The warm, light-filled interior of the Muggles Mittens family home

Est. 2025 · Bushey, Hertfordshire

Our Story

A cattery that began as a love affair with one cat — Echo — and a promise that cats deserve better.

Muggles Mittens began with Echo — one cat who changed everything. Having seen at first hand how carelessly some cats are bred, we decided ours deserved better: ethical, small-scale breeding that never compromises on health. Our queens live as family members, never in cages; our kittens are raised underfoot in a bright, warm kitten room in Bushey; and every family who takes one home stays in touch with us for the whole of their cat's life.

The Journey

Where we began, and where we are going

Nothing about Muggles Mittens happens by accident — and that is rather the point.

  1. 2025

    Where it begins

    Muggles Mittens begins in Bushey. It starts, as these things do, with one cat — Echo — and the decision to do things properly, having seen at first hand how carelessly some catteries breed. Our first British Shorthair queen joins the family, and the foundations of a small, ethical breeding programme are laid.

  2. 2026

    A foundation of queens

    A year spent building a genuinely strong foundation — a lovely variety of health-tested queens with strong, carefully chosen lineage. And towards the end of the year, the piece that shapes everything to come: our own stud, Aris, joins the household.

  3. 2027

    Building our own lines

    The plan comes into its own. We begin building on our queens and thoughtfully replacing them — breeding our own future queens from the very best of our kittens, the successors to the likes of Barbie and Prada. With Aris here, we breed our own queen for the first time — and, the milestone we have worked towards, we gain our own GCCF breeding prefix.

  4. 2028

    The long game

    The vision from here is patient — developing our own bloodlines, deepening the health testing behind every pairing, and growing the Muggles Mittens name for one thing above all: quality over quantity, always small-scale, always ethical.

Our Philosophy

Four promises we will not bend

Health before beauty

No cat joins our programme on looks alone. DNA results, heart scans and temperament come first — the beauty, invariably, follows.

Family, not facility

There are no cages here, and never will be. Our cats sleep on beds, supervise the cooking, and raise their kittens in the sunniest room of the house.

For the life of the cat

Our responsibility does not end at collection day. Every family has our number for life — and every Muggles Mittens cat has a home with us, always, should they ever need it.

Bred on demand, never on spec

We only breed when there is genuine demand — ideally, a queen is mated only once at least two of her kittens are already reserved. No unnecessary litters, no kittens waiting for homes that may never come.

Health Standards

Peace of mind, as standard

Every Muggles Mittens kitten leaves vet-checked twice, vaccinated and microchipped, with five weeks of free Agria pet insurance provided through the GCCF — and a breeder who remains on call for the whole of their life. Our queens come from PKD-tested, GCCF & TICA registered Championship lines, because peace of mind should come as standard.

The health testing every Muggles Mittens breeding cat and kitten receives
TestOur standard
PKD DNA screeningClear — every queen, verified against GCCF records
Wisdom Panel DNA profilingBeing completed across the whole programme
Vaccinations & vet checksFull course and examination before a kitten leaves us
Microchip & GCCF registrationPapers travel with every kitten
Free insuranceFive weeks of Agria pet insurance, provided through the GCCF
The sunlit kitten nursery at Muggles Mittens

The Nursery

The sunniest room in the house

Our kittens are born and raised in a bright, warm kitten room at the heart of our Bushey home — chosen because it catches the morning light, and because it sits at the centre of the household rather than away from it. From their first fortnight the kittens hear the dishwasher, the doorbell, the radio and the general commotion of family life.

Every cat in the house is fed a raw diet from day one, and the kittens are weaned straight onto it — the healthiest possible start, and one they carry with them to their new homes.

By the time a kitten leaves us at twelve weeks, nothing about a normal home will surprise them. That is not an accident; it is the whole design.

A Muggles Mittens cat settled by the fireside

Raised Underfoot

Ethics you can see in the cat

We keep a deliberately small number of cats, rest our queens generously between litters, and plan every pairing around genuine demand — ideally mating a queen only once at least two of her kittens are already reserved. Our queens live as family members, never in cages, and we interview every prospective family — kindly, but properly.

Our cats enjoy the best of both worlds: safe indoors at the heart of the family, and outdoors in a protected, enriched garden where they can climb, bask and patrol without ever meeting a road.

The result is the thing our visitors always remark upon first: cats that stroll over and introduce themselves. Confidence like that cannot be staged. It is simply what happens when a cat has only ever known gentleness.

“A cattery should smell of woodsmoke and breakfast — never of disinfectant.”

At Home

Moments from the house

A few frames from daily life — there are many more on @mugglemittens.

A quiet moment at Muggles Mittens — cat at rest in soft light
A Muggles Mittens kitten at play in the nursery
Golden-hour light across the Muggles Mittens sitting room
A portrait from the Muggles Mittens photo diary
One of our cats surveying the garden