Our Story
Our Story: How God Led Us Here
Royally British Cats is, on the surface, a cat business of sorts. We raise British Shorthairs, have kittens, and help families find a cat they can love for years. But when I look at the road that brought us here, I don't really see a business story. I see a God story.
The more I look backward, the more I see things that seemed completely random at the time but somehow fit together now. Not neatly, and certainly not in a way I could have understood while I was living it. But looking back, I can see God's hand in places I didn't recognize it at the time.
Before I Knew Him
I didn't grow up knowing Jesus. My childhood was complicated and painful, and by my teenage years I was carrying a lot of hurt, anxiety, and hopelessness. When I was sixteen, after a particularly difficult season at home, I went through a particularly painful experience that left me both mentally and physically damaged, but already in that experience I have multiple things I can clearly look back to and see the grace of God and how He supported me through it without me even knowing it.
Not long afterward, a completely random phone call- what I believe was a pocket dial/wrong-number situation- connected me with someone I didn't know. That strange little interaction eventually led to an invitation to a beach bonfire.
I thought I was going to a random bonfire. It turned out to be a youth group event, and that night I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time.
I remember sitting in the sand looking out at the dark ocean while someone played worship music on an acoustic guitar. I had never experienced that kind of peace before- especially at such a hard time in my life. I didn't understand everything that was happening, but I knew something was different.
That night changed the direction of my life. I began following Jesus, but my faith was young and immature. I believed in Him, but I didn't really know how to walk with Him or grow in His Word. That was when Jesus became my Savior, but I didn’t recognize His rightful place as Lord until much later.
Even still, God was faithful when I wasn't.
A Lot of Unexpected Turns
In 2010, I met my now husband, Cesar. I was drawn to him by an incredible force of boldness that I very seldom exert as a natural introvert. For reasons I can’t explain, I knew I needed to be connected to him and my first question to him was “Are you a Christian?”. He wasn’t. In fact, he wasn’t even close. He told me he was atheist and in his mind he already thought I was crazy. 😂 But we became friends and eventually started dating. Seven months later, I already knew I would marry him.
For years, I prayed for him to know Jesus, but neither of us really understood where our lives were headed.
After the birth of our first son, an unexpected job opportunity with Amazon took us from California to Seattle- that hardest decision we ever made to take a huge leap of faith and a whole testimony story in itself, honestly. A few months later, another unexpected opportunity brought us from Seattle to Tennessee.
We moved here in 2019, and not long afterward, life became very difficult. We lost a baby, Cesar became seriously ill- from which he never fully recovered, and the world shut down with COVID. There were a lot of hard years, and a lot of things that did not look like they were leading anywhere.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we got cats.
Introducing Royally British Cattery
We originally wanted a British Shorthair as a pet. Instead, completely unexpectedly and with no provocation, a breeder contacted me offering to sell me a small group of cats to start a cattery. It was so bizarre and unexpected and I actually wrote an email saying essentially, “Thank you, but no thanks. We don't want to breed cats.” But I never sent it. I stopped, talked to Cesar, and somehow ended up saying, “I think we need to do this.”
So we did.
We started Royally British Cats with no idea what we were doing. We thought breeding cats would be fun. Kittens! Cute! Easy!
It was not easy.
For years, the business was anything but a sure thing. We had sick cats, difficult births, losses, unexpected expenses, discouragement, and a whole lot of learning the hard way. We lost money. There were plenty of times when I wondered why we were still doing this.
And if I'm honest, I wasn't always faithfully trusting God with it either. A lot of the time I was confused, stressed, and trying to figure everything out myself.
But God was still working.
Looking Back
In 2024, we found a wonderful church and Cesar even agreed to go, basically saying that churches do teach good morals and it would be good for the kids (by this time we had 3) and it would make me happy. A few months later, still working now for the 5th year full time at Amazon and years of building the cattery, I felt very strongly that the Lord was asking me to leave my job.
It didn't make much practical sense. The cats had not been a successful business whatsoever, and I couldn’t fathom how we were going to pay the bills. But I felt like I needed to trust God with the direction, even though I couldn't see how it would work. So I left that job after a very prayerful few months in early 2024 after getting the affirmation that I was praying for.
And then the cattery started working out.
This strange little cat ecosystem that had struggled for years suddenly became sustainable enough to provide for our family. By no means was it paying out like I was at Amazon, but I get to work from home, homeschool our children, and raise our family together. Cesar is able to be home with us rather than having to figure out how to maintain a job he physically can't do anymore.
That life could never have been something we simply planned out in California. So many things had to happen first.
And there is one little detail we didn't even notice until afterward: I started at Amazon on April 12, 2019, and five years later, on April 12, 2024, I quit based on some ‘signs’ I kept seeing to quit on the 12th. Looking back, we found more examples of 412 in our recent history too which has been so powerful.
I don't think April 12 has some special biblical meaning or something. But when we realized it, I couldn't help but think, Wow. God really had this established very specifically for us.
Looking backward, I can see that God was preparing us long before we knew what we were being prepared for.
And Then There Was Cesar
For years, I prayed for Cesar to know Jesus.
He had become deeply skeptical of Christianity and spent many years with a shallow faith. But eventually he began investigating Christianity for himself. He started reading the Bible, asking questions, and looking for answers to things that had bothered him for years.
Then he gave his life to Christ in 2024 after an incredible challenging time. When we met 14 years earlier and I asked him about his faith at the start of our friendship relationship- I believe that it was Holy Spirit with hands on the wheel. He had such big plans for us that it required such immediate boldness. Cesar now reflects back that he thinks God was confronting him even in that moment. In his own words, saying “You are mine [says the Lord], you’ve just yet to realize it”.
Watching what Jesus has done in him has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. His hunger for God's Word, his leadership, and his love for Christ have changed our marriage, our family, and my own faith in ways I could never have produced on my own.
I prayed for my husband to know Jesus for years. I didn't realize God was also preparing me for the answer.
More Than a Business
This is also why I don't want to tell the story of Royally British Cats as though God simply gave us a successful business.
But God has definitely used these cats in ways I never expected.
He has used this very unique situation to provide for our family and give us a way to work from home through disability. He has given us the ability to homeschool our children and be together as a family. And He has also allowed us to bless other people through the cats.
We've received messages from families telling us what their cats have meant to them- how a cat brought joy into a difficult season, provided companionship during illness or a hospital stay, gave someone something to look forward to, or simply became an incredibly important part of their family.
Those messages mean a lot to us because at that point, it's not really about selling a kitten. It's about the life that kitten becomes part of.
I don't think God needs a cat business to bless people. He certainly doesn't need me. But He has allowed me to be part of it, and I am incredibly grateful.
What I See Now
I don't tell this story because I think I have extraordinary faith. Honestly, one of my most familiar prayers is, “I believe; help my unbelief.”
There have been plenty of times when I haven't understood what God was doing. There have been times when I was angry, afraid, confused, immature, impatient, controlling, or simply exhausted. There have been seasons when the path ahead looked anything but clear- actually it really still doesn’t to this day. But God was and still is faithful.
I don't have to understand everything while I'm in the middle of it. God sees the whole story when I can only see the page I'm on.
God was there before I knew His name. He was there when my faith was immature and childish. He was there when I couldn't understand what He was doing. He was there through the things I would never have chosen for myself. And He was still there when I couldn't see a way forward.
Sometimes the thing that feels like a detour is actually part of the road. Sometimes something that seems completely unrelated turns out to be preparation for something years later. Sometimes you don't recognize God's provision until you desperately need the thing He was preparing years beforehand.
When I look backward, I see so many things that once looked random: the phone call, the beach bonfire, meeting Cesar, a weird job offer in Seattle, a sudden shift to Tennessee, our home, the bizarreness of cats, my career, leaving Amazon, and all the years in between.
He was working through things I thought were random, but really he was preparing things I didn't know I would need.
And somehow, all of those years later, I am sitting here with my husband, our children, our home, our cats, our business, and a much deeper understanding of who He is. And I can't look at that and call it luck. I couldn't see what any of it meant while I was living it. But God could.
And that's really why I'm sharing this. Not to boast in what we've built (honestly this was a prompting of Holy Spirit to even write and post), or to pretend that we've somehow figured everything out, but to point back to God. His providence has been so much greater than my ability to understand it.
Sometimes you look backward and realize, Wow. You were there the whole time.
The Why
So if you've made it this far because you came here looking for a kitten, I want you to know that you don't have to believe what I believe to be part of our cat family. You don't have to be a Christian to buy one of our kittens.
But I also don't want to tell you our story without telling you about the person at the center of it.
The Gospel isn't that God wants us to have a successful business or an easy life. It isn't even that He promises to make every difficult thing work out the way we want.
The Gospel is much bigger than that.
God created us to know Him, but every one of us has sinned. We have all rebelled against God and fallen short of what He created us to be. We can't fix that by being good enough, trying harder, or doing enough religious things. Our sin separates us from a holy God, and we cannot make ourselves right with Him.
That is why Jesus came.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world as a real man. He lived without sin and willingly went to the cross, where He died in the place of sinners. He took the punishment that our sin deserved.
And then, three days later, God raised Him from the dead.
Jesus had actually died. His body had been buried. And then He was alive again. The resurrection wasn't simply a symbolic way of saying that Jesus' ideas lived on. God raised Him from death, showing that Jesus truly is Lord and that death does not have the final word.
Because of what Jesus did, forgiveness is available to sinners- not because we earn it, but because He paid for it.
God calls us to repent and believe in Jesus: to turn from our sin and put our trust in Him.
That is the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And that is the most important part of my story.
The cats are a gift. Our home is a gift. Our family is a gift. This business is a gift. The people we've been able to bless through it are a gift.
But Jesus is the gift.
Everything else is just part of the story.
And I don't know what God is going to do with the rest of ours. I'm sure there are things happening right now that I won't understand until years from now.
But after everything I've seen, I'm learning to trust Him with the parts I can't see yet.
And when I look backward, I keep finding Him there so I can’t wait to see what the future has in store knowing He has established all our steps. We pray that He continues to move in powerful, evident ways for our lives and yours. God bless.
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