If you want to do a good deed, whilst saving yourself some cash, you can pick up a kitten from your local rescue center. These centers contain cats and kittens that have been found stray or abandoned and have ended up at the rescue center to find new, loving homes. Most centers will let you take them away for free, provided that you have your cat vaccinated and sometimes sterilized. This isn’t usually a costly procedure with prices somewhere between $50 and $100.

The next option is to buy from a general cat breeder. Here you should be able to pick from a wide variety of cats from different breeds, and with different features, for a few hundred dollars. Don’t expect them to be pedigree though, as you generally pay more than this for pedigree cats, as covered below. You can find local breeders with a quick internet search, or by looking through your local directory.

Finally, if you want a ‘superior’ pet and the bragging rights to go with it, you will want a pedigree kitten. These kittens are bought from specialist breeders, who usually focus their breeding on just one species, and will come with certification that they are pure. Unfortunately these don’t come cheap. You can expect to pay anywhere from one thousand dollars for a pedigree kitten and the Guinness world record book in 2007 showed a pedigree kitten that cost $42,000. For kittens and cats that have won prestigious feline shows, you can even pay in excess of $42,000 with some breeders charging $50,000 or more for some of their best male pedigree kittens.