Finding a cat

Start with the breed or start with the cat

If you know what you want, Find a Cat is the whole marketplace with filters over it. If you do not, the breed pages describe what living with each of the 99 breeds is actually like, and the quiz asks nine questions about your home and your day and suggests five breeds.

Neither is a sales funnel. Breed pages say what is hard about a breed as readily as what is good about it, because a cat that suits somebody else is not a cat you should be talked into.

The filters

• Age. Under 16 weeks, under a year, one to eight years, or eight and over. Kittens is the same search with "under a year" already chosen.
• Ready now. Available today and old enough to leave. This is the one that hides expected litters and kittens with a go-home date still in the future.
• Pedigree only. The listing is registered with a registry. This is about the cat, not the seller. A verified breeder can list an unregistered pet kitten, and somebody rehoming a retired show cat may well have the papers.
• Distance. Type a city or a ZIP and choose a radius. Sorting by distance needs a location first.
• Price, sex, coat and breed, and the trait filters: litter trained, good with children, dogs or other cats.

Sort puts the results in order: Featured first (the default: featured cats at the top, newest featured first, then the newest), newest first, name A to Z, age youngest or oldest first, price low to high or high to low, or distance once you have chosen a location. Expected litters always come after the cats.

Every filter and the sort are in the URL, so a search is a link you can send to whoever is deciding with you.

Expected litters

A seller can list a litter before it is born, with a due date, the parents and the expected colors. You can ask to reserve from it the same way as a listed cat: the conversation opens, and the seller can add you to the litter's waitlist, in order, and record a deposit if you agree one. When the kittens arrive the seller lists them individually and assigns them to the waitlist, and your place becomes a reservation on a specific kitten. Every kitten is its own listing, with its own price and photos, and the litter's page shows them together. Expected litters show as Expected with their due date.

When nothing matches

Most breeds have nothing listed on any given day. Every breed page has a one-field alert: leave an email address and we will tell you when a cat of that breed is listed, at any age, and you can narrow it to your state. No account needed, and one link in the email unsubscribes you.

If you have answered the buyer questionnaire (the one sellers read, not the breed quiz), the home page's matches show the cats that best suit your answers, best first.

Compare cats

On Saved, check Compare under two or three of your saved cats (two on a phone), then press Compare in the bar at the bottom. Each cat gets a column with everything its listing page says, in the same order: price, breed, age, colors, papers, what's included, getting home, the seller and their deposit and payment policy, and About in full. Rows where the cats differ are tinted, and Show only differences hides the rest. A field a seller left out says Not given, and a cat that is reserved or has found a home says so and stays in the comparison. Each column ends with Message seller and View cat.