| Ridgeview Ragdolls |
| She sold us a sickly kitten that died 3 months later of FIP and will not give us ANY compensation. |
| 2nd of Mar, 2014 by JoshuaTree |
Here's 10 things to know from my personal experience with Ridgeview Ragdolls:
1. The breeder sold us a kitten (Pumpkin) that was showing signs of FIP and died 3 months later. When we picked him up he was underweight and had fleas. That night we got him home he had diarrhea and was sneezing. She made up illogical excuses for these things. If you're wondering why I bought him even though he was too thin and had fleas, just know that I had already paid her a non-refundable deposit. I figured he just needed some flea preventative and good quality food. She refuses to give me ANY compensation, even though she gave me her word that she would.
2. She brought a cat into her cattery that originally came from Elegant Ragdolls. Look it up and you will find warnings of scams, ringworm, and kittens/cats dying of FIP. She admitted that this cat came from a "non-reputable breeder". This was the mother of the kitten we purchased that died of FIP.
3. The father of our kitten that died of FIP is Hershey from Ridgeview Ragdolls, and he is still in Tamie Knowle's breeding program.
4. The kitten I purchased from her had fleas upon me picking him up. When I asked her about this she told me that she lived in the country and this couldn't be helped...... SERIOUSLY?!
5. She will only allow guests into a room she calls a "kitten room". She says on her websited that nobody is allowed into her house. How am I supposed to know what type of conditions my kitten is coming from and the condition of the parents if not allowed to see it? That seems EXTREMELY suspicious in the very least.
6. When we bought our kitten from her we recieved no veterinarian records. Instead I recieved paperwork listing were she had self-administered nasal vaccines and wormings.
7. When I asked to see the paperwork proving Kara-the mother mother of my kitten-had been tested for FIV/FeLV she told me she didn't have it. That the breeder she got her from only gave her her word that she had been tested. She wasn't shown any proof of that. That could have potentially endangered her entire cattery. Even our local Animal Control and Rescue test for this. Because of this we had to pay to get our kitten tested for FIV/FeLV. Tamie advertises on her website that her cats are tested for FIV/FeLV. I feel as though she has falsely advertised at least in my case.
8. Tamie and her friends posted that one reason I was not given a refund was because according to them kittens usually die within 14 days of the Corona Virus mutating into FIP. Look up: www.peteducation.com, and search FIP. That is a webpage that is referenced by veterinarians. It says on there that kittens with the wet form of FIP can live up to 2 months. In the dry form of FIP it says kittens can live up to a year. Our kitten had the dry form. Also search FIP on "wikipedia.com". It actually gives an account of a cat living 26 months after showing clinical signs of FIP. Another good source of information is a website written by an actual doctor. It is: http://dr-addie.com/Choosekitten.htm. I wish I had found her websited BEFORE purchasing a kitten. I am wondering where they are getting their information. Tamie says she plans on educating people about FIP. Given the knowledge or the lack thereof that Tamie and her friends have about FIP, I certainly hope she does not try to educate anyone about FIP.
9. She does not show her cats. Beware of breeders that do not show their cats. Showing is a sign of a true breeder that cares about the betterment of the breed and not just making a profit off of breeding and selling kittens. When a breeder shows they are willing to put the money into their cats and cattery to make it the best it can be, and do not care about making a "quick buck".
10. Another reason she will not give me any compensation is because she claims we fostered a kitten while we had the one that she sold us. This information she got and has misrepresented from our confidential vet reports. She claims it was the Coccidia that Jake had that caused Pumpkin, the one we bought from her, to develope FIP. Coccidia is an intestinal parasite. Like a tapeworm. Has anyone heard of a DEADLY tapeworm? I advise you, the reader, to look up Coccidia. It is not deadly. Certainly not like FIP, which has a 100% mortality rate. Corona caused the FIP in Pumpkin. What happens is the Corona virus mutates into FIP. Or at least it did in Pumpkin. Jake WAS an adoption. I did not foster any kittens while I had Pumpkin. I had originally contacted my rescue letting them know I wanted to adopt a friend for pumpkin. I asked them if they got any pointed kittens to let me know. The next day I got an email from them with a picture of a cute, fat, Siamese mixed kitten that they had just found. For the record, Jake never stayed at a shelter or rescue. He stayed overnight at the vet, had a series of tests done on him, as well as recieved his vaccine and worming. They even tested him for FIV/FeLV. He was neutered and watched overnight. The next evening I picked him up. Because he was kind of skittish at first I was given 9 days by the rescue to decide. They also wanted to make sure Pumpkin and Jake were a good match. That was a kindness on their part. I adopted him on the 9th day. I have explained to Tamie why it says foster on the records. The rescue had the vet list him as a foster because they had originally promised me they would cover all of his vaccines and wormings. As well as pay for the Coccidia as I found out he had it after I got him. They are very good friends with me and did me that kindness. I do, however, have the official adoption contract which is signed and dated by me and a witness that says when I adopted him. So I do have proof of adoption even though he stayed in the vet's system as a foster long after. In fact, I believe she could learn something from this rescue. They put the animals and their customers first. To them it is NOT about the money.
The seal pointed kitten is our healthy kitten Jake. The flame point curled in a ball in pain is Pumpkin. In the picture Jake is trying to get Pumpkin to play with him and wondering why he won t.
|
|
|
|
|
I have been dealing with Kelley and her husband since December of 2013 about Pumpkin's
illness.
Kelley contacted me a while back about a ragdoll kitten. My kittens were out of
her price range but at the time I had a litter that I was helping a breeder with.
The breeder was going out of business and wanted me to take her 2 females,
one male and 4 kittens, with the other female ready to have kittens in a few weeks.
Those are the kittens Kelley was interested in. When I received these cats, they were
quarantined from my other cats and Kara the Momma went to the nursery room to have
her litter. At that time I DNA tested the two females for HCM and had them vet checked. I told Kelley that I didn’t have the test results for Feline Leukemia because I only get the receipt for the test, my vet does not print out anything saying that they are negative or not. I would have to go to my vet and have them make a copy of her chart. Another misleading accusation by Kelley where she didn’t get her facts correct.
I also contacted TICA- the cat club that these cats and kittens are registered with and found
out that Kara- the mother was not full ragdoll, but a mix of ragdoll and ragamuffin. Seeing I
only sell full breed ragdolls, I let Kara have her litter and then fixed her and all her kittens so
as not to perpetuate a mixed bred cat. When the kittens were old enough, I posted them on my
website and fully disclosed their background and that I had gotten them from another breeder.
I posted them for around $350.00-$600.00 depending on them being traditional or minks or solids.
Kelley contacted me about Alabama (my name for the kitten she got). She wanted 2 but didn't think that she could afford both so she eventually picked Alabama, but asked for an even more discounted price, so I agreed to sell her the kitten for $300.00. We had many long discussions about the kittens and her fostering kittens and I told her that when she got my kitten, she should stop foster as to not bring diseases into her household from other kittens. We also discussed the vaccine protocol I have and she agreed with it and also wanted me to provide the final vaccine for him when she picked him up. Which I did, so her coming back at me about my vaccines now is unfair. I have this protocol because with research I have found that cats can get tumors at the injection site of the vaccine. I therefore give Ultra nasal vaccines, which I purchase from Revival or Dr. Foster and Smith. My vet can't carry a special vaccine just for me because of expiration dates. Kelley got weekly photos of her kitten with a little blurb about how the kittens were doing and how they were progressing on their litter training and their weaning.
The kittens and Momma went in to get fixed on 9/23/13. My vet does spay and neuter surgeries when the kittens are at least 2 lbs and around 12 weeks old. When taken to the vet for his surgery, all his vitals were normal or he wouldn't have done the surgery. I got them home the next day because my vet keeps them overnight and does another check on them in the morning before going home, and Kelley got her kitten 4 days after I picked them up from the vet. She says that the kitten was infested with fleas and she said he was anemic in one of their many postings on complaint boards to try to ruin my business. If this was so, my vet would have never done surgery on this kitten 5 days earlier. And if he was infested with fleas, why did she take him home that day instead of refusing to take a sick and flea infested kitten?
I contacted her a day or 2 later saying that when she took him to her vet, have him tested for worms and treat him as I forgot to give him a Drontal before he went home because of us being so busy here at our house with people fixing our basement. It is not usually an issue with my kittens but I do this protocol to all my kittens in case they had a flea that may have given the kittens tapeworms. We live in the country and at any time someone can bring
in fleas into ours or anybody’s house, and with all the extra people around because of construction at our house, I felt it was a necessary precaution. Just like you can bring in diseases from visiting a shelter, therefore I also have a very strict visitation policy so others don't bring in disease that can spread through my cattery. If Kelley had been allowed to roam all over my house after visiting her friends at the shelter, who knows what she could of brought to my cats and kittens. Most good breeders have this policy to protect the welfare of their animals.
I also have a protocol of administering Revolution to all my adults, but at the time I was talking to Kelley, one of my males had a reaction to the Revolution with what seemed to have burned his hair at the application site. I had discussed with Kelley that I would like to find a flea med. that was a pill or given orally so that I did not have that issue again. But in doing the research about other products out there, none of them did as much for the health of my cats as Revolution, so I stuck to using Revolution. I think that is where she got the impression that I didn't
treat my cats anymore because of that reaction.
Also I do not see in the vet reports that Kelley's vets sent me that says that my kitten was infested with fleas. Kelley has 2 vets that the kitten had seen. One vet just tells about the flea product that Kelley had chosen, neither mention infested with fleas.
Kelley had contacted me about Pumpkin (my Alabama) being sick probably sometime in Dec. I sympathized with her and told her that she just needed to concentrate on Pumpkin and do what was best for him. We had discussed maybe a replacement, but I told her that I had to see the vet reports and I also wanted to see them to further my education on FIP. Anyone can say their cat died to get another cat, but without proof, no breeder will agree in replacing a kitten.
In seeing her vet reports, I noticed that she had gotten another kitten 2 weeks after getting the kitten from me, and that kitten had started with bloody diarrhea and a week later had given it to Pumpkin (my kitten). The proper way to integrate another animal into a house hold is to
quarantine the new animal for at least 2 weeks so that is if that other animal is sick, they don't spread it to the other animals already in the household. Kelley did not do this, which is what caused Pumpkin to get Coccidia. With Kelley’s experience with fosters and diseases that she said she handled in the foster kittens, I would have thought that she would have done this simple but effective procedure to insure the health of her other kitten, Pumpkin (the kitten she got from me). Or if she didn’t know she should have asked her vet (or the shelter she got the kitten from) which should have given her the proper way to introduce animals into a household that already has pets. If her shelter was wanting the best for their customers and animals, they should have told her this, to avoid spreading a disease to her other animal. That is the same reason hospitals quarantine patients that have very contagious diseases or you wear a mask into your doctor’s office when you have a cough so you don’t give it to the other people that are there. I have no
idea of what else this kitten may have brought into her household.
About the part of Pumpkin having FIP from my cattery. FIP comes from a mutation of the corona virus which is now considered normal in cats (this comment was taken from Kelley’s own vet report) seeing that 85%-90% of cats carry it, and it is even higher in cats that comes from shelters. Corona virus mutates into FIP in only 1% of those cats that have corona virus. It is like us carrying the chicken pox virus and later it can mutate into shingles. It doesn’t mean that because you have the chicken pox virus in you that you WILL get shingles, it means that you could get shingles. It is not a genetic issue. What happens is, when the kitten is stressed
or sick, it can trigger the Corona virus and can cause the kitten to have symptoms of a cold. Usually with treatment from a vet with antibiotics, it goes away and isn't serious. But when a kitten is introduced to another debilitating disease like Coccidia, that can cause a kitten to become dehydrated because of bloody diarrhea, it can trigger the corona virus and I am thinking that is what got my kitten's immunity so low that the corona virus mutated into FIP. But the corona virus could have come from her other kitten that had the coccidia and not from my cattery. I'm not being superior, but just saying they haven't proved that it didn't come from their second kitten.
As for my cats having an outside area to go to. I also researched the benefits and risks of this. My cats are in a cage outside and not free roaming, in a fenced in back yard and I have 2 dogs that would keep cats from wandering into the cat’s area. Kelley has never seen my outside cat cage so I don't think she should be commenting on whether it is safe or not. That is also the reason I have
stayed with the Revolution for fleas and ticks. It also works for mosquitoes. The benefits of fresh air and sunshine in a controlled area, and the protocol for controlling fleas and other parasites, benefit my adult cats. I have done DNA tests and any vet tests on my adults to make sure that my breeding cats are at the ultimate health genetically and health wise. I don't provide vet records from the surgeries for the kittens because that would put undo extra work on my vets office when they would not be using my vet anyways. Also you can't have a vets report when the kitten was never sick to be taken to a vet. The fact that the kitten was healthy enough to have surgery, and not have any other vet reports is a pretty good sign that the kitten is healthy.
If she would have asked for the vet record at any time I would have provided it, but they did not ask for the vet report until after Paul (Kelley's husband) had threatened to sue me. At that point I did not communicate with them directly except through my lawyer.
About point number 8 in her complaint. All I have to say is I am not responsible for anyone else’s response to this complaint. Again, not fair to attribute that to me.
About point number 9. Most breeders do not show their cats. Does not mean they don’t know the standards for the breed and that they are not striving to get the healthiest cats. It just means that they don’t have the time, or money, or want to subject their family pets to the travel, and chance of diseases from other animals at the shows. And most cats don’t like to sit in cages all weekend at the shows and in the hotel room, just to be picked up by strangers and poked and prodded just to get a ribbon saying they look pretty. So again to say that I don’t care about my cats because I don’t show is unfair.
All my breeder cats are DNA tested for anything that I can test for, but there are some things that you can't test for. And according to my vet, if the parents are tested then the kittens don't need to be tested.
About her report that I got the Mother cat from a cattery that has a bad reputation. I did not. I received this Mother cat from a total different cattery, but that is where she got them from. This is another odd situation and why I would have never gotten a kitten from them, but she did. The cattery is Elegantrags. They have lots of bad reviews, but that doesn't mean that you can't get a good kitten from them. Elegantrags is more like a broker than just a single cattery. The owner sells breeders for pet prices and in turn the new breeders are under her name. The individual breeder raises the kittens, but Elegantrags does all the paperwork and maintains the website were these kittens are sold, and Elegantrags gets the money from the kittens until the breeder's price is paid or their contract is fulfilled. She has catteries in many different states but the kittens are all sold through her and under her name. It is a shot in the dark to get a kitten from this kind of breeder, but you can get a kitten from a good breeder under her umbrella that is doing everything right, or a bad kitten from another cattery under her umbrella that doesn't do everything for the health of the kittens. So to disparage my cattery because of Elegantrags name on a registration slip in not fair.
Kelley and her husband Paul in return have posted many bad reviews on several complaint boards, and with the BBB of Knoxville (in which the case was closed on 3/4/14 with no action against me), with these exaggerated accusations.
They have also left sick voicemails on my answering machine. I have backups of those voicemails, where he threatened to ruin my business and make sure I never sell another cat.
They (or he) have also hacked my e-mails and sent out a message with a worm attached to people in my contact list. One of my customers sent me a screen shot of the e-mail she got from wehateridgeview@gmail with the wording almost exactly of the wording in several of their
complaints on several message boards, in which he used other names and posted several posts like they were from different people. When my customer opened this e-mail, it then sent out the complaining e-mail to people in her contact list. I also have a screen shot of this e-mail.
He also attributes other responses to his complaints, as mine. I have never posted a rebuttal in where I did not say that it was me making the post, unlike them pretending to be other people. Those other posts in my defense were from other people that either know me or don't think Kelley and Paul are fair in their complaint. Some I don't even know who they are from.
In conclusion, all the other kittens from this litter are healthy and doing well in their new homes. I even sold a second kitten to one of them.
Kelley or her husband did not have a contract with me because of the kitten being discounted. As is the case with all the other kittens from that litter. And even if they had, I would still not be obligated to replacing that kitten because it was not a genetic issue. I cannot control the home situations after a cat leaves my cattery, but with all the other kittens in the litter doing well and just having this issue with Kelley and the situation she put my kitten in, I feel they should take some responsibility for their actions.
I do not know of any other breeder that has a contract that will replace a kitten from the death from a disease and in my contract I notify the people that FIP is not a genetic condition and therefore not covered in the contract. Again I cannot control the actions of other people, I can only make sure that I am breeding only healthy cats and Kelley seemed to agree with all my protocols for how I raised my kittens. If she had any qualms she didn't have to take the kitten. She was not bound by any contract to do so.
I am sorry for the loss of this precious kitten, but don't feel I should have to pay for something that is not under my control, or I am not obligated to do. Reimbursement, in any form (replacement or refund) is done on an individual basis when you don’t have a contract, and all the circumstances have to be weighed out. Is this home responsible enough to have a replacement kitten? Was the lost because of something I could have prevented or because of something the new owners have done. Have they taken responsibility for their part in this whole situation? Should I reimburse someone who has posted exaggerate accusations against me, hacked my e-mail and left sick voicemails on my answering machine? All questions taken into account when making my decision.
I have learned a very valuable lesson from this, in that you can't really know people, and the people that you think would be a good home for your kittens, might not be. In doing so I have made out a form for new families to fill out to learn more about them before I place one of my kittens into their care, and have stricter visitation rules, so I don't put my cats and kittens at risk. If it was all about the money to me, I wouldn't have discounted the kitten further for Kelley. I would have stood firm on my price. And I wouldn’t have done any testing on my cats or the care I do give them. I wouldn’t have brought in 2 cats from New Zealand at the cost of over $5, 000.00 so I wouldn’t be line breeding my cats. I wouldn’t pay over $100 a gallon for a cleaner that my vet uses to make sure there are no diseases spread. I wouldn’t pay for the surgery to get them fixed. I would make the new owners do that so there is more profit in my pocket. I wouldn’t spend hours on the phone or e-mails with new families answering their questions. I would just take their money and run. I would waste my time taking pictures every week of the kittens and sending them to the new families so they can see their kitten grow up. I wouldn’t do the research to find out which products to use for my cats health.
I can't go back and undo any of this situation, but hopefully I am wiser from this experience about who my kittens should go to. Thank you for listening to my side of this complaint. |
|
|
Post your Comment
|
|
|
