to the Pirot Cattery of Maud Dickson breeding history

It all began about 1969. I was ill and my husband bought me a cat for comfort. She was a seal point siameese with an oldfashioned round face and a terrible temper. I called her Pusjkin. When she was young, she used to attack visitors, so I couldn't even keep her in the same room as my friends. To me she was my first "baby" and I loved her over everything else in the world.

My husband wanted us to enter a cat club and soon we came to visit a small cat show. Since I always loved cats, I found them all charming ... except three, one Cornish Rex and two very big neutered British Blue males. These males gave me the impression of something unnatural disgustingly overgrown. My husband loved them!

A few weeks later there was a big cat show in town. Before falling asleep the night before the show, I was thinking: "What if my husband wanted to buy one of those monsters?"

I decided that, if I could have another cat, I would not bother about how it looked. I would love it anyway. At the show my husband disappeared, for about an hour. Then he said "Come here, Maud, have a look" There she was, Brämhult Blå Florinda, a beautiful blue female. There were no males for sale. Within a year I had been given two cats. I was in heaven!

Before I knew better, I had a litter from Pusjkin. They were terrible! I got wiser and had her spayed. Now I mated little Florinda instead and had a lovely litter. I also discovered that there were very few people breeding Chartreux, as they were called then, and that there were a space, where a new breeder could develop these cats.

In 1972 I went to England to visit a big Cat Show. I soon realized, that the cats we had in Sweden were British Shorthairs and nothing else. The pedigree of Florinda had 7/8 parts English lines too. I was delighted to find that there were a lot of different colors in this breed. So I came home with a beautiful tortie female, Cherrywood Chequers. Now I had to find her a male.

Of course I had to use the best male in the country. His name was Brämhult Blå Rasmus and he was a full brother of Florinda. They had lovely children, who gave me a leading name in the Cat fancy.

One of the most famous ones was Pirot Cobby Hickory, a red mackerelled male and Pirot Cobby Queeny, a tortie female, base for the breeding of Björnligans, owned by Elisabeth Raab.

In Florindas first litter, I kept a blue female called Pirot Fatima, who was then mated to Pirot Cobby Hickory. A female in that litter, Pirot Cobby Athéna, was sold to Lars Häll, who mated her to Praetorian Germanicus, a new black English import. In that litter I bought Brogårdens Afrodite, a black female.

After Florindas first litter, I felt that I "needed" another siameese. I found Florindas kittens nice and cute but dull compared to the lively intelligent siameeses. So I bought San-T-Ree Cocktail, Sweden's first tortie siameese. She was very typy for the time and arouse a lot of discussion with her funny face. One judge even said: "How can a cat, that is so ugly, be so beautiful?" Then he made her best siameese in show out of 72 siameese cats!

In the 70th´s I went to England almost three times a year and I bought Boundary Moonbeam, a cream female, that unfortunately only lived to be four years.

An old lady found a beautiful cream male in a park. She named him Trillcott. A few years later, she had to board him, while she went into hospital. My friend, who boarded Trillcot, could not believe her eyes. She phoned me and said, in a very excited voice "WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!. He is fantastic!!" In those days our novice class was open for unregistred cats.

We asked the lady's permission and entered Trillcot to a show. He was registered and the lady had a party at the hospital! I mated him to Moonbeam and sold a female, who became the base for the creams in Sweden.

Brämhult Blå Rasmus could only sire kittens till he was eight years old and also he was related to most of the British Shorthairs in Sweden, so we needed a male. I found a nice boy, Kasimir Aether, at one of my trips.

He was breeding a lot for some years and you can find him in many pedigrees in Sweden. Two years later we went back to say hello to the Kasimir Cattery.

And there she was, Kasimir Black Tulip, a fantastic black female. I fell for her at once, but did not dare to say anything to my husband. On the way back to London, he asked me, what I thought about her and I admitted she was real first class. "Shouldn't we bye her then?" he said. So at two o'clock in the morning we phoned back and bought the kitten.

We now had a fine group of solid colored British Shorthairs in Sweden, and I started to be interested in whites. Some were brought from Finland, but they turned out no good. I had seen some beautiful whites in England but they had bad temper. So I asked permission to make a cross breeding and mated Kasimir Black Tulip to a white Persian, Midtstuens Chagall. Two of their sons were Pirot What a Day and Pirot Woodstock, who both had lovely kids.

Woodstock was mated to Cherrywood Chequers. The result was Pirot Cobby Woodhouse, a white male and Pirot Cobby Wimbledon, a cream, who was BIS many many times and the base male for Björnligans breeding.

Today we don't have many whites but those who are to be seen, should have these males in their pedigrees.

Tulip gave birth to many nice males but after 14 boys, I still had no female.

In those days the tabby colors were not as typy as the solid ones. So I mated Tulip to Finnvedens Jerker, a brown spotted male, with Swedish and British lines behind him. The purpose was to produce a nice male for someone to show and thereby make the tabby colors more popular.

To my surprise, in 1981, I got a brownspotted female, Pirot Zenobia, and a real beauty at that. Everyone said: "Don't sell that super cat as a pet." So I phoned around the whole country and she was sold to be the base female of Magic's. This cattery later produced the best British Shorthairs in Sweden.