What Our Past Buyers Just Told Us About Their Cats — And What We Changed Because of It

What Our Past Buyers Just Told Us About Their Cats — And What We Changed Because of It

Every reputable Ragdoll breeder can tell you their kittens are healthy at twelve weeks. Twelve weeks is easy.

What matters — what really matters — is what these cats look like at one, two, four years old, in somebody else’s house, on somebody else’s food, with a vet I’ve never met.

This summer I ran the first proper edition of something I’d been meaning to do for years: an annual health survey of every family who’s ever taken a kitten home from us, going back to 2022. About thirty-five households. Twenty-five cats came back in the first round of responses.

This post is what I learned. And more importantly, what I changed because of it.

Why This Survey Exists

Anyone can produce a healthy-looking twelve-week-old kitten. The real test of a breeding program isn’t the kittens on go-home day — it’s the adult cats those kittens become.

I wanted to know: What are our cats eating years after they left us? What do they look like now? What health issues have they had? When did those issues start? What has their vet run? How would their family score their overall health today?

These are the questions that only past buyers can answer. And they’re the questions that produce real changes in a breeding program — not marketing changes, but the actual “we’re not putting that treat in the go-home bag anymore” kind of changes.

I’d been meaning to do this for a while and finally built it properly this summer. It’s going to be annual from here.

Who The Survey Went To

Every family who has ever taken home a kitten from Kitten Around Ragdolls. Not applicants. Not people on the waitlist. Families who already have one of my cats — some of them for four years now.

That’s the whole point. This is data from cats living in real homes, with real vets, real food choices, real environments. Not sanitized cattery data.

Response Rate: The Honest Denominator

Sent to about thirty-five households.

Twenty-five cats came back in the first round of responses.

I’m telling you the denominator on purpose. “25 of 35” is more honest than “twenty-five cats surveyed” — it tells you how many people I asked, how many actually responded, and how much I didn’t hear from. If I only shared the positive responses, this wouldn’t be a survey. It would be a testimonial page.

What We Asked

The survey covered:

• Food and treats — brand, formula, what changed from what we sent home, and when
• Body condition — using the nine-point veterinary chart, with a follow-up asking specifically what the ribs felt like under their hands. That question is critical. A Ragdoll’s coat hides everything. If you ask owners to score body condition by eye, every single cat comes back “just right.” Ribs-in-hand is the question that actually works.
• Any GI, skin, eye, or respiratory issues — and critically, when they started
• What testing their vet has run
• Temperament on five scales — friendliness, calmness, playfulness, sociability with other pets, and vocalization
• Overall health score, one to ten
• Permission to contact their vet directly

What I Changed Because of the Results

Three concrete changes came out of the first round of responses. These are the things I’d never have discovered from inside my own house, because none of them show up until the kitten’s been gone for a month or more.

1. A Treat Came Out of the Go-Home Bags

One family has two of my cats. Both got the same reaction — loose stool — and both were fine the moment she stopped giving them the freeze-dried whole fish treat that came in my go-home bag. Two cats, one house, one product, clean cause and effect.

Three other families mentioned the same category of treat unprompted.

That treat is out of the bags now.

This is exactly the kind of change I’d never have made from inside my own cattery. My cats do fine on that treat. It only became a problem in the transition to new homes, on different food, in different environments. I only saw the pattern because I asked twenty-five families the same questions and enough of them mentioned the same thing.

2. Trialing a New Transition Kibble

Enough families reported soft stools in the first weeks on the kitten formula I was sending home that I’m trialing a different go-home kibble for the next litter.

This isn’t a crisis. Soft stool during a home transition can be caused by dozens of things — stress, water change, environment, timing. But when the pattern shows up in enough responses, it’s worth investigating.

I’ll report on how the new kibble performs in the next survey.

3. A New Fecal Testing Protocol Across the Cattery

This one is the biggest.

One family sent through their cat’s full lab history — years of it. It told me more than the other twenty-four responses combined.

Their cat had been dealing with recurring GI issues since kittenhood. Their vet had run testing that identified specific pathogens. And when I looked at the timeline, I saw something I hadn’t been able to see before — a signal I could work backward from.

That single piece of shared history is why:

• I now run comprehensive IDEXX fecal panels on my breeding cats
• I now run comprehensive fecal panels on every litter before go-home (details here)
• The whole household is on a probiotic supplement
• These protocols are already on our go-home records

One family, sharing their real data honestly, changed how I do things across the entire cattery. That change protects every kitten going forward.

Why This Matters

I’d rather find out something uncomfortable from twenty-five families than not know it.

The kittens who come after them are the ones who benefit.

Everything we do in this cattery, we do because someone before us either did it right or did it wrong. The families who take home our kittens today are teaching me things I’ll apply to the litters coming next spring. That’s how a breeding program actually improves — not by pretending everything is fine, but by asking the questions and being willing to hear the answers.

What I’m Still Working On

The first survey is just that — the first. Some things I want to do differently or better:

• Reach the ten families who didn’t respond. I want to know what’s happening with those cats too, not just the ones whose owners had time to fill out a form.
• Improve the body condition question further. The ribs-under-the-hand question worked well, but I want to develop clearer photo references so owners can compare directly.
• Add more specific questions about litter box behavior. This is a health signal I underweighted in round one.
• Track long-term outcomes with the families whose vets I now have permission to contact. Their vet records over time will tell me things owners can’t always articulate.

What Comes Next

This is annual from now on. Same families, plus every new adopter as they come into our program. Same questions, refined over time.

I’m planning to publish the aggregate results on a dedicated page on our site each year — not a marketing version, the actual findings. Including the parts that don’t flatter me. If I’m asking these families to tell me the truth about their cats, I should be willing to tell the truth about what they told me.

That’s the deal.

To the Families Who Responded

Thank you. Genuinely.

You didn’t have to fill out a form for a breeder you bought a cat from years ago. Some of you had cats going through hard things. Some of you had cats who were absolutely thriving. You told me both, honestly, without knowing what I’d do with it.

What I did with it is above. It’s not everything I want to do yet, but it’s a real start. And it’s why the kittens coming home in the next twelve months will be better than the ones who came before.

You made that happen.

Are You a Past Buyer Who Didn’t Get the Survey?

If you took home a Kitten Around Ragdolls kitten and didn’t receive the survey link, or if you meant to fill it out and got busy, please reach out. Your response still matters. There is no closing date for a survey that’s going to run every year — I want to hear from you whenever you have the time.

What This Means for Prospective Buyers

If you’re evaluating breeders and trying to figure out who’s doing this right — the survey itself is a signal. Any breeder can tell you what they do. Fewer can show you what they changed because their buyers pushed back on something they were doing.

Ask the breeders you’re considering:

• Do you follow up with past buyers?
• What’s the most recent change you made because of buyer feedback?
• Have you ever removed a product from your go-home bags because of what buyers reported?
• Can you show me evidence of changes you’ve made over time?

If a breeder can’t give you a real answer to those questions, they’re not tracking outcomes past twelve weeks. Which means they don’t actually know how their kittens are doing at one, two, or four years old.

Ready to Meet a Kitten?

Every kitten from us now benefits from what our twenty-five past-buyer families told me this summer. And every kitten going forward will benefit from what next year’s survey teaches us.

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Looking for a Ragdoll kitten from a breeder committed to tracking real outcomes long after go-home day? Check our available kittens or join our waitlist for upcoming litters. We’re a TICA-registered cattery in Sacramento, CA, breeding for health, temperament, and the traditional Ragdoll standard.