Norwegian Forest Cats are a recent passion of my family.

I have been a cat lover for my whole life... When I was 4 years old, I found a little kitten under a parked car, and I took her home. Although we already had a dog, my parents decided that I could keep her, and she was my best friend for many years during my childhood.

She was a small, black and white female, and I want to ask my Mom if she still has photographs of her. I had called her "Snoozy", and she was around me almost full time. Never could I have dreamed about the existence of a giant cat like the Norwegian Forest Cat, or Wegie, short for "norwegian".

Forest Cats have been around for a long, long time. The first mentioning of their existence dates from the time of the discovery travels of the Vikings. As you might know, these warriors and discovery travellers were Norwegian. The Forest Cats were taken on their boats to hunt the mice on board, and I only imagine what people in the southern countries were thinking when they saw these giant cats!

Due to the traveling Norwegians, Forest Cats were probably the first cats to arrive in the Americas, and they are thought to be the ancestors of the Maine Coon cat, and of the Siberian Cat, both of them being very large breeds.

If you keep your Norwegian Forest Cat indoors, you will have to make sure that you groom him and you keep him happy. If yourcat is at least a part time outdoor cat, he will groom himself by rubbing his fur on trees, and thus shedding the excess hair.

Obviously, if you want to go to shows with your cat, you will have to follow a regime, in which the fur gets as fluffy and full as can be...

Although you would imagine that a big cat like this needs lots of space and exercise, they are actually quite happy sleeping big part of the day. For every cat, however, it is just great to be able to play outside, and if you have a brook or a little river nearby, your cat will adore to go fishing!

Apart from the size, this is probably the most intruiging feature of this breed: they are not scared of water!

In nature, they used to catch fish to eat, and this character trait has been preserved until now.

The video is really funny, and it illustrates the lack of fear for water. I imagine that there are not many other cats who will just keep their head under the tap like this!