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About us
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| Andy and Alison up a mountain in the Lake District |
Hi, we
are Andy and Alison Whittle and we welcome you to the Norspirit website. This page is really to introduce ourselves to
any visitors to the site who don't already know us and to give you a flavour of what we are about apart from our NFC's.
Anyway;
we live in the old market town of Ashbourne on the edge of the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire with our Norwegians.
We are both engineers and we run our own business, Peak NDT, that develops high-tec electronic equipment for use in the Non
Destructive Testing (NDT) industry.
We enjoy
just about anything to do with the 'great outdoors' and especially enjoy walking, mountain biking and skiing. (Unfortunately
Alison suffered a broken leg this year while skiing in Norway which has curtailed us showing our cats this year).
We are also fascinated about everything 'Norway'
and love visiting for holidays and family (Alison's brother lives just outside Oslo), which is probably one for the reasons
we got into Norsk Skogkatten (Norwegian cats of the forest). I love the fact that these cats had such close
ties to the early inhabitants.
We've met some really nice people on our travels
and also quite a few 'natives' (cats of course) as well as their breeders. Have a look at our page on
'Andy's take' of the history of the NFC.
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| Snowed in in Norway |
We also acquired a motorhome in 2007; so far we have been across to Norway twice in it. The first time in
the summer 2007 and the second as you can see in the Winter of 2008. It's also good for taking the cats to
shows in!
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| Near Stavanger |
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| Open Road |
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We 'escape' most weekends with our skoggy family
to our caravan, to a place in Yorkshire deep in a forest near Pickering, where our cats become Cropton Forest Cats for the weekend.
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| Nutmeg at the grand old age of 18 |
We were introduced to the NFC about 3 years ago after
or domestic 'tortie' sadly passed away at the grand old age of 18. We had decided that during the last years of her life it
would have not been fair on Nutmeg to introduce any new cats to live with her (she always was a bit of a loner and very
independent). Her housemate Sweetie had passed on 3 years before that. So when Nutty died we did some research. Andy
had it in mind that he would quite like a big cat with personality, so we came up with two breeds Norwegian
and Maine Coon. A little more research and the Maine Coon was out. So we set about meeting some Norwegians. Luckily
we came across Norsvana in Yorkshire (probably the close proximity to the caravan had something to do with it) and they had just had their first
litter of kittens so we were introduced, interviewed and that was that.
We didn't intend to show them at first, after all
they were part of our family, but they are so fantastic we wanted other people to see and meet them. Currently we haven't
shown them that much, but they have done quite well.
Last year we were joined by Vanja our first breeding
girl, who has matured wonderfully into a beautiful blue tabby with quite nice 'type'. This year we plan to have our first
litter of kittens, once we find a nice 'gentleman' for her. We will never be large breeders, only having one or maybe two
litters a year. We are more interested in keeping healthy cats and trying to do what we can to make sure that there is good
diversity in the breeding lines of the Norwegian Forest Cat.
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