We had a much loved, beautiful black & white British shorthair
rescue cat, called Blackie that we had to have put to sleep
after 17 very happy years with us, as she had an inoperable
tumour. We decided to wait for a while before getting another
cat as we wanted to find a totally different breed as we just
couldn’t replace her with another of the same type. After
much research we narrowed it down to 4 possibilities;Russian
Blue, Turkish Van, Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat; then
Ian really wanted a big cat so that reduced it to two; the Maine
Coon and the Norwegian Forest Cat.
We thought we’d better
see what they were like in real life and so went to the National
in 2001 where we saw and met some really beautiful cats and
very informative owners. We fell in love with the Norwegian
Forest Cat so we were decided, now to find a breeder near where
we lived who would have kittens available. The Norwegian Forest
Cat Club was very helpful and gave us a list of breeders and
also their kitten list. Using these we found a breeder, in Milton
Keynes not far from where we lived, called Mary-Rose Douglas
(Vieuxtemps) who had some kittens available.
At this point we decided we had better have two so that they
were company for one another, we weren’t bothered what
colour they were but Ian wanted a male and I wanted a female.
There were three in the litter that Mary-Rose had at the time
we visited her; 2 males (blue & white tabbies) and 1 female
(ticked tortie tabby). After lots of discussion and several
visits Ian finally chose his kitten and then decided that we
couldn’t possibly leave the third one so we ended up with
all three!
As we could not have them until they were 13 weeks old I visited both them and Mary-Rose a number of times over several weeks and as a result we became friends.
During my visits she asked if I would be interested in having
a go at showing, which I said I would be. To cut a long story
short Mary-Rose showed me the ropes at GCCF and FIFe style shows
and I was hooked. Showing is great fun, you can make some good
friends and the added bonus is you can talk about cats all day.
Mary-Rose then talked me into letting Amber have a litter of
kittens and the rest is history.
