While we are still just a day over six weeks away before we bring two new household members into the fold (checks countdown meter for third time today), I still see no reason to not write about these two handsome young devils coming through the mists to join us.
They are not your average kitten: These kittens are skogkatter.
Skogkatt. Forest cat. The plural used in the title and throughout posts like this is skogkatter. If you say it aloud (SKOOG-kaht-er), it sounds much like what they are — something Scandinavian and old, a creature that belongs at the edge of the weald rather than a set-piece in the center of a room.
The Norwegian Forest Cat is not a newfangled, upstart breed — these cats worked the farms and ships of Northern Europe for centuries before anyone thought to formalize the name, and the selection pressure was most assuredly not for mere appearance. It was for function: Dense double coat against northern winters, tufted ears and paws for cold and rough terrain, the climbing instinct and hunting drive of a cat that actually used both. They are large, slow to mature, and built for inclement weather.
They are also, by nature and centuries of selection, creatures from the edge and of thresholds. A skogkatt does not sit in the middle of things.
Grendel and Grímnir will arrive in late July at fourteen weeks of age. While I would love to have them in my hands sooner, I agree that this is in their best interests. Some breeders tend to release kittens early from their littermates and mother, where they learn valuable socialization skills and gain a sense of acceptable behavior — not only with other cats, but with humans as well (they learn what’s proper by emulating their mother’s behavior).
Males of this breed take four to five years to reach full size — somewhere between fourteen and nineteen pounds at maturity (and occasionally more), still filling out long after most cats are fully grown. What arrives in July is already showing the breed’s markers: ear tufts, paw tufts, the bone structure that will eventually carry real weight. But they are still kittens, and the work of the next several months is kitten work. I hope to be a key player in how they develop moving forward.
On training:
These little boys are in for some fun that indoor-only cats can only imagine, while keeping them safer than traditional indoor/outdoor cats are in general. Plus, we like our various neighborhood critters (especially birds) and the foxes don’t need the added competition for the squirrels, mice, rabbits and chipmunks. I think it is my responsibility to keep an apex predator out of the local ecosystem, which is why all of my current cats are indoor cats and the skogkatter will be harnessed and leashed.
I want to take these skogkatter outside. Not for performance or spectacle — not that Instagram kayak-and-summit version of the thing — but neighborhood-scale, the way you might walk a dog. At the edge of the yard. Down the block. In a nearby nature preserve. Maybe for some playtime at a nearby park. Eventually to wherever the interesting edges are within walking distance or a short drive. A skogkatt on a lead in a residential neighborhood is not performance; it’s just taking a forest cat to the nearest available forest, which happens to have lawns and sidewalks.
Getting there requires work, and the work starts as soon as they arrive, while they’re small and the world is still being assembled for them.
My philosophy is pretty straightforward. When I have trained a kitten in the past, I use positive reinforcement to get them to do things. I don’t believe in flooding or forcing.
Cats are surprisingly trainable, as long as you don’t try to train them in the same way as you train a dog. They have different motivations and different needs. The key is puzzling out what those motivations and needs are. And some of the same tactics even work, as long as you unlock how they will be most responsive.
Each cat will be initially trained separately — Grendel has his sessions, Grímnir has his. They need individual relationships with the work and with me, not a shared experience mediated through each other. The harness goes on before it means anything, before there’s any association with outdoors or restraint, just a thing that sometimes appears and involves treats. The carrier is a piece of furniture before it’s ever a vehicle. Novel surfaces, sounds, textures — all of it introduced early, kept brief, kept positive.
The obstacles are low. The bar, literally, starts on the floor (This is an Easter egg of my future plans).
On the household:
As I’ve already shared, Grendel and Grímnir are arriving into an established ecology. Five cats with their own histories, claims, and opinions about newcomers. The integration will be slow and careful, managed in stages, with particular attention to cats who have earned the right to their own space. I’ll probably document some that process as it unfolds in upcoming posts, as it will likely be educational even for someone like me who has done multiple kitten integrations over the years. Sometimes the process is effortless, other times it takes a bit of coaxing for all parties to get them to get along.
What I can say now is that the household is already in motion before they arrive — rearranging itself around an absence (the recent passing of Fennekin, which is currently showing itself in behavior modifications of the survivors) and an incoming presence simultaneously. That’s going to be worth noticing and will require some adjustments of my own.
The next six weeks, before they arrive, I’m planning on writing a little about the preparation: the reasoning behind gear choices, the first training steps, what I’ve built and why. Not a buyer’s guide, no reviews — just thinking out loud about what it actually takes to bring a skogkatt into our world and then take it back outside again.
A little longer…
Hei, skogkatter. We’re getting ready.
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