Cats are the essential part of our everyday life. I have always had cat(s) and it is hard to even imagine how to live without them. Our ragdoll cats live primarily indoors in our spacious detached house, enjoying lots of care and love. Our ragdolls are keen on participating in all possible activities by ”helping” in duties whatever you have to do. The cats can also go safely out in our garden that has been fenced to be a great place for cats. However, they do not enter there without supervision. Gardening is one of the activities that is so much more fun with dear eager ragdoll ”assistans”. As a cattery, Gayaneh represents small-scale activity – though serious one (see Breeding). It is important to participate various happenings including cat shows and seminars organised on important topics, including especially health and breeding issues.
Finnish lapphund Joiku (Haltinmaan Sade) takes care that our cats are accustomed to dogs. Cats also provide a versatile hobby through activities with other cat fanciers and in cat clubs – in our case especially Finnish Ragdoll Cat Club.
The long history in short:
Cattery name was needed as early as in 1979, when it was clear that the persian cat Muru was worth having offspring. Of all the many suggestions, Gayaneh turned out to be the most attractive. At that time, it was possible even for an underaged candidate to apply for a cattery name. The interest towards pedigree cats had raised already some five years earlier, but cats in general had been an essential part of life already since babyhood. The first cat was black-and-white ”Mikko”.
Like Mikko, also our first pedigree cat was black-and-white: persian Ami (Gårdsbacka Bel-Ami, 1973). Soon arrived two more persians: cream Mussu (Sans-Rival Panchito, 1974) and blue-and-white Muru (Sans-Rival Mitzi Bleu, 1977). Especially Ami and Muru turned out to be very beautiful cats according to judges in cat shows. Thus, the cat hobby reached a new level that included occasional visits to cat shows. The pivotal reason for Gayaneh cattery was the charismatic and very social Muru. However, quite soon breeding and also other cat activities slowed down. Muru was the last persian of this cattery.
A secret crush since childhood, blue eyes, became true with the sacred birman Alma (Kittenhill Almost Angel, 1996). Thanks to Alma, one litter of Gayaneh birmans saw daylight in 1998. Soon after that, together with a toddler aged Aino, we saw another blue eyed cat in a local cat show: it was huge and very nice tempered. It was ragdoll! After a keen searching for a ragdoll, we finally found Hemmo (Erkatin Hemmo Hermanni, 2002). Like all ragdoll owners know, if you have a ragdoll, you need to have another… and yet another. A new seach project was launched to find ”Mr Pöpö” (a working title set by Aino) and following a few queries, we were very lucky to find Pöpö (Bobkatin King of Riverknee, 2006). Thanks to these two blue point ragdoll dudes, cat hobby became much revitalised. Breeding was supposed to be history, but gradually an idea of at least one Gayaneh litter started to bubble in mind. By coindidence, it became realisable when seeing a bunch of beautiful tabby ragdolls. One of them was especially distinguished: Pii (Utuinen DashingDesign, 2011). A dream about a tabby came true as well as a wish to own a really floppy ragdoll. The world deserves to have more cats like that… Thus, occasionally (0-2 litters per year) new ragdolls may appear in our cattery – with or without tabby markings.
