Meet the family
We are Ross and Paula (GCCF breeders, exhibitors and, in Ross’s case, a judge of the breed) sharing our Hampshire home with British Shorthairs, Siamese and Orientals.
The judge who fell for the breed.
From the judging table to the kitten pen
EzBritz is a small British Shorthair cattery run by Ross and Paula Davies in Fareham, Hampshire, and it began, honestly enough, with a confession: the judge fell for the breed.
Paula and I have bred and shown pedigree cats for more than twenty years under our GCCF-registered prefix Burnthwaites, producing Best in Show Siamese and Orientals, including International Grand Champions.
And this is where the story actually starts. I did not come to British Shorthairs as a breeder. I came to them as a judge.
When I was a junior judge they were simply one of the breeds in front of me on the table, and it did not take long. I fell for them quickly and completely, and I have been going over them at shows ever since.
I now judge a good many breeds (Maine Coons, Ragdolls, Siberians, Persians and Exotics among them) and I like all of them. But liking a breed and wanting to live with one are different things. In more than twenty years nothing had ever made me want to breed anything other than Siamese and Orientals.
The British Shorthair did.
Wanting one is not the same as being trusted with one. Sandie Holloway of Rayanshel trusted us with Rosie, and has since been my mentor in the breed. Her cats have been winning at the top of it for years, so I was hardly the first judge to admire them. Paula and I are grateful to her, and I would rather say so than pretend a new cattery invents itself.
That is the part of the cat fancy nobody mentions when you start. You come for the cats. The people turn out to be why you stay.
RAYANSHEL WHOLE-LOTTA-ROSIE has lived with us for over two years now, and her first litter, born on 25 May 2026, is the first to carry our EzBritz prefix.
We will be upfront with you: as breeders of British Shorthairs, we are at the start of our journey. EzBritz is a new cattery and Rosie’s litter is our first. But we come to the breed with two decades of breeding, showing and husbandry experience behind us, and with the breed standard quite literally in hand: Ross assesses British Shorthairs on the judging table at GCCF shows. Few new catteries begin with that grounding, and we believe our kitten families deserve both the honesty and the experience.
About Ross
- GCCF cat judge — Sections 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6; judging since 2014, and a full British Shorthair judge since December 2023
- Breeding and exhibiting Siamese and Orientals for over 20 years; Best in Show winners and International Grand Champions under the Burnthwaites prefix
- Active GCCF member — cat club committee work; show manager for various clubs
- Member of the Southern British Shorthair Cat Club
- Certified in feline behaviour & psychology, and in cat anxiety & stress
- Published cat writer — featured in Your Cat and Our Cats magazines, and guest speaker at cat seminars
About Paula
- Breeding and showing pedigree cats alongside Ross for over 20 years
- Certified microchip implanter — every EzBritz kitten is microchipped at home, by Paula, with no extra stress or strange handling
- Qualified pet first aider
- Certified in pet bereavement counselling
- Feline artist — her cat designs and caricatures feature in our CattyLicious gift shop
- Active member of the cat fancy and cat club committee member
A mistake I have never quite lived down
Some years ago I had an Oriental kitten I was completely certain was a boy.
He was not going anywhere until his testicles descended. An undescended testicle means a more invasive operation when the time comes to neuter, and I was not willing to hand a family a kitten with that waiting for them down the line. So he stayed with us. I kept checking. Nothing happened.
At thirteen weeks I finally worked out why.
She was a girl.
She stayed, obviously. She went on to breed for us under our Burnthwaites prefix, which was a far better result than my powers of observation deserved. I have not repeated the oversight with a British Shorthair, though I do check rather more carefully than I used to.
I tell you that for two reasons. The first is that it is funny at my expense and you may as well hear it from me. The second matters more: my instinct was to hold a kitten back rather than let somebody else discover the problem after they had paid for it. That instinct is the thing to look for in a breeder, and it is worth more than any certificate on this page.
What this means for your kitten
Experience is only worth talking about if it benefits the kittens. Ours means: pairings planned by someone who judges against the breed standard; husbandry, socialisation and weaning shaped by certified behaviour knowledge and twenty years of practice; microchipping done gently at home by a certified implanter; and a breeder on the end of the phone for the lifetime of your cat — backed by the kind of first-aid and bereavement training you hope never to need.
If you are at the point of looking for a kitten rather than reading about us, our British Shorthair kittens for sale in Hampshire page sets out how the kitten list works, what a kitten costs and what happens next.
Ross also writes about cats elsewhere: CattyLicious, Burnthwaites Siamese & Orientals and The British Shorthair Cat.
