My name is Lizz Benson and I live with my fiancé, Matthew Adair, in East Yorkshire.

This page is designed to give you a little bit of our background in how we started in cats, and although I have tried to keep it to a minimum my friends will tell you I like to go on a bit! so I hope you find the read interesting as this is how it all started for me.....

I have always been an animal lover and I have always owned cats, my first whom I had from being age 4, she was called pompom and was a beautiful black and white with pink nose (spit of Felix) moggie.

I had pestered my mum and dad for what seemed like forever to let me have a pet, I would keep snails and slugs in ice cream tubs saying they were my pets if I couldn't have one of my own!

So one day dad brought pompom home a tiny kitten in a monster much box with a blanket in the bottom it is such a vivid memory! she was very beautiful and we bonded immediately and she was my best friend.

Shortly after she came to live with us dad brought home a beautiful rough collie puppy (they had already booked before getting pompom), we called her Lassie (I was 4 and couldn't think of anything better!) Lassie and pompom were the best of friends and when my Lassie passed away at the age of almost 15yrs Pompom was clearly lost for sometime without her mate. We compensated and gave her extra love and attention and Pompom continued to thrive when Lassie was gone.

Sadly at the grand old age of 17yrs she passed away through age related illnesses, having her put to sleep was truly heart breaking but I have many fond memories of her throughout my growing years.

There wasn't a gap in-between cats as in pompoms latter years, early 2001 I moved out with Matthew into rented accommodation, if wasn't fair to take pompom so she stayed with mum and dad but we visited all the time. I was so lonely without a pet, Matthew finally relented and in September I got a chinchilla (not cat) and although WONDERFUL they didn't fill the void of not having a cat in my life.

It didn't take much persuading as Matthew had been a cat lover all his life and in the week before Christmas in 2001 we got Foxi a beautiful silver spotty pet BSH, and so my love for the breed began.

Because of our previous involvement with showing and breeding the chinchillas (not cats) and our new passion for the beautiful BSH in early 2002 we decided we would like to get Foxi a best friend and also have a cat to show, although we loved Foxi's colour we decided it would be nice to have 2 cats a different colour, so we contacted her breeder and she had available what we were told a blue spotty. When we went to pick BB up he was huge and a beautiful honeycomb brown colour, needless to say we were thrilled with him and Foxi hit it off immediately the pair were soul mates.

As we began researching into the breed more we started looking on websites to see pictures of other blue spotties to compare them to BB, we were amazed to find the colour staggeringly different and to our disappointment when emailed several breeders pictures of BB we were told he was a severely tarnished black silver spotted.
Because of his colour BB could never be shown, of course it did not make us regret buying him as he was a pet first and foremost and much more important then any show to us. BB has developed into a HUGE big beautiful British (see below and our other pets) cat despite being the "wrong" colour we still think it is a very pretty one and love him to bits!

I would urge anyone who is thinking of buying a cat to show to ensure they don't make the mistakes I did, make sure that you visit shows first and look on as many websites and in magazines for the colours you are interested in to guarantee you are buying the right cat.

As Matthew and I lived in rented accommodation we moved to my parents in late 2003 to save for a house of our own; however due to the rocketing house prices we ended up stayed with my parents for 2 years (bless them they deserve a medal!), in the same year mum and dad they decided they wanted another cat for when we moved out as they had fallen deeply for our two, so Bella joined our family, another silver spotty BSH (see our other pets).

Shortly after BB came to us I contacted a select number of silver breeders, some were not so helpful and wary of new people asking questions, when others were brilliant and gave me nothing but good advice and friendship, Ursula Graves of Sargenta, and Marilyn Storey of Skidoosh were all wonderful and very patient with me and my 101 questions! I remained in contact with all but expressed to Ursula my interest in having a girl of my own from her in the future. Ursula was brilliant and taught me so much about silvers, she was kind enough to let me meet her at our first cat show in Reading 2003 where she showed us the ropes. We had a great time and the cats were beautiful, it was very different from a chinchilla show but we got the bug!

Whilst at mums & dads, although we would have LOVED our first queen we knew it was not the right time to get another kitten, and we had to be patient.

Finally in May 2005 we started house hunting! I contacted Ursula to ask if she would consider me for a kitten as we would be moving soon and when we went for a visit we were shown Willow a beautiful Tabby BSH whom really jumped out at you with her striking colour and pattern we couldn't believe it when Ursula said after our wait of 3 years we could have her! As we had our offer on our house accepted in July we ecstatically said yes and Willow came for a short time to mum and dads, this was a good thing in hind sight as mum and dad could ensure she had lots of fuss and regular feeds being a kitten.

She was a beautiful kitten and did nothing but purr! She has the loudest purr of any British I have heard!

Trying to integrate Willow with the other cats was a NIGHTMARE! The big cats were so established and although we took our time they seemed very hostile after weeks of patience. Because of this and my parents total love and devotion to the big cats, they asked if they could keep them when we moved, at first Matthew and I were adamant this would not happen as we didn't want to leave our old cats for favour of our new cats, but the more we though about it the more we realised as a result of living with mum and dad for so long, both them and the cats were very settled and well into a daily routine,  dad is retired, mum works part time, they have their own run in the garden to play and have supervised free runs twice a day when the weather is nice, they have constant love and attention; and were such a close family unit we felt awful we would have to spilt them

We felt the only decision we could make was to leave BB & Foxi with Bella at their home. As much as we miss them I know we did the right thing by them (You can see pictures of all 3 on my Other Pets page) and although it was one of the hardest decisions and it wasn't taken lightly, we do live only 6 miles away and visit all the time, it is lovely to see them so happy and it is certainly us who misses them more then they miss us!

By saying goodbye to our big cats we realised we would be moving Willow to a new house with no company during the day as we work full time, we felt this would be unfair so we asked Ursula if we she would entrust another beautiful kitten to us.

Thankfully she agreed and we collected Tabitha, another stunning tabby BSH.

Willow bonded with Tabitha almost instantly, they were totally devoted and inseparable until 2010 we sadly lost our beloved Tabitha to a rare and aggressive cancer.

Matthew and I FINALLY moved into our first house in October 2005

I can never thank Ursula Graves of Sargenta enough for giving me such beautiful, adoring and characteristic kittens, and such a good foundation for what I hope is a long and happy hobby in the cat fancy. Learn more about my girls on the Our cats page and News page.

I believe in breeding for quality and temperament first and foremost. It is paramount to me for to do my best for the silver BSH, for love of the animal and my desire to improve/preserve such a beautiful breed/colour.