some time to travel to visit family, both in New York and in Florida. While our visit to Florida was on more pleasant terms, unfortunately, our trip to New York was not.

Sadly, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago. He worked all the way up until just before his 70th birthday last year despite this fact, but over the last few months specifically the cancer has become resistant to any and all treatment options. Then, just a couple weeks ago he was finally put in hospice care and given only a few short months to live.

As you can imagine, our family is devastated and has been doing our best to manage our personal life while also continuing to work full time and run our in-home cattery. We hope to share as much as possible in this blog post about what can be expected over the coming months, and then we will likely take some additional time to just be with family. In the interim, we just wanted to say that we really, REALLY appreciate everyone’s patience with our spotty updates and follow up communication.

Titles Earned

On a lighter note, for those of you who are caught up with reading our social media and show related blog posts, you may have already heard, but for those of you who are new to our breeding and showing journey, I wanted to quickly summarize some of the titles we’ve earned in the second half of the 2022-2023 show season.

LakeViewCoons Bella Luna Nera (aka Luna) achieved her Champion title.

LakeViewCoons Silver Lining (aka S.L., pronounced “Essel”) achieved his Champion, Grand Champion, Double Grand Champion, Triple Grand Champion, and Quadruple Grand Champion titles.

Here are a few of our favorite photos from the show season, and the certificates awarded for each.

Health Screening Results

We are happy to announce that CH LakeViewCoons Bella Luna Nera has finally received her Wisdom Panel genetic test results which came back clear, and her OFA Hip Grading results which came back “GOOD.” We are still awaiting her OFA Advanced Cardiac Screening which is scheduled for this summer.

With that being said, Luna has officially entered our breeding program and we willl be updating the QUEENS tab of our website accordingly (these updates are a work in progress, but once watermarked and redacted, the health screening results can be viewed by clicking “Queens” > “About Luna” > “DNA Test Results” and “Heart Echo / Hip X-Ray Results”).

Planned Pairings

We are probably most excited to announce our upcoming plans for this coming Spring and Summer. CH LakeViewCoons Bella Luna Nera and RW QGC IAU Orion’s Hunt StarArk were recently paired and had a beautiful litter of three kittens, two black boys (at least one of which appears to be smoke), and a brown (black) tabby girl. We have the female under cattery observation and a couple breeder friends we are networked with have also expressed an interest. More details relating to this litter will be published once we have a chance to properly evaluate the litter for breed and show potential. Because both parents of this litter have earned championship titles, altered pets and altered show kittens from this litter will be priced at $4ooo USD.

We had hoped to pair Orion with our blue smoke and white polydactyl girl, LakeViewCoons Twisted Fate (aka Blue), and our other black smoke girl, “Queen Dagmar” of LakeViewCoons, but unfortunately we got ultrasound confirmation that the matings did not take.

In addition to Luna and Orion’s litter, we have another successful mating to announce: Behold Star of Bethlehem (aka “Setareh”, Persian for Star) was successfully paired with our boy Mando. This is a repeat mating from last year and these are the same parents that produced Luna. Because neither parent of this litter has earned championship titles, altered pets and altered show kittens from this litter will be priced at $3000 USD.

Mando & Setareh’s pairing has the potential to produce MALE kittens with solid black, black smoke, solid red, red smoke, red silver classic tabby, black silver classic tabby, and black (brown) classic tabby coats. This pairing also has the potential to produce FEMALE kittens with solid black, black smoke, black silver classic tabby, black silver classic torbie, black (brown) classic tabby, and black (brown) classic torbie coats. Both male and female kittens could be with or without white (paws, belly, chest).

Behold Star of Bethlem (Setareh) & Ermionida Mendelssohn (Mando)

Last, and certainly not least, we have plans to pair Dagmar with Mando, and Blue with Orion in the late summer or early fall. Nature willing, we hope to share more about these tentative pairings in the near future.

Adoption Applications

Many people have reached out to ask, so we wanted to address this more publicly…

Interested individuals need to submit an application with each litter.

We do not keep past applications on file.

When adoption applications are scheduled to open, no early OR late entries are accepted or considered.

We do not currently charge more for male versus female, polydactyl versus standard, or for “rare” coat colors or patterns. Our pricing is however based on our ever changing monthly cost for Hip Grading and Advanced Cardiac Health screening, routine veterinary care, emergency veterinary care, as well as food and supplies. Each of these things, coupled with overall demand, is what drives the national average price for the breed, which currently ranges between $2000-$5000 USD.

With all that being said, we hope to open up our adoption application process again in either August or September, depending on if we allow any of Luna’s kittens to go to altered pet kitten or altered show kitten homes OR if we wait to open up applications for when Setareh’s litter becomes available.

Since we typically receive such an overwhelming response to our available kittens, we plan to limit the submissions of applications to a 24-48 hour window.

For those who are not already aware of how our cattery’s reservation process works, we do not keep a waitlist, we do not accept deposits for kittens not yet born, and as mentioned earlier, our digital adoption application form will NOT be made visible to our website for at least another few months.

When reserving kitens, we always give first pick to our Cattery, and then after that to the few breeders we are closely networked with and trust. Next, we give priority to our immediate family and then to our current Lake View Coons family. We also try to prioritize approved applicants who express an interest in showing and/or who express an interest in adopting a sibling pair (that is, assuming we have kittens with show potential and/or a sibling pair that would do well going home together and with the family that expresses an interest).

For more details on our cattery’s reservation process, be sure to visit our website FAQ page: www.LakeViewCoons.com/faq

Future Vision

LakeViewCoons Calypso, our black silver mackerel girl and daughter to our titled cats, Orion and Blurry, stayed with the cattery. She will remain under an extended observation and assuming all goes according to plan, Calypso will be a second generation kitten born in our cattery and retained for future breeding/showing work. We are super excited about the potential she brings and look forward to sharing future photos and updates of her.

Another exciting announcement we have to make is that we are hoping to add a new stud to our cattery in 2023! The addition of this future king will help us to meet some of our most important cattery goals relating to reducing inbreeding coefficient percentages in future offspring, and expanding overall genetic diversity in the pedigree lines we currently work with. Details relating to this new boy will likely be shared with our next cattery news update, so stay tuned for those details!

With the addition of a new future king, we are sad to announce that we will likely need to retire Mando in 2024. This is bittersweet news for us to share. Mando is an incredible cat, both in looks and personality, and he has produced some amazing kittens over the last few years, a handful of whom have even been awarded championship titles, and regional and international awards of excellence. While it’s hard to imagine this may be the last year our sweet boy will be producing kittens, we know that Mado’s retirement is much deserved and we look forward to sharing our home with him as a FURever loved and spoiled (altered) pet.

Continuing Education

This last cattery news update is one that I am especially proud of!

As many of you already know, I’ve always loved to research and learn new things when it comes to feline genetics and husbandry. I also found early on that with starting the cattery it’s super important to be resourceful and set aside time for continued learning.

With that being said, back in 2019 I signed up for some feline education courses at the PawPeds PawAcademy. I successfully completed the first course in 2021 and after another two year long wait, I finally got confirmation in January that I was accepted into the second G2 (English) Course! Needless to say, after a total of over four years of waiting, I am ecstatic to announce I have now successfully completed the second PawAcademy course, G2. Now we wait, wait, wait… for the G3 course that follows!

With the completion of our final exam for the PawPeds PawAcademy G2 course, we designed three different informational brochures to hand out at future TICA shows. These pamphlets were created with the hope to help guide future pet buyers in finding the PURRfect pedigree pet. We are in the process of having these double sided, tri-fold brochures printed, in addition to some new double sided business cards with QR codes. These are rough draft copies of the final product, but please be sure to leave us a comment below to let us know what you think!