Terms of Service

Who we are & our role

TrueKitten (truekitten.com) is operated by NorthPeak Software, Inc. (opens in a new tab), a Delaware corporation (“TrueKitten”, “we”, “us”). TrueKitten is a marketplace venue that connects buyers with independent Maine Coon breeders. We verify breeder identities, authenticate health documents, and orchestrate on-platform payments — but we are not the seller of any kitten: every sale is a contract between the buyer and the breeder.

Title to and possession of a kitten pass directly from the breeder to the buyer at the in-person handoff. TrueKitten never takes title to, possession of, or custody of any animal.

These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of TrueKitten. By creating an account or using the platform, you agree to them.

Eligibility & accounts

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract to use TrueKitten. You agree to provide accurate, current information when you register and to keep it up to date, to maintain only one account, and to keep your sign-in credentials secure. You are responsible for activity under your account.

Accounts are personal: you may not sell or transfer your account, and if you register for a business you represent that you are authorized to bind it. Tell us promptly at contact@truekitten.com if you believe your credentials have been compromised. If we terminate your account for violating these terms, you may not register a new one.

Listings & verification

Breeders are solely responsible for the accuracy of their listings, including photos, pedigree, pricing, and health information.

A “Verified” badge means TrueKitten has authenticated a breeder's identity or a specific document against its issuing source. A badge is never a guarantee of any animal's current or future health, and it does not make TrueKitten a party to the sale.

Verification is a point-in-time check: it authenticates an identity or document at the time we review it. It does not monitor a breeder's day-to-day operations and is not an endorsement of any breeder's future conduct. You should still exercise your own judgment, just as you would with anyone you don't know.

Breeder responsibilities & legal compliance

Breeders alone are responsible for identifying, understanding, and complying with every law that applies to their breeding and sales — including any licensing or registration requirements, health-certificate rules, and state consumer-protection and pet-sale statutes. By listing on TrueKitten, you represent and warrant that you have done so and that your listings and sales comply with those laws.

Where applicable law requires a refund or gives a buyer rights, the law prevails over anything a listing, policy, or contract says. Breeders must keep their listings accurate, promptly update anything that changes, and honor the guarantees and policies they state.

Offers & the sale contract

Only buyers may submit offers. When a breeder accepts your offer, a binding sale is formed between you and the breeder under the TrueKitten Standard Contract — you can read its exact text on the listing before offering. Both parties electronically sign the contract before any funds move.

Electronic signatures

By using TrueKitten's signing flow you consent to sign and receive contracts electronically, and you agree that your electronic signature has the same effect as a handwritten one. TrueKitten provides the Standard Contract form and the signing technology; the signed contract is between the buyer and the breeder.

When you sign, we record the signed document together with a timestamp and technical details such as IP address and device information; these records may be used as evidence that a signature occurred, and signatures made under your credentials are attributed to you. Signed contracts remain available from your dashboard and are retained — including after account deletion — for as long as the law requires.

To sign electronically you need internet access, a current email address, and the ability to view PDF documents. You may withdraw your consent to electronic signing by contacting contact@truekitten.com; withdrawal stops future e-signing (which will prevent new purchases on the platform) but does not affect contracts you have already signed.

Payments & fees

All payments for a sale must be made on the platform through our payment processor, Stripe. Funds are held by the payment processor and released to the breeder only after the confirmed in-person handoff and a short grace period. TrueKitten never holds your funds in its own bank account.

Each breeder appoints TrueKitten as their limited payment-collection agent, solely to collect and settle buyer payments on the breeder's behalf. A buyer's payment received by TrueKitten counts as payment to the breeder: once you have paid on-platform, your payment obligation to the breeder is satisfied, and if funds we received are not settled to the breeder, the breeder's recourse is against TrueKitten, not you. This appointment gives TrueKitten no authority to sell any animal, negotiate for a breeder, or act for a breeder in any other way.

Buyers pay a Payment Protection fee of 10% of the kitten price and a payment-processing fee passed through at cost — each shown as its own line before you pay. Where the law requires TrueKitten to collect sales tax on a purchase, it is added to your total. Breeders pay a success fee of up to 10% of the sale price, charged only on completed sales. Steering a transaction off the platform to avoid fees is prohibited.

Deposits, deadlines, and forfeiture

After a breeder accepts your offer, you pay a deposit to reserve the kitten and then the remaining balance by a stated due date. Your deposit and balance are held in escrow by our payment processor — never by TrueKitten — until the sale completes. Each due date is shown to you before you pay.

If you do not pay the deposit by its due date, the offer is simply cancelled and the kitten returns to the listing; because no money has been collected, nothing is forfeited. If you have paid the deposit but do not pay the balance by its due date, the sale does not complete and your deposit may be forfeited.

A forfeited deposit is not paid out automatically. It is held while we review the transaction, and how it is distributed is decided case by case in light of what happened — it is not an automatic transfer to the breeder or to TrueKitten. If you believe a forfeiture is wrong, use the platform's resolution process; filing a card chargeback while a review or resolution is in progress may delay the outcome, and we ask that you work through that process first.

Zero-Regret Guarantee (our fee, refunded)

If you are unhappy with TrueKitten's service, we will refund our 10% Payment Protection fee within 30 days of your purchase — unconditionally. This guarantee applies to our fee only; it is not a refund of the kitten price.

Safe-Handover Guarantee (transaction backstop)

If a transaction turns out to be fraudulent or seriously wrong, our resolution process makes you whole from the funds held for that transaction. This guarantee is conditional on the outcome of the resolution process, and it is separate from the Zero-Regret Guarantee above — the two are never combined.

To be covered you must have paid on-platform, be the account holder who paid, cooperate with the resolution process (including providing the evidence we reasonably request), not file a card chargeback while the process is running, and not have caused or colluded in the problem yourself. Any remedy is paid from the funds held for that transaction and is capped at the amount you paid on-platform for it.

The guarantee does not cover payments made off the platform, issues arising after the handoff except as your sale contract provides, a change of mind (the deposit section above governs that), or events outside anyone's reasonable control.

Prohibited conduct

You may not use TrueKitten to scam or mislead anyone; steer payments off the platform; post photos or content you do not own; harass other users; manipulate reviews or ratings; create multiple or false accounts; or violate any law. We may remove content and suspend or terminate accounts involved in prohibited conduct.

You also may not: scrape or otherwise collect listings, breeder, pricing, or verification data by automated means, or use platform data to build a competing service, directory, or database; buy kittens for resale or act as a broker or intermediary for animals bred by others; recruit breeders you found on TrueKitten to off-platform or competing services; or circumvent any technical protection of the platform.

Payments and transaction communication stay on the platform through the handoff. We may use platform activity — such as messaging and payment patterns — to detect attempts to move transactions off-platform or avoid fees.

Content & reviews

When you post content on TrueKitten — including Verified Owner Stories, reviews, and photos — you keep ownership of it and grant TrueKitten a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to display and reproduce it on and in connection with the platform, including in TrueKitten's own marketing of the platform.

Reviews and Owner Stories are the opinions of the members who write them, not of TrueKitten, and we do not independently verify what they say. We moderate content only for policy violations. We never remove or edit a review because of a low rating.

If you send us ideas or suggestions about the platform, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.

Disputes & chargebacks

If something goes wrong with a transaction, use the platform's resolution process first — it exists to resolve issues quickly from the funds held for that transaction. Filing a card chargeback while a resolution is in progress may delay the outcome. Disagreements between you and a breeder about the sale itself are governed by the sale contract.

You authorize TrueKitten to contest a chargeback on a transaction using the records of that transaction, including the signed contract, messages, and payment history. Disputing a charge you authorized in order to avoid the outcome of the resolution process is a violation of these terms and grounds for termination.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold TrueKitten (and its officers, employees, and agents) harmless from claims, losses, and expenses — including reasonable legal fees — arising out of your breach of these terms or of law, the content and listings you post (including claims that a photo or document you uploaded infringes someone's rights), or your transactions and disputes with other users. This obligation does not apply to the extent a claim arises from TrueKitten's own breach of these terms.

Release of claims between users

Disputes about a sale are between the buyer and the breeder. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you release TrueKitten from claims and damages arising out of your disputes with other users — except for TrueKitten's own commitments in these terms, including the Zero-Regret and Safe-Handover Guarantees, which remain fully yours to invoke; the two are separate guarantees and are described above.

If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code Section 1542, which says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.”

Dispute resolution & arbitration

Please read this section carefully — it affects how disputes between you and TrueKitten are resolved. Except for the carve-outs below, you and TrueKitten agree to resolve any dispute arising out of these terms or the platform through binding arbitration before a single arbitrator under the consumer arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association, rather than in court, and you and TrueKitten each waive the right to a trial by jury.

Carve-outs: either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court for infringement or misuse of intellectual property or for scraping. Nothing in this section waives rights that cannot be waived under the law that applies to you.

Claims may be brought on an individual basis only: neither you nor TrueKitten may participate in a class, collective, or representative action, and the arbitrator may award relief only to the individual party. If a large number of coordinated claims are filed at once, they will be resolved in staged batches so each still receives individual attention.

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement entirely by emailing contact@truekitten.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, with your name, your account email, and a clear statement that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other part of these terms.

If any part of this section is found unenforceable, the rest of it remains in effect — except that if the individual-basis requirement is struck, this entire section is void. This section survives the closure of your account, and a material change we make to it will not apply to a dispute you had already notified us of.

Disclaimers & limitation of liability

TrueKitten provides the platform “as is” and, to the maximum extent permitted by law, disclaims all warranties. As a marketplace venue, TrueKitten does not guarantee any animal's health, temperament, or fitness for a particular purpose; a breeder's health guarantee is the breeder's own promise under the sale contract.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, TrueKitten's total liability arising out of or relating to the platform is capped at the fees you paid to TrueKitten in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

If you are a New Jersey resident, the disclaimer, limitation-of-liability, indemnification, and release sections apply to you only to the extent New Jersey law permits.

Termination

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or create risk for other users. Provisions that by their nature should survive — such as a formed sale contract, content licenses, and the limitation of liability — survive termination.

If an account is suspended or closed while it has a transaction in progress, TrueKitten may let the transaction complete on its terms, cancel it and refund the buyer from the funds held for that transaction, or otherwise resolve it to protect both parties — always from the held funds, never from TrueKitten's own account. Obligations you incurred before termination, including fees owed and contracts already signed, survive it.

General provisions

If any provision of these terms is found invalid, the rest remain in effect. These terms (together with the sale contract, which governs the sale itself) are the entire agreement between you and TrueKitten about the platform, and our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms; TrueKitten may assign them as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, with your rights under them intact. These terms create no rights in anyone other than you and TrueKitten.

Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control. If such an event interrupts a transaction, the funds stay safely held by the payment processor and the relevant deadlines extend until the event passes.

We may send notices to the email address on your account, and you consent to receiving them electronically. California residents may reach the Complaint Assistance Unit of the California Department of Consumer Affairs at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or (800) 952-5210.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the platform evolves. If a change is material, we will notify you before it takes effect — for example by email or an in-product notice. Continuing to use TrueKitten after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms.

Governing law & contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute not subject to arbitration must be brought in the state or federal courts located in Delaware — except that nothing in these terms deprives you of consumer protections, or a venue, that the law of your home state guarantees you. Questions? Contact us at contact@truekitten.com or (302) 587-7787, 9 AM – 5 PM ET, Monday – Saturday.

Third-party data

The US city and state list is provided by SimpleMaps and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Modifications: we filter the dataset to the 50 US states + DC (territories such as Puerto Rico are removed) and de-duplicate same-named places, keeping the most populous.