Hei, Skogkatter — 19jul26

It is very hard to believe that it will only be a few more days until this house is filled with new floof and chaos. I occasionally wonder at the wisdom. Or lack thereof.

Anyway, money has changed hands and, ready or not, not one but two fairly large kittens with the DNA to grow into even larger cats will be joining the tribe. We just need to do a little drive and back on Friday and suddenly two Norsk skogkatter, Norwegian Forest Cats, will run rampant in the home.

Grendel and Grímnir were already well on their way to a large size, last time I got some numbers to check their growth rate right after the July 4th holiday. Back then, at 11.5 weeks, they were 3.7 and 3.5 pounds, respectively. While I only have two data points to judge by, they are well above normal kitten weights and projected to be 4.5 to 5 pounds when we pick them up next week, assuming they follow kitten typical growth trends (above the chart, but they are growing at a similar rate). I’m just enough of a geek that I am interested in how that growth curve changes over time.

Enough numbers and weirdo geek stuff, Michael! Where are the pictures?!?!?

Well, here those lads are together as a collective menace.

What has started to surprise me a bit is how grey looking Grendel has gotten in just a few short weeks as his fur grow out. He used to be the darker of the two and, while some of this might be the effect of the lighting and low-quality phone camera, it seems that he’s gotten much lighter:

In the meantime, Grímnir has retained his darker, less floofy, traditional longhair look:

I’m willing to bet money that Grímnir is just a slight be behind the curve in the floof department and will probably puff out a bit and become lighter on the dark parts even as soon as pickup day. It’ll also be interesting to see how they compare in person and with a higher quality camera in better lighting taking the shots.

One of the things I am noticing: compared to my other cats, their rear leg’s knees are set a little differently, longer and more articulated. It probably explains how the breed is good for running up trees as not having the typical cat issue of getting back down. That said, I just watched Pixel, my Ragdoll cat, do a classic videogame “double jump” up a new cat tree without relying on a horizontal surface except the ground, tagging the smooth box on the way up. He does those kinds of acrobatics — a total parkour cat. I haven’t a clue how he manages crap like that.

Friday. Wow. Can we even stand it?

One thing about the breeder, she likes to take a meal in with the adopting family (her treat). I am impressed and feel awkward at the same time. While some of us would rather just pick up and head back home, I feel it is important to develop that camaraderie with the breeder in case questions come up or if you need to let them know something (not to go into it here, but the Maine Coon breeder talked big about maintaining contact, but seemed annoyed when it became important to discuss something we were observing with her cats; she basically avoided us when complications came up and we tried to reach out).

Life is about to get interesting, I think.