Fascination of the Norwegian Forest Cat

10 years ago the word "Norwegian Forest Cat" was in Switzerland still almost a foreign word. The number of breeders you could count nearly just at one hand, this has changed the meantime completely. At the shows there were just a few cages with Norwegians (like we call them). But there, where they were, the public stopped and you could hear their "Ah and Oh". Their opinion was: finally a "real cat". This bold and brash look who give creeps. Then this ears with the lynx-tufts, perfectly made for painting. This strong and furry pads, this breathtaking coat who pale each Haute-Coture dress and then this bushy tail like any Manta-Car has had like antenna. What for a cat! Of where this cat was coming?

Scandinavia

We let sweep our mind into the country with the thousand fjords. There, where the time seems sometimes to be stopped, the colored houses, the large and thick forests, the rough sea, the fascinating polar lights, the country of the trolls and sagas ... The gulf stream who pass near of the coast, give there a mild clime and in summertime nearly yet a maritime clime. In the inland the summers could be very hot and the winters very cold with hard snow storms. In summer the nights are very lucid and around the polar circle the days in winter are just dark.

The formation of the fjords has been caused by many glacial periods in Scandinavia. Based of this big number of glacial periods the valleys have been deformed many times and deep fjords have been created. Some of them are deeper as the high of the surrounding mountains. Because of the warming by the Gulf-Stream plants are growing here which don't survive normally on this lines of latitude. Mostly you see braids and moos. The timberline is in the near of the sea around at 100m and in the inland at around 800m. Mostly you see spruces, pines and birches. In the midland fruit and berries are blossoming galore. The fauna in the sea is multifarious: salmons, codfish, haddocks and trout are swimming in the clear water and are offering welcome sources of food and income.

An incomparable fascination

Back of our geographical short-trip: here we found the cradle of the Norsk Skogkatt, how the Norwegians call this cat. There they roamed - and are still roaming - the brush of the murmuring forests in Scandinavia. Always being intent to win the battle against the nature (today some adventure-undertakings are offering similar trips for mollycoddled managers to learn about the seriousness of the live and to transfer it into their two-fisted day-to-day business)). The most important kit is their double coat: the warming under wool and the long and water-repellent kemp wool. At the paws they have a long and elegant footwear which is affronting against snow. Their imposing, bushy and very hairy tail the cat is putting like a protection before the head against very nasty borealis and clanking ice crystals.

But over all we have this matchless sprightly mind, who - similar to surveillance satellite - notice each change in the environment with a full presence and they comprehend promptly each danger. Do you have this cat before your eyes? I'm really happy to have at home some of them because they are spraying around a incomparable fascination. Very often I hear: Once Norwegian Forest Cat- Always Norwegian Forest Cat!!!

The metamorphoses of this Nordic beauties

When I reminisce about how the Norwegian Forest Cat was 10 years ago, I detect some distinctive changes. Long and straight profiles you can measure with a plumb line were getting actual and the judges wished to see long, elastic and high-legs bodies. The following years showed, as inevitable consequence of this strict parameters, an active changed type, and sometimes you made some inferences about a oriental grandmother. The consequence was that the Norwegian Forest Cat was loosing mass, the structure of the coat was getting softer, they were loosing the greasy kemp like also the distinctive attributes like the lynx-tufts and the tufts between the toes, we call them "snow shoes". Without any doubt the form of the head was getting too much important and the rest of a typical Norwegian Forest Cat have been forgotten. Of the whilom Nordic, wild looking beauty of the fjords we have had in many areas now a docile and fine doll of "Thousand and One Nights". 1999 they overwork the standard and they tried to adjust this extreme breeding, because they don't love really this petite type. This new type was not related to the strong and heavy cats of the Nordic fjords. And so each one was in the right way, who - determined of the new parameters - abided by the "old" type and the show prices were not important. Some breeders bred on two ways: the strong old type for the fanciers and the new type for the shows.

Even tough yet always existed differences between size and look (this was yet at the beginning of breeding Norwegian Forest Cats), pivotal was and is still the harmonious general view of the cat. This is raster of breeding. The rest is purely a matter of taste and formed during the years distinctive the own breeding-type. This bred lines a specialist is detecting immediately at first view without seeing the pedigrees.

Beside of the "oriental-type" you have also seen extreme big and heavy Norwegian Forest Cats who have put yet like young cat many kilos on the scales. It was seeming that they need a as possible high "slaughter weight". I think, I'm not wide of the mark, when I saw this brawny Norwegian roly-poly, I was thinking to a similar semi-longhair race American provenance (we don't have to forgot that many breeders bred or are breeding Norwegian Forest Cats like also Maine Coons!!). Apart from breeders have exterminated unnecessarily at the outward appearance, they changed also the typical character and they adopted also genetic defaults who other races could have and that our Norwegian Forest Cat could have been escaped!!

The Norwegian Forest Cats love colors

Let us turn to the colors because here is a lot under way! Several years ago there swarmed with black-tabby with or without white, still today this is the favored color of the Norwegian-fans. With the tiger-look our beauty of the fjords is drop-dead gorgeous. The colors black and black-white followed at the 2. position. The red cats were a long time not so favored how I've noticed also my-self. By now also the color red have found a numerous followers and the tortie, this would say the cats with 3 colors are very favored in the breeds like this cats are real showbags. Silver is still a color for adepts and lovers although silver is not easy to breed if you wanna get a silver without rufismus. Moreover silver cats are slower in their evolution and the quality of the coat is finer. Diluted colors like blue (diluted black) and crème (diluted red) have also many followers, but you have to know that this cats doesn't have the same wild expression like with other colors.

I loved always this diversity of colors by this cats, with or without white, completely white, etc....

But the most important is their temper

The best thing of the Norwegian Forest Cat I've saved for the end like a dessert! The best was and is still this sensational temper!!! It's a composition of surrender and refusing. The cat is at the same time wolf and lamb. The cat is limpet and vagabond. The cat is wild like a storm in breakers and softly like a pillow. The cat is passion and request. The cat is wisely and is full of mischief. The cat is chaser and is also be hunted. The cat is cooing like a dove and is babbling like a parrot. The cat got an exceptional power of observation and is intuitively like Sherlock Holmes. The cat have pepper and is also so sweet. The relationship to "their" human can be very deep and this made our responsibility for this wonderful cat so immense!