- Report: #1049571
Complaint Review: Silmply Silver Persians Cattery - Columbia City Indiana
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Silmply Silver Persians Cattery
Columbia City, 56725 Indiana, USA
Web:
www.silvercattery.com
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Silmply Silver Persians Cattery Sold a deformed and dirty kitten Columbia City Indiana
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I recently purchased a kitten from Rebecca Sprague at http://silvercattery.com/. I was so excited to finally pick up my kittens at the airport as they were a surprise for my child. Within minutes I had taken one of my kittens out of the pet carrier to check him out and cuddle with him. I was in for the shock of my life. My poor kitten has a deformed mouth and jaw area. He was missing several teeth, one of his canine teeth was so offset it was cutting into the roof of his mouth!
The other bottom canine was sticking out the side of his mouth, he was completely unable to close his little mouth all the way. Not ONCE was I told I was purchasing a kitten with a deformity. While I was provided with a few pictures of him, his jaw appeared fine. The only pictures I was provided were very small baby photos of him, which were grainy. I am extremely disappointed by the fact Rebecca did not mention this to me. After spending $1500 on a kitten I expected a lot more.
After further looking at the kittens, both has mats on their belly and between their legs and arms. They smelled horrible. The male kitten's eyes with extremely filthy. Both looked at though they were never brushed or given baths. As if this wasn't enough, the only paperwork I received was a crumpled piece of paper from Rebecca's vet. Then I noticed green puss coming from the female kitten's eyes.This only further escalated my anger. I called Rebecca, but instead talked to her husband.
He claimed they never once noticed an issue. He proceeded to blame me, the airport, and the kitten. How on earth was I able to detect a problem within minutes, but these horrible breeders claim their wasn't an issue????? I feel deceived and lied to. Rebecca then tried to claim this issue was my fault! Rebecca Sprague has no respect for her customers or her kittens, or the Dearheart blood line to be selling kittens with deformities and not make her buyers aware of any problem. I want to make sure this never happens to another hopeful customer of hers. Purchasing a kitten from http://silvercattery.com/ will only bring extreme disappointment.
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1 Updates & Rebuttals
Rebecca S.
Fort Wayne,Indiana,
False Accusations
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Fri, May 10, 2013
My name is Rebecca Sprague, owner of SSPC. I am here to address the completely false accusations made by Ashley Wittling.
Let me start by saying that I have been in business for over 5 years in the Northern Indiana area as a small hobby breeder. We currently have 3 females and 1 male in our entire household, so we are in no way a "mill" or a commercial breeder. Our cats are part of the family and allowed to roam as they please in our household. They are all considered dear members of our family.
We have placed a great number of our Dearheart Persian kittens into loving homes all over the United States by way of airlines shipping, and by welcoming customers into our home for viewing and pickups. I can say with 100% certaintly that we have never had so much as one complaint leveled against us up until this point.
We were contacted by Ashley Wittling by phone on March 24th 2013 expressing an interest in Star (female) and Mr.Fuggles (male). We spoke on the phone for close to 15 minutes, she then inquired about the two kittens and their different personalities. I informed her that the kitten in question "Mr.Fuggles" was not as attractive as the other kittens...HENCE THE NAME, but that he had an amazing personality...which he did. Not only was the aesthetic trait she was speaking of completely unnoticed by a trained, licensed veterinary doctor, but he was issued a clean bill of health in all areas as stated on the vet papers below. The kitten was seen the first time at around 3/26/13 by our vet, and the kitten in question was approximately 8weeks of age at that time.
Shortly after we hung up with her she made the $200 holding deposit for each kitten. She told us of her intentions to come to Indiana to pick up the kittens in person at our home. After repeated attempts to contact her without response we finally heard from her on April 16th at which time she insured us that she was still interested in the kittens. We did not hear from her again until April 24th when payment & a confirmation that Ashley was still planning to pick them up in person was received. On April 26th Ashley Wittling asked if we could ship the kittens to her that week suddenly changing the original plans. Since we were already shipping off another kitten from the airport that coming weekend on May 4th we accomodated her request and we made the last minute reservations the flight. My point here is that we were never trying to hide anything from Ashley as we were expecting her to show up at our front door in soon to pick up the kittens before she suddenly changed things.
Late May 2nd (2 days before flight) we took the kitten in for a 2nd vet check up to obtain his health certification stating he was in good health and in no danger to fly. He received yet another clean bill of health from our vet this time as well. Keep in mind we in no way EVER blamed our vet for this situation as stated by Ashley. We only make these statements to show that if it was not addressed as a serious or life threatening condition by our vet nor was it something that we noticed, so it came as quite a shock to us that they were making such claims of him looking like a "sabrtooth tiger", naturally we started asking if it looked like a fresh injury that could have happened during the flight. We explained to Ashley that we had never had an issue with the PetSafe program although if her vet did find a fresh injury to inform us immediately.
Contrary to Ashley's completly false statement claiming that we only provided "grainy photos" to help her pick her kitten we actually shoot all of our pictures and video with Hi Def camera and video recorder, not just for her, but for every kitten and every customer we have ever had. In Ashley's case we provided two hidefinition still pictures, 1 of front profile and one of side profile (seen below), on top of that a total of 4 HI DEFINTION VIDEOS that were made of that particular litter for her to view to help her decide which kitten out of the bunch she wanted. *Mr.Fuggles is the kitten with the green collar in all of the videos*
We also keep every kitten identified with color coded collars so that kittens are always identifiable to the customer from the time they are 4 weeks old until the time they are shipped. You can see this for yourself on you tube. Just type in simply silver persians. You will see a large collection of videos of all the previous kittens that we have ever placed into other homes. I challenge anyone to view those videos and say that our kittens look neglected, abused, unhappy, have matted fur, dirty, etc. Our vet would literally laugh if you told him that one of our kittens was matted, smelly, dirty or uncared for as we are well known for HOW CLEAN our kittens are every time we go into have them checked up. Miss Wittling knows in her heart that she is lying about this 100%.
In fact, we go far above and beyond what most other catteries are willing to do in regards to helping customers see every aspect of the kittens personality and looks. Do we open their mouths and do a dental inspection on each video?...no, we leave that up to the professionals. No kitten is ever perfect...especially with the Persian Breeds who at times are subject to congenital predispositions towards nasal, tooth, eye, and jaw abnormalities. Actually those "abnormalities" are part of what makes the Persian Breed so unique and desireable to a large group of cat lovers around the world and these "Typy Persians" are sought after just much as the Traditional face or Doll Face Persians. That being said, we always make sure that before ANY kitten is placed into a new home that he/she is given a clean bill of health by our vet...free from any life threatening problems. This coupled with the numerous high quality videos and pictures provided should have been more than enough on our part to help the customer choose which kitten is best suited for them. The rest of the responsibility must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the buyer to select the "look" and "personality" of the kitten as desired by the individual. If there was ever any doubt we will always submit new pics or videos at the request of the customer without hesitation.
I would like to address the statement made by Ashley in which she claims that the kitten has several missing teeth. I cant beleive I am actually having to explain this to an adult, but the reason behind the missing teeth is that at 3-5 months of age all kittens loose their baby teeth and get replaced by their adult teeth. Furthermore they are born without teeth to allow them to feed from their mother without hurting her. The "deformity" of which Ashley Wittling is speaking of, was not visible to us at anytime during the kittens stay at our home. Ashley appars to have gone to great lengths to provide pictures of this kitten looking as utterly disgusting and pittiful as possible. Well ... videos can not be altered or manipulated so I invite those who are in doubt to view the videos with Mr.Fuggles in them on youtube. All of the videos containing him are labeled in the description box with the word "Fuggles". Below are the videos, pictures, and vet documents that were used in the ad for both Mr.Fuggles and his litter mate Star with the supposed green puss problem. Keep in mind the pictures of Star were taken 1 week before the actual shipment of her to Mrs. Wittling and Star was documented in good health by our vet days before her flight. Also the crumpled piece of paper she is speaking of is the actual health certificate he was issued to be able to fly. By TSAA regulations that is the only piece of paper work we were allowed to put in there with them. I suggest to Ashley Wittling to check her e-mail as I sent both the CFA registration papers along with the vet papers to her on May 6th, just a couple days after arrival as we do for all of our customers.
Star & Fuggles flight cert Vet Papers
Star's Picture 1 week before ship
I think what this boils down to is that she was unhappy with the choice she made when she met the kitten in person and is willing to go to any effort to slander my name to either get her money back or hurt me trying. Unfortunately for Miss Wittling my reputation speaks for itself and I have hundreds of satisfied customers to back me up. I have been in business for over 5 years and you cannot find one complaint on my hobby cattery up until yours.
