A Word About Us

We are (well were) UK breeders of Norwegian Forest Cats and now live on the West Coast of Scotland (up until September 2004 we lived in Blackburn, Lancashire - about 1 hour South of the Lake District). (I use the term breeders, but in reality we only had 1breeding queen, who produced one litter of kittens a year). We have now spayed our only queen and are taking a break from breeding (cats that is) for a while. We hope to get a new girl in the near future.

For information about what to look for when buying Norwegian Forest Cat kittens please click here.

When we first started breeding NFC's we were Vanda and David Clunas. But we are now Vanda and David Clunas and daughter Georgina Clunas, who was born in January 1998.

This web site has been written by Vanda and put together by David, so any comments that begin with "I" refer to Vanda.

I have always loved cats, right from being a small child. There was always a cat at home from as early as I can remember. I always was cat crazy. I have probably had 6 or 7 moggies over the years. My last moggy was a black and white male called Jacob and he was the runt of the litter. Jacob was born in 1979 and I had him from a baby. Jacob lived with me and my mum at 2 different houses in Blackburn. He then came with me when I bought my own house back in 1985, accompanied me to London for my 9 month sojourn there, came back to Blackburn and then moved once again when David and I bought a house together. Jacob died very suddenly one Saturday afternoon in May 1994 aged 14 years. Unfortunately, I wasn't at home. When I got back home, David had to break the news to me. I was totally devastated. I went to see Jacob at the vets the next day and sobbed all over him. Jacob was cremated and the carved box containing his ashes sits on the bookcase. Jacob watches over us daily from a large black and white photo that hangs on a wall in the kitchen. We both missed Jacob when he went. I found myself seeing him around the house in his usual spots as well as feeling his weight on my feet in bed. It took a lot to get over Jacob. Thankfully our next door neighbours had 2 cats, so they became our surrogate companions, allowing me a daily cuddle but without bringing another cat into the house to replace Jacob.

After a number of months I started to miss the constant companionship of a cat of our own. I felt that we had an empty space to fill. I had done my grieving for jacob and now needed another cat of my own. When I raised the topic with David he knew instantly what sort of cat he wanted. It would have to be a pedigree, but also it had to be as natural as possible. A couple of years earlier I had bought a Cat World Annual, and inside was an article by Eileen Hancock on Norwegian Forest Cats. David had always admired these cats and had actually said at the time that if anything ever happened to Jacob he would like one of these. So off I went to the newsagents and came home with a copy of Cat World. We looked in the back at the adverts in the "Kittens for Sale" column. Yes there were indeed Forest Cats being advertised. So I took a note of all the telephone numbers and then rang Directory Enquiries to find out where in the country the STD codes related to. Once we had a list of where kittens were available we looked at a road atlas and decided who was easiest to get to by car. So, this is how we chose Elinor Herbert in Scotland. I made contact with Elinor and arranged to go visit her and the cats/kittens. About 10 days later we made the trip to Scotland and after having met Triggve (the cat who filled the doorway) and the rest of the household, decided that we wanted a kitten. We had been told that there were a number of kittens available to choose from, but after a three hour drive, we found out that only one was actually available to take away that day (another kitten from the same litter (Sonja) had been provisionally reserved and booked into a show at the end of the month, so even if she became available again she couldn't go to a new home until after this date). As we were only looking for a pet, we decided to (very naively) buy the first cat that was available. So home we came with Elfentanz Marit.

A few weeks later we decided that Marit was lonely so we had to get another kitten. I went out and got a farm kitten, but as it was full of everything under the sun (fleas, lice, ear mites) the vet said that we would not be able to introduce it to Marit for about 8 weeks. This defeated the object of the exercise so off I went to visit my mum taking her a present of a jet black kitten. So it was back to the drawing board. We spoke to a number of other breeders but couldn't find another kitten that was ready. So we made contact with Marit's breeder again and were eventually told that we could have Elfentanz Sonja. A few weeks later (12 November) we repeated our previous trip and brought home Sonja, Marit's litter sister. Elinor had suggested to me that I might like to have a go at breeding as there was no one in the North West breeding. This idea did appeal to me, but our home at that time was not really big enough (by my standards anyway). But we moved just a couple of months later after having completed a sale and purchase in 6 weeks, and the idea became a reality. We decided that our aim would be to produce the best quality kittens possible. We wanted to continually improve the "type" and "size" of our kittens. So far we feel that we are on target please judge for yourselves by looking at the information on the rest of our site.

Sonja was a precocious young madam and started calling at 7 months of age. So I decided that I needed to look for a stud cat. A few weeks earlier I had seen a wonderful cat on the cover of Cats magazine and looked up the details of the breeder. A strange coincidence happened then, the cat had been bred by Eileen Hancock - Kyrrekatt (Eileen's article had been our inspiration to go out and get a NFC in the first place). So contact was made with Eileen, pedigrees were exchanged and an agreement was reached to take both Sonja and Marit to stud there. Sonja would go to Hvit, whose head length would hopefully improve on her head length, and Marit would go to Hakon (Hvit's father), as she was a lovely little girl, who really only needed an injection of size. Eileen and Brian Hancock lived in Devon - a four hour plus drive, but having decided that their boys were the ones I wanted to use I made the trips anyway. So at the appropriate times Sonja and Marit went off to be mated, and so as they say "that was how it all started".

I am saddened to report that Eileen Hancock passed away very suddenly on June 7, 2004. She will be greatly missed by a number of people. Sadly no one else will directly benefit from her knowledge and advice, but her legacy lives on in her cats and the Kyrrekatt name.

I had earlier decided that I really needed a breeding prefix. As one of the most important things to us about Forest Cats is their naturalness, I decided that I had to have a prefix that reflected something about the nature of the cat as opposed to its origins. So after much hunting in dictionary's and books on Norse legend, I came up with "Klatringkatt", which is made up of 2 Norwegian words, "klatring" literally translates as "climbing" and "katt" is obviously the Norwegian word for "cat". Therefore a translation of our prefix would be "climbing cat". As one of the traits of this natural animal is its climbing ability, "Klatringkatt" really caught my imagination, especially when I discovered that NFC's come down trees head first (very unusual for a cat), so I decided that this was what I would apply for as my number one choice.

Today we have 4 NFC's, Marit and Sonja, Sonja's daughter Mani aka Mouse from our first and Sonja's only litter, Merlin from Marit's second litter. Sadly In August 2006 we lost Morry who had been rehomed with us. We lost our 6th cat Dagwood (Sonja's son) in October 2004. Dagwood finally lost his hard fought battle against CRF. He had a very happy 6 weeks in his new home, but finally could not go on anymore. Dagwood we still miss you.

I am a member of the Norwegian Forest Cat Club and in 1996 I became the Club's Secretary. I retired from this position (November 1997) for personal health reasons. I was also Secretary of the Norsk Skogkatt Society for a while and saw the Society through the process of affiliation with the GCCF. During my spells on both Committees, I also spent a number of years on the NFC Breed Advisory Council.

I have contributed to a number of magazine reviews on the NFC and have also been commissioned to write articles for a variety of cat magazines, both on the NFC itself as well as on Norwegian Forest Cat Club events.

My interest in Forest Cats is very great, I eat, sleep and breathe Forest Cats.

Please look around the rest of our site and feel free to contact us with any comments/queries that you may have.

Vanda and David Clunas

klatringkatt@btinternet.com