I paid the deposit… When and how do I pay the balance?

by Riverside Rags | Jan 6, 2023 | Delivery, Pickup and Shipping

I paid the deposit… When and how do I pay the balance?

Balance of Payment Due

Thank you for the deposit. The remaining balance of the payment for your new kitten will include delivery or shipping fees (unless you plan to pick up your kitten at our in-home cattery), taxes, and any applicable transaction fees. The due date for the balance depends on when your new furball is ready to go to his new home with you:

When will my ragdoll be “Ready to Go”?

A kitten is “ready to go” (RtG) to her new home when she:

weighs 2 lbs or more (or is very close to that weight).
is fully weaned.
is litter-box trained.
has received at least the first round of vaccines.

These milestones are usually accomplished by 12 weeks, but sometimes it can be a couple of weeks earlier or later. If a mother has a large number of kittens in her litter (five, six or seven, for example), they might take a while longer to reach the same size and weight as kittens from a litter of one, two or three.

When

If you make a deposit on a young fluffy bundle of fun, it is likely that your kitten will not yet be ready to go. We will probably be able to give you a target date of when we expect him to be RtG and we will let you know when he does. At that point, we will contact you and request the balance of the payment in the next day or two.

On the other hand, if you choose a sweet kitty that is already RtG, we will request payment in full within a couple of days of making your deposit, after making any necessary delivery arrangements.

How

In-person pick soon after your kitten is ready to go

If you are picking up your new furbaby at our in-home cattery within a week after she reaches RtG status, we will accept payment at the time you pick her up. You are welcome to use the following two payment methods, whichever you prefer:

Cash
Cashier’s check

All other arrangements

For all other cases (any delivery service or when the in-person pickup is scheduled for some time after your new kitty reaches RtG status), the following payment methods are accepted:

Mail a cashier’s check
Paypal (you can use a credit card, a debit card, or a direct transfer from your bank)
Call us and provide a credit card over the phone

Request for payment of balance due

After making arrangements for any delivery services, we will send you a request for payment that details the delivery service costs, taxes, etc. and that also shows that your deposit has been applied. Please wait to receive the request for payment before making the final payment.

Optimal Transition

Our primary objective is to optimize the transition process for the well-being of each kitten. When the full payment is made, the person adopting the new kitten is demonstrating that they are equally committed to the best interests of the kitten and best-case outcomes. We are honored to be part of the adoption of your special new kitten.

Please let us know if there are any questions that may apply to your specific circumstances.

Visiting our In-home Cattery

by Riverside Rags | Jan 5, 2023 | Delivery, Pickup and Shipping

Visiting our in-home Cattery

In-home Cattery

We raise our kittens in our in-home cattery. Our breeding kings and queens live like royalty with their kittens in our large daylight basement which is more than 2,500 square feet. My husband and I also have our work-from-home offices in our basement. The cats have their own rooms that are spacious, clean and well-lit with plenty of fresh air.

We don’t offer tours of the Cattery or make our kings and queens available for show and tell

While we would love to invite each of you into our cattery to see all of our cats and kittens in their lap of luxury, there are several reasons we don’t do this. While we do invite you into our home to either pick up your kitten or choose a kitten, we limit the amount of exposure outsiders have to our kittens and breeding ragdolls. Most importantly, we work very hard to keep our cattery clean and free of diseases. Unfortunately, hosting cattery tours would bring risks of tracking in harmful diseases and bacteria.

Our ragdolls have a wonderful living environment

Our ragdoll cats are very well cared for. We have large spaces for our kings and queens where they have picture-window views of the Columbia River and its wildlife. Our kittens and their mothers are able to run freely and have plenty of room to play and sleep. The spaces allocated for our cats far exceed industry guidelines and are cleaned daily. We circulate fresh air and provide UV light treatment of the airflow to treat airborne infection. We feed them very high quality food and they love to play with our young children as they become socialized.

We can’t help it… these kittens are so cute that we spoil them! You’ll see… when you bring one of these irresistably soft and cuddly kittens into your heart, you will do it too!

TICA and CFA Certified

We have gone to great lengths to establish a healthy life for our amazing cats. We have regularly scheduled visits from certified veterinarians to inspect our cattery for compliance with the top level standards of care. As a result of this effort, we have been awarded the rare endorsements of the TICA Outstanding Cattery and the CFA Cattery of Excellence. At the time of this writing, there are no other ragdoll catteries in the world who have both of these certifications.

Your new kitten will be healthy and well socialized

While it would be fun to tour people through the cattery, it is much more important that each family can take home a gorgeous ragdoll kitten that is a healthy and well-socialized pet. Your new furbaby will provide beauty and companionship for years to come.

Planning a visit to pickup your new kitten

by Riverside Rags | Jan 5, 2023 | Delivery, Pickup and Shipping

Planning a visit to pick up your new kitten

Congratulations on the adoption of your new purebred Ragdoll kitten! We are looking forward to meeting you and introducing you to your new fuzzy furball! Here are some important details about your upcoming visit.

Coming to our home

We will be welcoming you to our home where we raise the kittens. It isn’t a retail store where there are regular store hours, like Petco or Petsmart. Just like you, we aren’t always home – sometimes are gone to the store or school for our children or their various activities. Like everyone, we are doing our best to balance family needs with all of the other important activities in life. We receive visitors by appointment.

Schedule an Appointment

We will schedule with you and set an appointment to meet you at a time that works for both of us. It is important that you be on time for your scheduled appointment because we might have a narrow window of opportunity to meet you before another scheduled event in our family life.

If your schedule changes, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can both adjust to the next available window of time. Hopefully it won’t be problematic, but sometimes there are scheduled appointments at the doctor or other errands that can’t be adjusted without significant disruption.

Travel Progress

If you are driving to Pasco, please text us your GPS arrival forecasts to keep us apprised of your progress. There can be construction delays or weather delays so it is helpful to know how your trip is progressing.

If you arrive early

If you happen to arrive early in Pasco, please consider stopping for a quick bite to eat first so that you can adjust your arrival time at our home as scheduled. We are normally not prepared for an early arrival because we prefer to bathe and dry your new kitten just before you arrive and this process takes a couple of hours. We time these preparations to match your scheduled arrival time.

Remember to bring a travel carrier

Please remember to bring a travel carrier for your new furball. In all likelihood she will enjoy sleeping on your lap or purring on your shoulder during the ride home. But you still need to put your kitty inside the carrier while carring him from our home to your car, and then into your own home when you arrive. Using a travel carrier outdoors will protect your sweet kitten from being startled by outdoor noises and and that new experience.

Bringing your new Ragdoll kitten home

by Riverside Rags | Jan 5, 2023 | Delivery, Pickup and Shipping

Bringing your new Ragdoll kitten home

The day you bring home your new Ragdoll kitten is an exciting day for you and your family. Be sure that you are prepared for your new kitten. See the products we recommend for your new kitten.

For your young kitten, however, adoption day is a stressful event. It usually starts with a bath followed by travel to a new home. It always involves meeting new people and experiencing a new environment and new smells. Sometimes other pets are also introduced to the kitten. As a result of these stressful experiences, it is possible that your new kitten might not initially act in the traditional laid-back, “floppy cat” ways that are typical of ragdoll cats. They might respond to stress by being more curious or more timid. They might play more or sleep more. They might eat less or use the litter box less. Sometimes there can be a brief episode of diarrhea.

Just like people, cats have different personality traits that they are born with and others that are developed through nurture and training. Cat behavior changes as they grow from being like toddlers as kittens, through adolescence and into adulthood.

There are many things you can do to shape the personality of your kitten after you bring him or her home. We suggest introducing them slowly to your home and to other pets. If your circumstances allow for it, keep them in a small room to begin with and gradually enlarge their space. Have them greet your other four-legged friends through a gate or under a door when they first meet. We also recommend sharing scents from blankets or towels with each pet before the full in-body experience.

Once your kitten feels at home and has comfortably claimed his or her position as ruler of the universe, you might have some fun training them to fetch, roll over or even use the toilet. Yes, all of this is possible. Just Google, “How to train your cat”. For starters, here is a website that has some great information but there are likely many other websites that can offer helpful tips.