EC & Pr ALFHEIM`S FIE, DM

2 years old

10 years old

Fie is my first forest cat and she will always be something special to me. I saw Fie for the first time when she was about a day old, and although there really isn´t much to look at at that age, I fell totally in love with her mother, Grorudmyra´s Tina, a beautiful silver mackerel tabby imported from Norway. After seeing Tina I became the owner of my very first forest cat, Fie.

She was going on her first exhibition with her brothers as a litter, and after this I was convinced that this should be her ONLY exhibition ever! However, after speaking with her breeders, Henning and Birgit, they convinced me to put her in a show in the open class, which went very well. She did so well that after that she was shown 21 times and became a European Champion on 09.28.96 in Copenhagen.

Originally I bought Fie so she could have just one litter, and now 10 years later, I have bred 21 litters, with Fie being the mother of 6 of them. Fie is a female that weighs roughly 5 kg. She has very easy deliverys and she is a very caring mother. She is THE QUEEN of my home and she rules the household with a sometimes hard and unfair paw. She recognizes that the human are on the highest level in the ranking, but she is directly beneathe me.

Even though I had anticipated to have just one more litter from Fie it just wasn´t meant to be. Over a periode of 14 days she became "old" and that told me that she should not have her last litter but be neutered instead. And she HAS contributed to the breed big time! Of her 6 litters the A-litter, B-litter and L-litter has been showed, in the class for litters, and all has become Best In Show, every time, with competition. The L-litter had a total of 7 litters to compete against!

I hope that she will maintain being THE QUEEN in charge and so far it`s looking good. My plan is to show her and if she tells me that she likes it, I will continue to show her until she says stop:-)

Even though I knew that Fie was getting older, I didn´t think that she was so old that we were going to say good-bye to each other soon. But unfortunately Fie began to look poorly at the end of November, so I decided that I wanted my vet to take a look at her.

When she was examined, the vet found that one of Fie`s kidneys aren`t working at all, but since the other kidney is working, she is now on a special kidney-diet. She is also on an antibiotic treatment, to help fight the secondary infection she has gotten, due to her failing kidney. When a cat gets problems with the kidneys, an infection almost always occours, due to the poor immune-system.

It appeared that Fie was reacting very well to the treatment and the new diet, but she kept on losing weight and her fur started to look poorly. I toke her to the vet several times, cause I wanted an accesment from another person than myself.

On December 12th. I toke her to the vet again, because she was still looking poorly. She would still eat, but not enough to gain weight and her fur still looked like something I had never seen before. My vet has followed my cats for 6 years, and (of course) has followed my cattery closely, so she toke my hand, looked me straight in the eyes and said, "There is nothing more we can do for her, because I can´t make her remaining kidney work".

At first I didn`t really understand what she said but then I realised that she was talking about my worst case senario, a world without Fie in it! Of course I know that no one lives for ever, but I don´t consider her to be old yet, cause she is, after all, only 11 years and 5 months old.

Fie was euthanized that day and the vet performed a post mortum, because I wanted to be sure that I had made the right decision. Subsequensly it showed that Fie had been living on share will, because she had no mussle or fat anywere on her body, which also means that she would have passed on very soon, if we hadn`t helped her into the other world. The liver would also soon have showed signs of giving up, so it was the right decision we toke.

She was my first Forest Cat and the one that gave me the desire to show and breed cats for so many years as I have. Since she was my first Forest Cat, she has alwyas had a special place in my heart, a place that she will always have.