The summary: The kitten we'd reserved died and the breeder failed to inform us, dodged our messages, and has not yet returned our $300 deposit. The more detailed version: When we first met the breeder, she offered us the chance to visit the cat we reserved whenever we wanted until we were able to bring it home. When we followed up with her a week later about doing so, we got numerous delay-tactic messages like "let me check my schedule, " "I had x illness but I'll let you know, " "I had y illness but I'll let you know, " "I'm working but I'll let you know, " etc. Finally I wrote about how discouraged we were that we'd sent so many messages without getting a real response and the breeder replied, "are you the ones who reserved the orange cat?" and went on to say that that cat had died "the other night." In other words, she'd withheld this information from us in order to continue holding onto our deposit. Even if you want to try to excuse this as pure disorganization and not actual theft, that's still not okay. I asked for a return of our deposit and have not heard back since. I'm posting here in an attempt to get a response and refund from this breeder.