cattery (also: "under foot")

[George Thompson]

GAT wrote "There may be a distinction in current use between a cattery and
a breeder, in that only a breeder would be able to give a certificate that
the parents of the kitten were pure-bred and registered and that their
nuptials were properly conducted.  A cattery won't give this certificate
and without one the kitten will not be accepted by the Cat Lovers' Vatican
as an authentic representative of the breed."

Further adventures among the catteries shows that this idea is wrong.  A
cattery is so called to distinguish it from a doggery, which isn't so
called.  Certificates of the kitten's purity of birth are provided when a
certificate is received from a vet that the kitten has been altered.

Meanwhile, it seems that a term of art among managers of catteries is
"under foot".  They assert either on their website or in correspondence
with me that their kittens are raised "under foot", meaning that they are
not kept in cages but are free to roam the house.  Saying raised "on the
floor" might be a better way to express the idea, but anyway.

GAT

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 10:29 AM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

>
> The OED has the following definition for "cattery":
>   An establishment of cats.
>  1791    G. Huddesford *Monody Death Dick* in *Salmagundi<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/29031?redirectedFrom=cattery>
> * 133   Enshrin'd celestial Cateries among, the sable Matron.
> 1827    R. Southey *Select. Lett.<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/29031?redirectedFrom=cattery>
> * (1856) IV. 171   All the royal Cattery of Cats' Eden.
> *a*1843    R. Southey *Doctor<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/29031?redirectedFrom=cattery>
> * (1847) VII. 587   An evil fortune attended all our attempts at
> re-establishing a Cattery.
>
>
> No doubt this entry was composed when Queen Victoria was hobbling about
> the Palace with a walker, and there's been no pressing need to revise it
> since.  Still, the quotations are pretty baffling -- Zen, we would have
> said, 50 years ago.
>
> Anyway, a current meaning of the word is an establishment where kittens
> are bred for sale.  Perhaps this is what Southey had in mind?
> There may be a distinction in current use between a cattery and a breeder,
> in that only a breeder would be able to give a certificate that the parents
> of the kitten were pure-bred and registered and that their nuptials were
> properly conducted.  A cattery won't give this certificate and without one
> the kitten will not be accepted by the Cat Lovers' Vatican as an authentic
> representative of the breed.
>
> I've been corresponding with catteries that sell "Siberian Forest Cats".
>  If any of you have experience with this breed, I would like to know of it.
>  Off-list, of course.
>
> GAT
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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