Photo of the day… Georgina the polydactyl kitten poses reluctantly to show off the six toes on each of her back feet. Cats “normally” only have four toes on each back foot, but Georgina (named after her probable father) has two extras (on each paw - 6 apiece). She appears to only have five toes on each front foot, which is the normal number expected for cats… but the arrangement is odd, more like five across the front pad, instead of four across the front pad plus another one set back farther. It’s apparently fairly unusual to have more back toes than front toes, or to have polydactyl expression on the back feet but not the front ones. We’ll examine them a bit more closely to see if we’re describing her front paws properly, and let you know. Meanwhile, she’s just a cutie.
Archive for ◊ September, 2009 ◊
Caprica 6, our polydactyl (”Hemingway”) cat, had two kittens about 3 1/2 weeks ago. She moved them five times. They were born outdoors somewhere, then moved into the garage at 5 days, then moved outdoors outside the garage, then far away in another outdoor location, then back into the garage again last night.
Caprica is an enigma. We don’t know where she came from. She appeared early this spring as a pregnant seemingly-teenage mother, completely feral but apparently starved enough to approach humans. We fed her well, but she lost her litter, probably not able to make milk or care for them in the condition she was in. Slowly, over the summer, she gained weight, warmed to us, and finally allowed us to begin to pet her a little bit. She never loses her nervousness entirely. On the day that we were first able to really pet her while she was lying down, we noticed that on each front paw, one of her extra toes had grown a terrifically long and horrible claw that curved around and pierced the skin between her toes, because it doesn’t wear normally. Her own claws were growing into her foot. We wrapped her up in a towel and trimmed them. We noticed the next day, and ever since, that she meowed differently - she used to yowl with each meow, and now she doesn’t so much.
Polydactyl cats have extra toes! Ernest Hemingway’s house grounds was, and continues to be, home to polydactyl cats, thus the nickname Hemingway Cats. It’s a genetic propensity that Caprica has passed to her two kittens. In fact, one of them has more toes than she does!
You can find out more about polydactyls here. And at this informative site, too.
