They bought it because the other cat I had was a Himalayan. The cats got the best enclosure in the joint! Nowadays they don't make people use those kennels for six long months--saves a bundle.
"Note the small size of the animal, the solid black, silky coat, the almost over-large ears, the crooked bottom teeth and the overbite, as well as the rather well-defined sparse hair pattern in the eyebrow area..that's quite characteristic of the breed! This one is a superb example, valued at well over a thousand pounds, don't you know! Terribly rare--you will almost never find one outside of Japan, they don't like to export them!"
The cat was actually a feral runt of a litter abandoned in a sugar cane field. It should have died, but it didn't, never got much bigger than a kitten even as an adult.... and I ended up with the thing (for over twenty years, that cat was a member of my household!).
With a bit of Andrew Carnegie patter, you can sell pretty much anything!