My name is Rachel Henderson and I live in the small, rural township of Southbridge, about 45 minutes south of Christchurch.
My love affair with Birmans started about 15 years ago when as part of the animal care course I did at CPIT, I did some work experience at a kennels/cattery.
I fell in love with the most beautiful creature there, he had a gorgeous warm brown face, stunning blue eyes and a personality that was second to none. His name was Max, and you guessed it, he was the first Birman I'd ever seen.
I knew I just had to own one, so I put my name down with local breeders, and within a year I brought my first Birman home, my eldest girl, a chocolate point called Topaz.
Well as anyone will tell you, one always leads to another, so about a year later we added another to the family, a blue point boy called Titus. His breeder mentioned that he might be good enough to show, so I took him along as a kitten to a local show and he came away with a few prizes much to my surprise. I was hooked from then on, and have been attending shows around the country ever since.
Attending shows meant that I met some wonderful people and made friends with some lovely breeders, and it was during this time I decided that when the time was right I wanted to breed these beautiful creatures myself.
Well this time came in early 2013 when I was approached by a good friend, Barbie Muller from Sinhiman Birmans. We both set about applying for our prefixes and in April 2013 I was granted my first and only choice, Tolaytus, which is a mixture of my first 3 Birmans names TO-Topaz, LAY-Layla and TUS-Titus.We then set about getting our breeding cats, and was lucky enough to be offered a wonderful stud boy and queen by Janice and John Davey from Leegrgo/Birpur Birmans.
I would like to say a big thank you to everyone that has helped me along the way to achieving my dream.
My aim is to breed stunning Birmans with great type and most importantly with excellent health and temperaments.