Breed status of the Norwegian forest cat from viewpoint of Eugenics

Abstract

The Norwegian Forest cat is one of our feline breeds in Norway. This breed emerged in the 19th century, but it wasn’t listed as an official breed before 1977. Pans Truls is the tomcat where the breed standard is taken from. He was born 1st of May 1973, and lived with the Nyland family outside of Oslo. It was the photographs of Pans Truls that got the breeding committee to decide that Pans Truls should be the breed standard for the Norwegian Forest Cat. Today the Breeding Club, Norsk Skogskattring, is working closely with the breeders to maintain a healthy breed with special appearance. Norsk Skogskattring was founded in 1975 and has today around 300 Norwegian members. They are providing the members with advices for how to breed the cats and also they help with the advertisement of the kittens. My goal has been to analyse the eugenics status of this unique cat breed to this date, its genetic diseases and further to discuss the future of the Norwegian Forest cat. The Norwegian Forest cat is not regarded as threatened by extinction and has been spreading around World as a lovely cat. It’s genetic status should be improved by screening for Glycogen storage disease IV, Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and hip dysplasia to decrease the population frequency of mutations. There are also some other genetic disease that can be found in the NFC trait which is also discussed in this paper. These are: retinal dysplasia, non pruritic granuloma and patellar luxation.