How do you find your kitty?

[Vrem Vaniva]

I bring in only very special kitties from "outside," because most of my live cats are from my own cattery and I unpack the ones I've bred myself. It's usually something I "don't already have," though it may not be a "new" trait (example: lovely pair of brown and white tabbies ... not new but "new to me".)

I get my new cats from
*Auctions
*Group Notices, occasionally (announcements of live kitties have sometimes drawn me, too)
*Love tables
*Live cats from stores
*Swaps and Gifts from friends
*Asking a breeder whom I know to be working with "trait X" if he or she has any "trait X" kitties to sell me
* I used to actually "go shopping," wandering through kitty sims, clicking boxes to see what they were. My "needs" were less specific in the first year or so. I also remember searching sims, exhaustingly, for Twinkle and Flash shades, when they were uncommon.

As for "finding the kitty that I want" -- I've found a few on the KittyCats Wanted group ... but we definitely need a better way to learn what's available. Kitties in the stores are only "the tip of the iceberg." If I put 40 boxes in my store, that still leaves thousands of boxes that are not in my store. Maybe someone wants the other ones, the ones that are not displayed. Probably, I want someone else's undisplayed boxes.

Here are some sources that haven't been mentioned much yet :
*The Instant Auctions group. If I happen to have enough lindens and there's a cat that "knocks my socks off" or intrigues me a lot -- I'll jump in for it. I watch this group and pretend to be asleep when I can't buy.
* I know a few people who ... sort of IM me and invite me to come over and look at their boxes. Sometimes they say they are broke and needy. I sometimes buy boxes this way. On the surface it looks like "buying a box from a friend," but I think this is also a marketing technique that some people use? It's hard to say no, though I do that too. They'll invite friends over, one at a time, as "specially invited buyers." Some are people I never hear from except when they want me to buy a box.

[Ivy Lane]

I almost always check the 100% market first, notices from groups second but i have been known to spend hours using the updated Secondary Market list to search for a particular kitty.