Welcome to another episode of the Cat Breeding for Beginners podcast. I'm Pamela and I breed British Shorthairs in Perth, Western Australia. I have a real passion for cat breeding and exhibiting and I want to share my knowledge and experience with you.
I'm on a mission to help new cat breeders go from feeling intimidated, confused and having trouble getting started, to confidently breeding happy and healthy cats whilst enjoying this amazing hobby. Well it's December, it's actually the gap between Christmas and New Year's, 2025. And the year end like this is a moment when people naturally stop and reflect and they think about the year ahead, the year that's just passed.
And I'm between seasons of my podcast at the moment, so I've just finished a season and I'm just about to start a new season in January 2026. So I thought this is a really great point to put in a bonus episode for you. And this episode is not about a specific topic as such, normally that's kind of how my podcasts roll, but this is a bonus episode that's just about, you know, the last year and the year coming.
And I wanted to sort of have a little chat with you about that. And I wanted to sort of acknowledge that this is, and maybe more so at this time of year, that breeders are feeling really unsure right now. And so it's a good time to just have a little pause and have a little reassessment about what you're doing, where you're going, what the future holds for you.
So this episode is really about positioning yourself for what comes next. And I want to let you know that where you're starting matters before you start planning anything. So it's really important to know where you are before you start planning where you want to go.
That's kind of what I'm talking about. But I thought I'd just talk to you about, it's kind of like my year in review, what sort of happened with me this year and some of the highlights for me. And I guess one of the big highlights for me is that I travelled over to Romania for the World Cat Show and that was amazing, absolutely amazing.
I had a booth at the show, Charlotte and I had our pink jackets on and going around and talking to everybody and having such an amazing fun time. It was really great. There was people there from all over the world.
It was really amazing to see some of my old friends that I see when I do travel overseas for shows and catching up with them and seeing their cats and being able to hold and handle their cats. I have one cat in particular that I love to see. I see him every year.
He's a Bengal boy called Sa. And I just love seeing him and I always get to have a cuddle with him every year. So that was amazing, seeing all of my old friends, but also meeting a lot of new friends as well.
When you go to shows like this, you meet a lot of new people and you go back home and stay in touch with them. So that was really fabulous as well. And there was people there who were travelling to the show from all over as well.
And there was a bunch of my people that I'd know from New Zealand. So friends from New Zealand were there and it was really great seeing all of them. It was kind of weird to go from Australia to Romania to see friends from New Zealand, but it was fantastic.
And I remember getting gifts from them as well. They bought pineapple lumps, which are a delicious chocolate coloured sort of marshmallow thing that you get from New Zealand. And I was so excited to get them because I absolutely love them.
So that was really fantastic, but it was really amazing to see them. And I also saw a lot of my newbies, my members of my new cat breeders club. And I just love absolutely such a huge kick out of seeing them and seeing them with their cats as well.
And I get to see their cats in person and meet them and see what they've been telling me about. And then I get to meet the cats in the first. So I absolutely love that as well.
And as per usual, in Romania, this is the same as pretty much everywhere that I go. One of the organisers there, he came up with a nickname for me and the nickname is Crazy Diamond. And I absolutely am so happy about that because it kind of really sums me up.
And I was a crazy diamond. I went there just for the weekend with a couple of suitcases to do a big stand and my bestie Charlotte and I had packed a sparkly blue sequined dress and spent the night at the gala dancing on stage and getting everybody else to get excited about dancing to ABBA and stuff. And that's just absolutely the kind of person I am.
So that was a real highlight for me. I really did enjoy my trip to Romania. Some of the other things that have happened this year is that I got to 200 new members, 200 newbie members in my new cat breeders club.
So I started my cat breeders club, my new cat breeders club a couple of years ago. And I remember when I launched, I thought, oh, I reckon I might be lucky if I get 30 members and that would be really exciting. And when I launched it, I launched it to 80 members.
80 people joined when I first launched it. And I was like, oh, wow, this is something that people need. And so that was exciting.
And then I thought in 2024, I was like, well, I want to get next year, I want to get to 200 members. And I did. It was the end half of the year that that happened, but I had got to 200 members in my new cat breeders club.
So I was really amazed that that happened and so excited to have so many newbies. And, you know, the volume of the conversations that they're having just in our Facebook group. So we have a Facebook group that no one else can be part of.
You have to be a member, you have to be a paying member of the new cat breeders club to get into that Facebook group. And that makes it super exclusive. But it also means we can talk about stuff however we want to talk about it.
And it's fantastic. And I think I had a look just before and there was 2,100 conversations in that group for the year. People chatting away about all sorts of things, but mostly asking questions and asking people for help or guidance or I don't understand this or what should I do about that.
And also sharing things like look at the success I've had with this. This is my latest litter. Could you help sex the kittens for me? Just all sorts of stuff going on in there.
That's amazing that you wouldn't be able to access that outside of, you know, it's amazing how much progress you can make when you're having, when you're part of something like that is what I'm trying to say. And, you know, they're helping each other is amazing too. That, you know, that the newbies that are there, if somebody posts a question there's lots of answers.
So nothing goes, you know, unacknowledged or people don't get help. And we've had people need help in an emergency situation and they've come in and posted and got help straight away and then talk to people offline and people have called them and they've worked things through together. And it's just been, it's like a source of help for when things go wrong in an emergency.
So it's amazing. I really just can't tell you how much it means to have so many people in there helping each other, but I see the same patterns every time we have new people join and people join and they're sort of overwhelmed about what they should be doing. And they're not really sure, you know, it's a lot, it's sometimes it's a little bit overwhelmed and sometimes it's a hell of a lot overwhelmed.
And that's the first thing that we can help them with. And they have beginner questions. They have beginner questions, which we absolutely love.
And we have the same questions quite often. Things like, how do I get my girl to call? She hasn't come into season yet. We have that question a lot.
We just answer it a lot. We're not like, that just doesn't happen. It's like, yeah, we can tell you because we know the answer and we're happy to help you because we needed help at the beginning as well.
So it's really great. And, you know, we're able to direct new people that come into content that they don't realise is there that'll help solve that problem. So we had some, we recently did a theme on fertility and someone then joined after we'd done that theme and they were asking questions about fertility and we were like, well, hey, you can go have a look at this section in the members area and that's going to answer your question.
And that was fantastic. Another person asked recently about DNA and she was asking about the breed DNA that they do now that where they tell you whether your cat's, how much percentage of your cat is a Maine Coon and how much percentage of it is a Siamese. I don't know.
And so we directed her to our section where we done a whole section on DNA before. And we talked in that, I had a masterclass where I actually talked about some of that and how that's directed at the pet earning public and it's absolutely of no use to breeders at all. So that was really great too.
So it's definitely the beginner questions. We either can answer them or we can tell people that we've talked about that before. Here's a whole big section.
And I have people come back after that or post comments in the members area saying, wow, this is exactly what I needed to know. You've answered so many questions for me. So that's fantastic.
I have seen people form friendships in there as well. And it's been because of, not just because they breed the same cats, which you would think would be the first thing, but often is the reason that they form friendships. But also it can be because of the location they're I have some members in the States that live in the same area.
So they've met up for coffee and chatting about their cats and they breed completely different cats. And I think they're completely different associations, but they've met up and formed a friendship based on their location as well. And so that's led to friendships and also just people helping each other.
So when people have needed help and support, one of the other newbies has helped them and they've formed a friendship based on that. So they have an offline friendship might be online, offline, outside of the Facebook group that they have friends and chatting in that, or they might have actually met in person and they've also met at cat shows as well. And we're going to the same cat show.
So we're going to catch up there. And then they've caught up and had someone at the show that's someone they know. So lots of different friendships forming and connections.
Sometimes it's not even a friendship. Sometimes it's just connections that you know that that person's there and that you've met them kind of thing. And that makes a big difference in terms of, you know, being part of the cat fancy.
It's a community and being getting your foot in the door in that community is about meeting people and knowing people. So that's really amazing as well. And I just see when people join, I just see very quickly, I see them come in quite timid and a bit like, hello, I'm here.
And then seeing their confidence grow. And by the end of it, it's just like, hey guys, can you help me? It's just a completely different personality really. And it's really interesting because we're often just seeing them actually typing stuff.
But the way that you can sort of see the confidence in the newbies growing, the more that they interact with each other, the more that they consume the content that we have in our members area. It's just fantastic. I absolutely love seeing the confidence build up in people and the changes that that leads to.
Being able to stand up to people, being able to be confident about how you interact with your pet owners, for example. It's just amazing. And I think one of the things that gives me the biggest kick in my new cat breeders club is that when I have another, like a newbie asks a question and then another newbie comes along and they answer that question and they answer that question with something that I've taught them.
That just makes me so super proud to think that my way of thinking about things and my way of dealing with problems and my thoughts about the cat fancy and how we interact together are getting out there. It's sinking in and people are now spreading that for me. It's just, that's the thing that probably makes me the most super proud about what happens in the new cat breeders club.
So that's a little bit about that. And then the other thing I did this year is I created a quiz. So that took a little bit of time, but I created a really cool quiz.
It's kind of fun and it's kind of interesting at the same time. And it was really because I realised that most breeders, not most breeders, a lot of breeders don't know what stage they're actually in in terms of their breeding, whether they're a newbie, whether they're more established, whether they're an expert. So I created a quiz that would really tell you what stage you're actually in so that you can know, because if you know where you are, you can know where to go next.
And that was really the most important thing. So I think that that was about people were focussing on things, my feedback I was getting, because I get obviously in the new cat breeders club, I get a lot of information there, but I also get people contacting me outside of that with problems and questions and things. And I feel like people are focussing on things that are not really the right things for where they're at.
So they're focused on what colours they'll get from breeding cats that they have, but they've got their cats all running around together and haven't got their housing sorted. Or they're talking about, should I import a cat from overseas at great expense when they don't have a pen set up ready for their stud cat? Or they don't have the, you know, just not focussing on the right things for where they're at and needing to read, needing to be redirected to that. So there was also, you know, like confusion about what to do and everything creating unnecessary stress for people, people getting overwhelmed.
When you get overwhelmed, it's really hard to decide what to do next. So the quiz was really something that I built to help breeders identify where they are and what is the next thing to focus on. So I was really excited about that.
And so many people have taken it. Hundreds of people have taken the quiz and got a result and, you know, found out exactly where they are. So that was amazing because they get a really good report at the end of it.
And I've had heaps of feedback from people about that. So yeah, I really have been excited about the way that that went. So my quiz, I only launched it sort of in the second half of the year and it's already had hundreds and hundreds of people take it and go all the way through, answer all the questions and find out the answer about where they're at.
So I'm really excited that that happened this year. But really, you know, before you plan for next year, you really need to know where you are now. You really need to know where you are now so that you can plan for what's the next best thing to do.
And so as we are about to hit 2026, everybody's frame of mind goes to next year. What am I going to do next year? If you want to make next year your best year ever in terms of your cap reading, you really need to know exactly where you are now so that you can work that out. So that's really something that is important to think about.
And I've had, you know, a lot of different members in my new cap readers club. Some of the journeys that they've gone on, that's been really interesting as well. I've had different people have different amounts of progress and it's been really exciting to watch.
People come into my new cap readers club in different stages. So they might come in as a brand new person that's like, I want to breed cats. I want to learn how to breed cats.
I know nothing about breeding cats. Other people come in and they're like, I've been breeding cats for two years and it's crazy. I don't know what to do.
I'm about to do sex everything because I can't manage this hobby and it's driving me crazy. So people come in in different places. Some of them are brand new.
Some of them are a few years in. I've even had people that are more than a few years in join and that's been amazing too because they're still getting stuff out of it, you know, and they've said to me that they're getting stuff out of it. So that's really exciting as well.
But you know, everybody has the same feelings when they come in. They're overwhelmed. They're comparing themselves to others.
They're second-guessing all of the stuff that they're doing and they don't really have any connection. No sort of, they haven't really got their foot in the door of the community that is the cat fancy really. And often they have like this first burning problem that they have to solve.
So when they join, they post that often as anonymous or they send it to me to help get the help from, you know, so they're not even confident about asking the question with their own name attached to it, but they have a burning question that they want to ask. And we do allow anonymous questions in there because I did have somebody ask, why do we let people do that? It seems a bit bad that they're hiding behind being anonymous. And I said, well, it's a way of becoming confident and feeling that it's okay to ask questions.
People come in and start asking questions maybe in an anonymous way, but then you'll find that they very quickly just ask the question themselves. It's about being confident and feeling I don't want to be judged. I've been judged before.
I've had some bad experiences and yeah, so we do allow that. I'm very strong about allowing that and I'm fine with it. But really the progress that I see them get comes from being supported by those other members and from focussing on the right things at the right time and seeing other people in there talking openly about their breeding challenges and learning from other people's experiences.
It just really makes you calmer about what's going on with your own cats. It really does. It even makes me calmer.
And the interaction that they're having with other newbies in the club makes interacting with other people in the cat fancy in general or interacting with pet owners, it just makes it more easy. It just makes it really more easy. So this confidence that people get, the confidence that they get comes from all of that.
And then they get the ability to stay calm and they get the ability to sort through drama more calmly. And I wanted to give you a few examples of that. So we've had people in the New Cat Breeders Club, I've had a brand new newbie who joined, her cat was pregnant and about to give birth.
So she joined, she came across the club and she joined straight away. And her cat then had eight kittens. Eight kittens in her first litter.
Eight. Imagine that. I just can't imagine that.
I think my first litter was a litter of three. So she had eight in her first litter and she had them, they were coming, she was kind of posting as it was happening. And she got so much help from the other newbies about what to do with them, how to care for them, how to care for the mum cat.
Should she be supplement feeding? What should she be doing to feed mum to make sure mum was getting enough food and nutrition and hydration? So much advice, so much fantastic advice. And also lots of congratulations and well done and that's amazing. And wow, for your first litter, how exciting.
So that was really wonderful to see. We had another person and this was a really interesting one. She had a cat give birth and it was feeding the kittens and she noticed a lump on one of its mammary glands.
So she took it to the vet and the vet told her, yeah, I see this every couple of weeks. No, I see a couple of these a week. It's mammary gland cancer and we're going to have to do surgery to remove it and your cat's probably going to have to have chemo.
And yeah, we're going to do all this and it's going to be real expensive and all the stuff. But she came in and she asked in the group about it. And the first thing that we noticed was that the vet had done no pathology.
They hadn't taken a biopsy. They hadn't taken any sort of, done any sort of testing. They just looked at her cat and decided it was mammary cancer.
And the other thing that we said about, a lot of people said this, I was the first one to sort of bring it up and a lot of people said, yeah, that's the same. Because we do have a few dog breeders in the group as well. Not, they breed cats, but they also breed dogs.
Lots of advice about how it's not a cat thing and it is a dog thing. So it's kind of more common in dogs for them to have mammary cancer and lumps. Cats, it is not a thing.
I could not think in 20 years of breeding of anyone who'd ever told me that their cat had mammary cancer. Just not. I had known about lumps in boobs when they're feeding their kittens, but nothing about mammary cancer in cats.
So the strong advice from the group was to do pathology, get pathology on the cat first. And at this point, this vet had scheduled surgery for this lump to be removed as a starting point for treatment for this cat. And she did actually take the cat in for that, but the surgeon was a different person to the vet that had scheduled it.
And they looked at the cat and said, there's nothing there. There's nothing there. It was just a lump on the boob while it was feeding.
There was nothing there. So a lot of drama created by this vet. Could you imagine the stress that that would be if you didn't have other people to turn to and talk about? Because you were brand new to this hobby and you hadn't made connections where you could have conversations with people about it.
So that was a huge thing, a huge thing to be there. We were all there for her. We were asking for updates.
She gave us, you know, updates as things went along with this cat. And the outcome was fantastic. The cat's great.
It's all good. So it was a really good outcome, but a big drama to go through if you didn't have anyone to support you. And we have other things as well.
I remember recently there was a newbie asking about, what does everybody else do about their kittens pooping all over the house? And then I'm absolutely at my wits end and I'm thinking about, but is this actually the hobby for me? Because it's so much to manage. And the people that have been in the club for a couple of years now just came on and it's kind of, and it was a really fun, lighthearted discussion. There was no judgement.
And we all came on and said, okay, so we don't let our kittens run all over the house. And that was pretty much the answer. It was about containment, containment until their litter box trained, but also still containment after their litter box trained, because given the opportunity, kittens will poop all over your house.
It's just a thing. And there's a period of time you go through when they're learning to use the litter trays where they just poop everywhere and it's often really messy and they get in it and oh my God. And I was going through the exact thing at that particular point in time.
And I had walked in and found that there was a nice gross poop in between the litter trays. Let's just bypass them completely and poop in the gap in between. So the kitten, it wasn't like they'd missed the tray.
They had crawled in there and done it. So yeah, there's all of that. So we talked about ways to manage the problem.
Puppy pants and making sure that they didn't have access to different things. And she was like, oh, well, that all makes sense. And it was great because she could make some changes to how she was doing things and that stress and drama and the being overwhelmed and feeling like I can't do this anymore.
I don't want to do this anymore. Changed. It just changed instantly to this is manageable.
I just have to go through this bit for a little while and then everything will be okay. So I felt like that was a really good example of some things where members have had challenges, the people that I come in contact with as the cat breeder coach have had challenges, they've had dramas, they've had things going on, but how they've made it through and made progress and moved on and gone on to bigger and better things. And I've seen some of my newbies, I've just seen progress so quickly for them as well, where they have moved through the stages of what type of, if you look at my quiz and what type of cat breeder are you, they've moved through the stages from being right at the beginning to being halfway to being an expert and beyond just in a really short amount of time, like six months.
And it's because they get the confidence and they get out there and they get doing stuff. And I see them with posting their show results and breeder of the year and prefix of the year type results that they've achieved. And it's just outstanding to see them make this progress.
And I'm really couldn't tell you, like, I'm so super proud of them. So yeah, I think in cat breeding, you can't skip the stages. You can't skip the stages, like being a new breeder to being an expert.
You can't skip the bit in between, but you absolutely can move faster and more smoothly between those stages if you have the right support. Well, that's what I'd say about that. And then of course, towards the end of the year, and this was just before I went to Romania, I got diagnosed as having breast cancer again.
And I say again, but it's not really again. It turns out that it was there from last time. I had breast cancer in one of my boobs and we checked all my lymph nodes and we did a, we took the sentinel node and we checked them and it wasn't in them.
So it was in situ, it was confined to the breast and we dealt with it that way back in five years ago. And I got the all clear. I got the all clear.
I got like, you don't have cancer anymore. I asked my oncologist if I was in remission and she said, no, you just don't have cancer anymore. And this is what we all thought.
We absolutely all thought this. And the story of how I was diagnosed and this is, and I don't mean this to be triggering for anyone that's had breast cancer, because I think that it would be if I had this story and I, you know, if it wasn't my story, but I was actually getting a ultrasound because one of the implants, I have, I had a double mastectomy and I have two silicone implants and one of them didn't feel right. And my surgeon wanted, she said, I'll just send you for an ultrasound and we can check that, but you do go on soon.
So we'll just check everything. And there's nothing wrong with that boob, that implants all fine and good. But as they were checking for it, they did find that there was some irregularities in my lymph nodes.
And so we took, when I had my first cancer surgery, we took four lymph nodes, I think it was, out and they were all checked and they were all fine. So therefore they could say that the cancer hadn't got anywhere. Well, it turns out it was in the fifth and sixth ones.
So it sat there growing all this time to the point where it was able to be seen on the ultrasound. And, um, you know, I had chemo back then and I've been on medication to, um, limit the ability of this stuff to come back, but it never really, it wasn't that it came back. It was just there growing, slowly growing.
Um, and yeah, so that's a bit of a drama, but I've had a PET scan and it's not in the rest of my body at this point. Um, and I had to have, uh, I'm just sitting here talking to you now in bed. Um, I'm not super tired today.
I'm pretty good today, but I've just had four rounds of, um, doxorubicam, which is often referred to as red devil chemo, which is really, really strong. And, um, I'm about to have four more rounds of chemo. Then I've got to have surgery.
Then I've got to have radiation. So it's a bit of a big deal. It's a bit of a big deal.
I'm currently booked. Um, it's a big interruption to your life. I am basically, I had to, uh, my, I had to stop going to my business.
I can't drive a car. I stopped driving after the first treatment. I drove home from the first treatment and realised that that was not good.
So I haven't driven a car since. Um, my partner has to look after me. Damien's pretty much looking after me and I am, yeah, I'm pretty sick.
So it's a big interruption in your life and it really makes you think about, well, what am I going to do with my energy and my priorities? Where am I going to direct things? Because I've got very limited energy at the moment. And I also have a lot of cats and I also have a lot of cats that, you know, were, it's the beginning of the breeding season. I'd already made them.
I had pregnant females. If I had have known I was going to be sick, I would have been able to make a decision about whether to do that or not. But the decision was already made for me.
Babies were coming and, um, you know, my cats still need looking after, um, I still need to make decisions about what I'm doing with different cats. Am I desexing this one? Am I not desexing that one? But it gets, it's really hard to do when you've got all this other stuff on top of you and you're really exhausted. So it's been a really big, um, thing to go through.
And this could happen to any cat breeder at any time. And I know it happens to other cat breeders and it might not necessarily be that they get cancer. It might be that there's a dramatic event in your life.
And I can think of people that have had that, that I know. I can think of a lady whose, um, house, um, got hit by a tree and pretty much squished and she had to move herself and her breeding cats somewhere else. Um, I know a dog breeder whose house burnt down completely.
Her cat, her dogs were in the, the kennels and everything was fine, but she, she had to find new accommodation and, um, deal with rebuilding her house and everything. Uh, people have medical emergencies. I know, um, a person who went into community health failure and wasn't able to look after their cats in the way that they wanted to at that time.
Um, other people have deaths in their families or they might lose their partner or, um, things like that can happen. These are big dramatic events, but cat breeding is not something where you can just say, Oh, I'll just put that in the cupboard for now and come back to it. You can't, your cats have needs.
Your cats might, like I said, already be pregnant. You might have things already in progress and these things don't stop because something happens to you. And so I think I need to make a podcast about this in 2026 because it's a big thing and having the ability to manage that is, is important.
And the reason that I think I have the ability to manage it this year is because I went through it five years ago. It's pretty much the same thing. It was the end of the year and the timing was that they're all having their babies.
I remember my mother-in-law and Damien delivering baby kittens, um, and having a video chat with me while they delivered baby kittens while I was in the hospital. You know, that was the way that we just had to manage and get through. So having a bit of a thought about a plan for that is probably a good idea, but you know, um, things that help me at the moment is that the positive support I've got from the people I know in the cat fancy from all around the world has just been crazy.
And the, the people who own my cats as well, we have a lot of them that were coming for boarding during this time. So I've seen a lot of owners and cats recently, but I put a, I put a post up on my Facebook page for Cuddleton, which is my British Shorthairs and, um, ask people just to share photos of the cats that I'd bred because it makes me happy. And there was hundreds of photos.
It was amazing. People share cats that I didn't breed, which is amazing too. They just wanted to make me feel good and feel happy.
So that was really fantastic as well. Um, and you know, the, the people in my club, I had to tell my, my, my newbies in the new cat breeder club, you guys, I'm about to go through something that's limiting my ability to help you. It's going to limit my ability to give you what you're paying for basically.
And they didn't care. They were like, we're here with you. We're here beside you.
And I just couldn't, I was blown away by that, to be honest. Um, and they really don't care. They don't care that if I reply to them with a video reply, that it's been from me and my bed or me on the couch and with my bald head, which is kind of hilarious.
Um, the support and love that they've shown me has really helped me to stay positive and see the light at the end of my treatment. And that's, that's come from my friends and family, the people I know in the cat fancy, the people that have my cats that I've bred and the people that are in my new cat breeders club. All of that has really helped me stay positive.
And I hear people say that to me all the time. You're so positive about this, but I have to be, I have to be, I have to get to the other side. I have to get the other side.
It's horrible and I hate it, but I have to get to the other side because I've got things I want to do. So I think the thing to learn from that is that when your energy is limited, support matters even more than it did before. And I don't mean necessarily physical support.
Sometimes it's mental support, having positive energy directed your way, having people say, we care about you and we love you. It just, it means so much. So being part of a community where you can tap into that is a big deal.
The cat fancy is that community for me. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So I guess, you know, wrapping up 2025 and so many of us are thinking about next year, I'm thinking about next year. I have some, like I said, I've got things I want to do. I just have to wait till this, all this rubbish treatment is over, but I have things I really want to do next year.
I have some big plans. You're going to love the plans that I have, but you know, as a cat breeder, we're thinking about what we're going to do next year. I want to have a really good show year next year.
I want to breed some really nice kittens next year. I want to breed, I want to get the colour that I've been chasing for so long. I want so much to come, so much of my recipe that I've been creating to come together and produce the things that I want it to.
So I really want that to happen next year. And I think a lot of us thinking in that sort of direction. We really want to make sure we want to go from, I've been half-assing this.
I've been doing this in a way I don't like. This seems difficult. This seems hard.
I want to do things properly. I want to do things better. I want to feel more confident.
I want to feel more confident about what I'm doing. Well, that's, I do feel confident, but you know, I want everybody else to feel confident. I really do.
I really do. It makes a huge difference when you just don't, you walk in and you don't care about the little stuff anymore because you have confidence in yourself and your cats and what you're doing. It's, it's amazing.
I want people to stop second-guessing things. If you, if you're always second-guessing things, you never make a decision. You know, if you're always like, oh, I don't know, is that right? Is that wrong? Will I be doing the right thing if I do that? Or am I going to make a mistake? So you never actually do the thing.
You never actually do the thing. So I really want people to stop second-guessing things. And it's really hard to plan next year.
If you're not really orientated about where you are this year, and you just kind of circle around stuff, not being able to make decisions, scared to make the wrong ones or making them and having costly, you know, you go ahead and decide to do something and you've made this decision and it ends up being a really costly mistake in terms of, you know, time and money and effort. And I know that because I recently had someone join and a newbie join the new cat breeders club. And he said that if he hadn't joined a year earlier, he would have saved himself a year and several thousands of dollars.
And I just think that's crazy because I'm just, you know, making the wrong decisions. I guess there's no real wrong decisions, but making decisions that weren't the right ones for him and his cats and ending up spending thousands and thousands of dollars going in the wrong direction. And so much time going in the wrong direction.
And especially, you know, for someone that's just going through cancer treatment at the moment, it makes me very focused on time. Time that we have on this earth to achieve the things that we want to achieve. So that's really important to me.
So before you map out next year, you really need to work out where you are now. That's so important. And if you know where you are now, you can map out what next year is going to look like.
So the one thing, the one thing that I want you to do, if you haven't done it already, because many of you have already done this and I'm very, very happy and I love this for you. But the one thing I want you to do before the end of 2025 is I want you to take my quiz. The quiz is what kind of cat breeder are you? I really want you to take the quiz.
And I've had people tell me that you get a report at the end of it when you finish and it tells you where you're at. And the report that they got at the end, they've told me this spoke directly to me. This spoke directly to where I'm at.
And it gave me the next steps to make progress. So I think it's just, you know, get feedback about the reports that people, it's exactly what they needed to hear. And so it's not, it's not a test.
It's not like a test or an assessment or anything. It's not about being right or wrong. It's just a way for you to see where you're at clearly.
And when you take it, don't put the answers in as what you aspire to be. Put the, put when you're answering the questions, answer them, what am I right now? And that way you'll get the most benefit out of it because that way you'll get the right answer and the right information at the end. So don't be aspirational about it.
Don't be like, this is what I want to be. Be what are you right now? That's my advice when you're taking it. But it's really about a way to see where you are, where you're at clearly.
And it helps you that the, once you know where you're at, that helps you to stop guessing. It helps you to focus in on what you need to focus on. And it makes planning so much easier.
So where can you find my quiz? My quiz is on my website. My website's capreadingforbeginners.com. And if you put in backslash links, so capreadingforbeginners.com backslash links on my links page, the quiz is there. I think it's actually on my homepage as well.
It's also on my Facebook page. I think it's the header of my Facebook page at the moment. There's links on my Facebook page to it.
There's links on my Instagram to it. And I'm going to put a link to it in this podcast in the notes and in the comments as well. So it's really easy to find, but please go and do it.
If you haven't done it already, just go and do it, go and do it. If you've enjoyed my podcast up until now, go and do it. But you know, if you're feeling unsure about about what's going to happen and what you're planning for next year, this is the quiz is really a great place to start.
So I'm going to leave it there because I'm a bit tired now. It took a bit of effort and a bit out of me, like I said, not super well at the moment. But I really just wanted to put this episode in here so that you can have a bit of a think about what you're going to do in 2026 as 2025 comes to a close.
So hopefully you found this episode helpful. If you have any comments, I love comments, comment, whatever platform you're on, you should be able to comment on this. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me on Facebook.
The best way to get in touch with me is to send me a message on Facebook. If you have a burning issue that you need help with, send me a message on Facebook. But yeah, always happy to help.
And I'd love to hear from you. I do get so much from hearing from new cat breeders and established breeders and any cat breeders really. So yeah, like I said, hopefully that was helpful.
Have a wonderful end to 2025. I hope 2026 is going to bring you everything you want, all of your dreams coming true. And I will chat to you again when my new season of my Cat Breeding for Beginners podcast starts, hopefully in January next year.
Okay, bye for now. Thanks for listening. Make sure you visit www.catbreedingforbeginners.com where you can find articles, guides, courses and more.
Plus make sure you check out my amazing New Cat Breeders Club. It's a supportive space where new cat breeders can learn, share and help each other. I only take new members a few times a year, so sign up to make sure you don't miss out.
