Welcome to Eden-Lea Ragdoll Cats and Kittens!
Hi!, My name is Kirsty and I am the owner of Eden-Lea Ragdoll Cats, which is in Nerang/Mt Nathan on the Gold Coast, about an hour's drive from Brisbane, Australia. Please note that Eden-Lea Ragdolls is not a commercial cattery, our kittens are raised inside our home in amongst our life, with much love and care.
A cat lover all my life, I had wanted a Ragdoll cat since I first saw them on TV in the early nineties. I love everything about them, from their beautiful range of patterns and colours, to their wonderful nature and to their extreme playfulness.
Because I have spent many years interested in and researching natural health in humans and all our other animals, I wanted a Naturally Reared Ragdoll Kitten as a pet for our family. However, my long-winded search disappointingly turned up not a single Ragdoll breeder in Australia who had any idea of holistical principles and would sell me a Ragdoll kitten that was NOT vaccinated, which was my single biggest requirement.
Finally my search ended with the purchase of an entire breeding Ragdoll male and female. The idea was that we would have one litter of kittens, keep our own Holistic babycat, de-sex and rehome the Mum and Dad. However, I was very quickly kitten-smitten. Our first litter of five gorgeous, fluffy Ragdoll Kittens completely won my heart, and I decided to continue breeding and providing Naturally Reared kittens to others who are of a similar mind.
I maintain the health of my Ragdolls as holistically as possible. My cats are fed mostly on a raw food diet. And for any health issues I turn first to natural methods: food supplements, Homeopathy with a few T.C.M. principles added in (Traditional Chinese Medicine). This keeps my Ragdolls cats and kittens in wonderful good health. For more info, please visit my Ragdoll Cat Health page.
Of course I run into problems from time to time with "the powers that be" of the cat world, who think that being unvaccinated means a cat is unhealthy, LOL, when the complete opposite is true.
However, as most of my new Ragdoll kitten owners are already aware of natural health principles, their pleasure and their delight in finding a breeder who raises kittens the way I do certainly makes it all worth while.
I breed mostly smaller Ragdoll cats..... But - why breed small Ragdolls when they are supposed to be one of the largest breeds of cat?
Well, initially I had great difficulty in obtaining Ragdoll cats to breed from that were of the large size Ragdolls are supposed to be. I was continually surprised, disappointed and very frustrated when most of my newly purchased breeding cats arrived here - at just how small they were. Ragdolls are supposed to be the second largest breed of cat, but it was obvious that some Ragdoll bloodlines were producing quite small cats. Lots of money was wasted buying "show quality" Ragdoll kittens which I ended up de-sexing prior to breeding as they matured just too small.
So in the end, I thought that there must be a reason I personally simply couldn't get big cats and I just decided to go with what the Universe was sending me - who am I to argue? I really do so love to see a great big, huge cat - but I am extremely pleased that most of my Ragdolls are now genetically quite small cats. Note: I do not let any of my small bloodlines go for breeding purposes, so as not to be detrimental to the Ragdoll cat breeder gene pool in general.
Eden-Lea Ragdolls is proudly breeding from only 100% Pure Traditional Ragdoll bloodlines - there are no outcrosses to other breeds and/or domestics in our cats' pedigrees. Our Ragdoll breeder cats all come from Champion bloodlines, and all of my initial breeding cats were shown to championship level. Now that the size of most of my Ragdolls is a lot smaller than average, they don't do so well on the showbench. I continue to breed for the Ragdoll "Look" and all the other exceptional Ragdoll qualities, just in a much smaller package.
They curl up beside me on the couch, lay on my desk as I work on the computer (keeping an eye on the cursor on the screen), just following me around and sleeping at my feet. In the words of my son, Ragdolls are the "VERY BESTEST CAT IN THE WORLD!" We love them and spoil them to bits.
Above: Eden-Lea Magic Happens at 6 weeks old
Above: Eden-Lea Kudos at 5 weeks old
Ragdolls benefit from an outdoor enclosure - they do so love to see the "wildlife".