Polydactyl Cats: The Felines With Extra Toes
“Regular cats have 5 toes on their front feet & 4 on their back, for a total of 18. But polydactyl... cats boast more toes, usually on their front feet.
...the Greek root poly means ‘many’ & daktylos means ‘digits or toes’. The record holder for most toes was a kitty named Jake, who had a whopping 28.
American writer Ernest Hemingway was a lover of polydactyl cats. He was given his first polydactyl cat, a white 6-toed feline named Snowball, by a ship’s captain; today, nearly 50 of Snowball’s descendants still live at the Hemingway Home in Key West. Polydactyl cats are known by many names, including ‘Hemingway cats’,...'mitten cats’, ‘big-foot cats’ & ‘6-toed cats’ — or even ‘cats with thumbs’.
Interesting Facts
The first scientific record of polydactyls is from 1868. They were mostly found in the northeastern United States & Nova Scotia. One theory is that the first mitten kittens were brought to America by English Puritans in the 1600s.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s poly kitty Slippers was one of the first cats to purr around the White House.
Polydactyl cats often found their way onto boats because sailors believed they were good luck. They were widely recognized as top-notch mousers, & their extra toes were rumored to give them better balance while sailing the high seas.
Common Questions
New York veterinarian Dr. Arnold Plotnick of Manhattan Cat Specialists tells us a little more about polydactyl cats...
Some cats have extra toes because they inherit a gene that codes for polydactylism. If one parent is polydactyl & one parent has normal feet, then 40-50% of the kittens will also be polydactyl...
Most polydactyl cats have extra toes that look like the other toes — there are just more of them. Thumb cat polydactyly is a condition where the first digit, or the dewclaw, is so large that it resembles a thumb...
...there’s no certain breed of cat that is more or less prone to being polydactyl. However, in the past, the original Maine Coon cats had a high incidence of polydactylism — about 40%...”
Vetstreet Staff (Vetstreet.com)
April 21/2016
care2.com
Weekly Chuckle
No comments:
Post a Comment