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I'm not 100% sure these are Norwegian forest cats, I heard there are some breeds that look similar like the Siberian cat. I think they are just domesticated cats that adapted to the climate over the centuries. It is said of the Norwegian forest cat that the medieval vikings kept them to hunt mice and they even traveled on their ships for that reason.
I don't think their faces look aggressive in this picture, the red cat on the right is actually "smiling" at the person behind the camera, by narrowing the eyes and/or blinking, that means they are being friendly to you. The other cat has a somewhat neutral expression.
Wikipedia has articles on the Norwegian forest cat and the Siberian cat, they look similar and are possibly related breeds.

Seconded! It's so nice to see your pets, guys!



With a short ‘I’ like big. And the o isn’t pronounced like the English “oh”. It’s like the German u, used in words like "Du" and "Schule", if you know how that’s pronounced.
In Norwegian, 'i' is always pronounced that way. Although in some words it can be drawn out the same way as in the word 'key'. A Norwegian example would be 'vite' (know).


Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I don’t always trust it either, lol. There are only two European countries starting with ‘N’ though, so there was only one option left after the Netherlands.



Yeah, of course they want attention. They’re part of the flock, after all. In Sissi’s case I think she was jealous too.

That’s really funny! I liked it so much that I had to read it to my mother (she is also an animal lover). She laughed, then got serious and said that animals do understand when they’re laughed at. Usually they don’t mind you laughing, but when you laugh at them, they react.
When I was 8 or 9 I was sitting on a wall. Sissi tried to jump up too, but failed and fell down. She looked a little lost and I laughed. Please note, I didn’t intend to be mean to her, I just didn’t think a dog would understand laughter and connect the dots. I tried to call her over, but she ignored and avoided me for a while. I really just chalked it up to coincidence until something similar happened again. I still think it’s amazing that they can understand such a thing. The implication that they understand what laughter is and what you’re laughing at… (at least when it’s at them)
By the way, no need to be there. The image of your cat was very clear in my mind and I laughed just thinking about it. I’m actually chuckling just thinking of how she acted!

One funny Viggo story: I wasn’t there when it happened, I’ve just been told this.
My mother walked Viggo when they stopped by a shop. Inside was a mirror. Viggo saw his own image and approached it eagerly. When he came up to the mirror he sniffed and looked behind it. He clearly saw it was a dog, but didn’t understand it was himself. He then went in front of the mirror again, to no avail.

I once showed my turtle Nemo a picture of herself. She looked at it with interest, then sniffed it, and lost all interest. That was the only time she ever reacted to a photo.

Yes these are funny stories
I read in a book witch deal with ethology (written by Konrad Lorenz) my favorite funny observation.
I'm sure you have already seen dogs, running up, and down while they snarling with an other (stranger) dog, along the fence.
Well, when Lorenz's dog did the same with the neighbor dog, but there was a buildings, at the neighbor's house or garden, I don't remember, anyway, the fence was teared down partly. The two dogs run towards the gap, they barked, snarled, It seemed, if there wouldn't the fence they started fight immediately.
When they arrived to the gap, they stopped, and.... after a couple of minutes they run back to the fence, and continued running, but always turned back before the gap
I think It could be funny

That's a funny observation indeed! Seems those dogs took the idiom 'all bark and no bite' literally!

Dogs are my life. I greatly approve of this thread.

I grew up with the dog above and I wish I had a better picture of her on my computer, because she was very beautiful and the picture does not do her justice. She passed away in December and I still miss her very much. I guess the only story I can think to share involving her is that when she was about 7 years old, she had wandered from our yard to nearby nature trails. Somebody had found her and thought she was a stray (because stray dogs TOTALLY wear collars!). If I remember correctly, the person who found her was a teenage girl and she initially decided that she was going to keep her until her mother, who I assume she does not live with, was informed of the situation and told her that the dog was clearly somebody's pet and she could not keep it. Her mother thankfully looked for the owner and she ended up being rightfully returned home to us after nearly a month. She had put on a lot of weight in her time away.

I have a puppy now, but no pictures to share currently haha.

That looks similar to my sister's first dog. She had a head similar to that which for some reason didn't seem to match her body

Yay, more 'dog' people What kind of puppy do you have Logston?
I have a little Shih Tzu, and although she follows me everywhere, she carries a tennis ball with her and entertains herself, she can dribble it (ie basketball), flip and catch it, her favorite game is to pull a blanket over it and burry it in the folds, and try to dig it out. This goes on for hours every day.

She's an Australian Shepherd. She's a ball fanatic as well, but prefers to beg me to play fetch with her over self-play. She'd chase after a ball all day if I let her. Crazy amounts of energy in this one...



What kind of dog was she? A mix?

Logston, she's gorgeous! Australian shepherds are lovely

So sorry for your loss, I know how much it hurts.

None of my two dogs were very playful, but we used to know a Border Collie mix who was a ball fanatic. She would start her walk with one ball, then replace it with the next ball she found on her walk and so on. Her name was Laika and she was quite the character. Very playful. She would even enter gardens to collect a ball.

Awwww, I'm so glad you appreciated the humor in that story----and, even told your mom about it; that was COOL!!

Yeah, animals seeing themselves in a mirror, has always been extremely entertaining!! LOL

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Logston: I love the picture of your shepherd----they're FABULOUS dogs!!

Amity: That's a GREAT story about your dog!! She can dribble? Really? LOL I think that's SO COOL!! I love that she buries it, too----and, that it can go-on, for HOURS!! Maybe she's a little Aspie----and balls are her special interest, and she has hyper-focus!! LOL

Yup she can actually dribble, she flips it forward to make it bounce, chases after it, paws it forward on the second bounce, chases after it and keeps the bounce moving forward in this way. Such a low maintenance dog, she only likes the worn tennis balls because they are fluffy and easier to carry. I think her hyperfocus is a little bit more ADHD, high energy, and she is a risk taker, another of her 'ball games' is with one of the Rotties. The big dog steals the balls from her basket, and as soon as the Rottie is distracted and leaves her tub, the Shih Tzu jumps into it, eyeballs the Rottie and takes her tennis balls back, this happens a few times every day too.

This is a picture of Whiskey as a growing puppy. He's half Great Pyrenees.

Whiskey is a very friendly dog, but also about the least intelligent dog I have ever had. Every other dog learned to stay away from porcupines within three encounters. Whiskey has had something like 15 or so encounters with porcupines. I told the vet once that we weren't going to have to deal with digging out any more quills because he had denuded every porcupine in the area.

He also encounters skunks a lot. It's not unusual for him to smell strongly of skunk.

Needless to say, he is an outdoors dog.

The rate of such encounters with porcupines and skunks has declined a lot but that is probably because he is getting old and doesn't get around as well as before. I don't think he's gotten any smarter.

I love that story about Whiskey, I like harmless dogs like that. Was he the same dog that you used to make food for (in work I think), or was that someone elses dog?

That was someone else's dog -- a Maltese belonging to a coworker. He died and she now brings her new dog, a Shih Tsu Maltese mix, to the office. The new dog doesn't tolerate people food very well so I don't feed him. The one time I did feed him, he puked for an hour.

lol! Sounds so cute. I know a crazy ball-obsessed BC whose owner takes her to tennis courts whenever they're running low on decent balls. The BC hops into and scouts out all of the bushes to find lost balls that nobody bothered to retrieve. Pretty much always ends the trip with at least 10 tennis balls.


@Eric: The porcupine thing reminds me of some dog meme I saw that said "It's better to have eaten something and then thrown it up... and then to have eaten it again... than to have never eaten it at all." Dogs will be dogs haha.

Oh, listen to THIS..... I watched a tribute to David Letterman, last night, and they had a dog on there who dribbled basket balls, and I thought of you / your post, and SMILED, great big!!