Letter sent to TIBCS in 2000

Mrs. Galpin will adimently deny that she has ever been turned into TIBCS. However, shortly after our dealings with her, this is the letter we sent in. We were contacted by a TIBCS representative about this incident. Unfortunatly, this was not handled the proper way, by us, by them, who knows. Through emails initiated by Mrs. Galpin recently (2003) and forwarded to us, no one seems to remeber seeing it or knows what happened to it. Nevertheless, the following is what the letter said.

The breeders name is Diane Galpin and she advertises as IndiaInk Bengals Cattery at indiainkbengals.com. My sister was interested in purchasing a kitten and was looking at several sites. She was fairly new to the art of purchasing from a breeder and so while the following might sound sophomoric by a more experienced person, it was all new to us at the time. Early in June, my sister found the website of Diane. She contacted her and asked about the kittens, as she did with several other sites. Diane responded quickly and said that she would have kittens ready by the end of June and if my sister was willing to buy one from her, she would give her a queen that she was retiring. Of course, this excited my sister! She agreed if Diane would be willing to hold Katie (the queen) until the kitten was ready so that we could pick them up at the same time, as we lived in Wyoming and she lived in Washington. Quite a trip! Diane agreed and we thought all was well.

Then, Diane started e-mailing my sister asking her if she was sure that she wanted Katie and that there where other people interested. My sister was becoming quite agitated and replied to the e-mails trying to make it quite clear that she DID want Katie and she had thought that Diane was willing to hold her. Diane began calling my sister at work, telling her that she was running out of room, she couldn’t take care of that many cats, and if my sister wanted Katie, she needed to come and get her right away. Of course, this was very upsetting. My sister talked to me about it and we agreed that we could go the last weekend in June to pick Katie up, even though the kittens would not be ready by then. The original plan was that we would be able to leave our jobs on vacation the next week, go to California and make our way up the coast to Washington and arrive in Kennewick at the end of the week. In the mean time, the check that my sister had sent made out to IndiaInkBengals was said by Diane to be no good. She claimed that she needed a check made out to her personally, as the bank did not honor checks made out to IndiaInk. We thought this a little odd, but consented. The check was to make a down payment on the kitten, which Diane wanted before we could take Katie. Since the date had been moved up, we asked if we could just make the payment when we arrived, as we would probably beat the new check there. Diane consented and the payment was made in cash, not with a check.

We were able to take part of the Friday off and travel to Washington over the last weekend of June. When we arrived at her house, no one was there and we waited for 6 to 7 hours for anyone to arrive. About 11:30 Saturday night, we finally met Katie. Diane let us come in and meet Katie. There were several other kittens running around as well. We played with Katie for perhaps 15 to 20 minutes before my sister asked if we would get Katie’s papers that night. Diane replied that she could give the registration to us, although she didn’t know why we would want it.

We went downstairs to the basement, where the other kittens were. It was from these that my sister had originally agreed to purchase a kitten. When we entered the basement area, it smelled very strongly of waste materials. We entered a room in the basement which only had a small window that was covered, an unused bunk bed along one wall and shelves along another wall. There was a pan of food in the middle of the floor and several plates scattered around that had dried up liquid on them (looked like it might be blood from meat). There were no toys or anything that made it look like a cat would be living there. The kittens were very small and had just opened their eyes. Diane started taking them out of the box they were in and placing them on the floor. The mother cat seemed very agitated, but just circled around, nosing them and occasionally taking one back to the box. We looked at them and decided on a couple that we liked before we went upstairs.

Diane then informed my sister that she wanted $92 for Katie. When asked why, Diane said it was to pay for the vet bill for having her fixed. My sister then asked if she would receive a receipt for Katie, Diane said that if we really wanted one, she could make one up. She grabbed a spiral notebook and handwrote a receipt.

She then began pressuring us into taking on of the kittens that was upstairs so that we wouldn’t have to drive again. We then asked if she wasn’t willing to ship the kitten to us, as that had been our impression before we came. She agreed that if we got one of the kittens downstairs that she would ship it to us, but it would be easier if we just took one of the ones upstairs. My sister was not very impressed with the kittens upstairs, as she had wanted to get a marble to contrast Katie’s spots. There was one however, that she would take. Diane was VERY reluctant to letting us take that particular kitten and at one point refused outright to us taking it. At that point, we went back downstairs to look at the kittens once more and let Diane know which ones we were interested in.

It might be of some interest to note that the mother cat had moved the kittens from the box to under the bed. Diane crawled under and tossed them out so that we could see them again. The mother cat became quite agitated and started gathering them up and trying to take them back under the bed. It was quite plain to me that this cat was not used to people coming in and touching the kittens or handling them.

We went back upstairs and put Katie in a carrier that we had brought along with very little trouble. In fact, my sister picked her up and put her in it and shut the door. Katie did not fight or meow or anything. We then asked again if Diane would be willing to ship the kitten, as we were getting ready to move and needed to know what to plan on. She said that it would not be a problem, and could ship it anywhere that we needed her to. My sister asked how much it would be and she said that it would run about $100. We agreed and left.

For the next 6 weeks we requested pictures of the kittens and received a few every so often. The shipping date for the kitten was very near the date that we were getting ready to move to New Mexico. This was the middle of August. Diane told us she would not be able to fly the kitten to New Mexico due to heat restrictions. This was understandable. We asked if she would be able to fly it to Denver for us, as we would be passing through there and had family we could stay with. She did not know and would get back to us. When she did get back to us, she said that she could fly it to Denver or Salt Lake, but would rather ship it to Salt Lake because of the time the flight would leave would be inconvenient to her. This was frustrating for us. Salt Lake was a days travel out of the way for us, and as we were renting a U-Haul, we did not have a day to play with. However, we did have a cousin that was in Salt Lake and if Diane could fly the kitten by the end of the week (four days to play with) our cousin could pick it up for us. Diane then replied that she would rather not fly the kitten, as it would mean that she would have to either get up very early or spend the night in a neighboring town. She did not think that she wanted to do either. We were confused as to how we were to receive the kitten if she refused to fly it. She replied that she would fly it to us in New Mexico. We reminded her about the heat restrictions and she said that she knew about them and that we would just have to wait the extra 6 to 8 weeks before she could ship it. She asked why we were so unwilling to wait when there was nothing that she could do about restrictions placed by the airlines. It was not the airline restrictions we were asking her to work around. We understood that. It was very frustrating for us for her to tell us that she can get this kitten to us and then back out of it at the last minute. If she was unwilling to ship the kitten to a particular city or on a particular date, why did she bring it up??? I did get frustrated and when she called once, I talked to her. She asked me what I wanted her to do and I told her that she should travel a few hours round trip to fly the kitten as she had told us she would do and leave it at that. She said that if she did that she would not be making any money on the kitten. I was confused, as she had expressly told us again and again that she had shipped kittens as far away as Germany and Japan. How could she send a kitten so far away, yet not to Denver CO? She did not answer me and instead told me that her sister was visiting her and lived in AZ. Perhaps the sister would fly the kitten to AZ with her and we could meet on the state boarder to pick up the kitten. This was not the best option, as it meant that we would have to drop everything in the middle of moving in to take a road trip, but given the options and the complete unwillingness of Diane to work with us, we agreed.

Diane then tried to change the amount due for the shipment, but we refused, as we had it in writing that shipping would be $100. When we told her that, she backed down and agreed that $100 would be fine.

Diane had told my sister that she did not want a check for the rest of the kitten’s payment, but would prefer a money order or cash. As we were not sure of the exact location of the meeting point, and had never met Diane’s sister, Debbie, my sister and I decided it would be better if we sent a money order made out to Diane herself. We traveled to a little town called Sanders on the AZ side of the AZ/NM boarder. We had agreed to meet Debbie at 1 o’clock, as we felt this gave both of us adequate time for travel. My sister and I arrived about an hour early, and so grabbed some lunch and kept an eye out for the sister. 45 minutes after the agreed on time, Debbie and her husband arrived. Debbie stepped out of the car and as a greeting started complaining that they had to drive farther than us. My sister had made up a receipt, figuring that if Diane had hand written the receipt before, she would not object to one written by her. My sister had made two copies so that each party would have one. When my sister pulled out the money order, Debbie asked what it was, and tried to tell us that Diane had said that only cash would be accepted. After 3 phone calls to Diane, and 30 to 40 very frustrating minutes, Debbie and Diane agreed to take the money order. Their reason for not accepting it was that they didn’t know if it was real or counterfeit. That in itself was very insulting to both of us. Finally we got the kitten and headed back to town. The kitten was very lethargic and unresponsive. In fact, he fell asleep almost immediately and even when we ran into a rain and hail storm so bad it forced all the cars to the side of the road to wait it out, he laid out on the seat between us, not at all scared or concerned. This puzzled us. He was also VERY thin, and his ribs were easily felt. We took him to PetSmart as soon as we got into town, hoping that their vet would still be in, as ours was already closed. The vet there was just closing, but upon a brief examination, told us that we should get him in to see a vet as soon as we could. Unfortunately, every one was closed until the next Monday. We brought him home and gave him a flea and tick bath, and treated him with extreme care, as he was VERY jumpy and distrustful of anyone or anything. On Monday, we took him to see our vet and she found several dead fleas on his ears and said that the bath that we had given him probably killed them. She gave us drops to put in his ears, as they were a bit red as if he was developing an infection and the backs of his ears were void of hair, indicating that he was rubbing and scratching them a lot.

Katie, the ex-queen that we had purchased in June, had still not gotten rid of her limp, and in fact it was getting worse. The vet said we should watch it a bit longer before taking x-rays, and after having her for 3, almost 4 months, Katie is limping all the time and is scheduled to go in to the vet within the next week.

We have requested proof of vaccination for both Katie and the kitten and any of Katie’s past vet records to help with her diagnosis now, and have received no response or help from Diane.

Overall, both my sister and myself have been very frustrated with the whole situation. Both cats have settled in with minimum to no difficulty. In fact, we were prepared for Katie to be sad and depressed from leaving her home of over 2 years and coming with us, but there was none of that, and she seemed happy and knew us and would rub us and come to us almost immediately.

We are saddened and angered at the condition that the kitten arrived to us in, especially after part of the $100 shipping fee was to obtain a health certificate for it. We have had to take him to the vet several times to get him healthy with no compensation or cooperation from Diane.

This letter hopes to serve the purpose of both awareness and information. We do not want what happened to us to happen to another, and we are concerned with the methodology with which Diane is running her business. We do not feel that the kittens or the studs or queens are in a suitable environment. In fact, everyone that has become involved in this has agreed that she is in the business for the money and cares little or nothing for the cats. We also began to wonder at the reasons that she would advertise the IndiaInkBengals on the internet and after several e-mails would fail to notify someone that they needed to make the check out to her personally, and then had a preference for cash. No receipts, cash transactions, even the refusal of a money order, made us wonder at the glaring lack of a paper trail that she desired. We do not want to wrongly accuse anything, but feel that our experiences should be investigated by authority figures, for the safety of the public wanting quality Bengals, and for the cats themselves.

Thank you, Coralie Crumrine