Recent History:

Gitalaya Cattery was established in 1981 in sunny South Africa in the rural community of Muldersdrift, Gauteng Province. We established a successful Burmese breeding programme and also ran our own competitive boarding kennel and cattery.  

The following pages give some indication of the measure of progress and success we achieved over the years.

In 1997 my husband John Francois passed away unexpectedly.  This precipitated profound changes in my life. Least of these changes was the meeting of my husband, Ed Pomerantz, via a mailing list for widowed folks on the Internet. 

When John passed on, my family who live in Toronto, insisted that I plan a trip to visit them. Fate had other plans for me. Ed and his son David visited South Africa and during his brief visit, Ed proposed and I accepted.

Fortunately a dear friend Artur de Freitas offered his services as a house sitter while I was away for three months. During this time Ed and I were married.  During my stay, Ed & I bought our home in Upper Freehold, Monmouth County, NJ. (We also found our new home on the Internet, a home large enough to accommodate us all, the willing human slaves to our cats!) Ed had been part of a dog mailing list as he was planning to adopt a dog for David.  One of the posts offered the property for sale and as a joke, Ed forwarded the mail to me whimsically suggesting a change of lifestyle!  I thought I had deleted it, but found it during his visit. (Ed followed up on the email when he got back to the United States). Later I  returned to South Africa to sell up my two properties - one of which was my boarding kennel and cattery I had owned and managed. In addition, I sold my "farm" of 72 acres and planned my move with my menagerie.

 Besides our cats which are the foundation of our "Stateside" breeding programme, we shipped two dogs: a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a German Shepherd dog.

Our home in Monmouth County - NJ, USA

The Gitalaya breeding programme will focus on Burmese, known as Foreign or European Burmese in North America, specialising in Reds, Creams and Torties.  In addition, we breed Bombays, the "miniature Black Panther" with a "patent-leather coat" and "new penny copper eyes". 

We will be establishing a breeding programme for Burmillas too. Our foundation cats were bred by Catteries - Ann Kidd & Ivan Battye - Burmese, Burmillas & Tiffanies.