Polydactyl cat
Encyclopedia
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
with a congenital physical anomaly
Congenital disorder
A congenital disorder, or congenital disease, is a condition existing at birth and often before birth, or that develops during the first month of life , regardless of causation...
called polydactyly
Polydactyly
Polydactyly or polydactylism , also known as hyperdactyly, is a congenital physical anomaly in humans, dogs, and cats having supernumerary fingers or toes....
(or polydactylism, also known as hyperdactyly), a type of cat body type genetic mutation
Cat body type genetic mutations
Cats, like all living organisms, occasionally have mutations that affect their body type. Sometimes, these cat body-type mutations are striking enough that humans select for and perpetuate them...
that causes the cat to be born with more than the usual number of toes on one or more of its paw
Paw
A paw is the soft foot of a mammal, generally a quadruped, that has claws or nails. A hard foot is called a hoof. Paws are used to pad feet for walking and increase friction.- Common characteristics :...
s. Cats with this genetically inherited trait are most commonly found along the East Coast of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
(in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
) and in South West England
South West England
South West England is one of the regions of England defined by the Government of the United Kingdom for statistical and other purposes. It is the largest such region in area, covering and comprising Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. ...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
.
Nicknames for polydactyl cats include "boxing cats", "mitten cats", "mitten-foot cats", "snowshoe cats", "thumb cats", "six-fingered cats", "Cardi-cats", "Hemingway cats", and "double-pawed cats." Two specific breeds recognized by some but not all cat fancier clubs are the American Polydactyl and Maine Coon
Maine Coon
The Maine Coon is a breed of domestic cat with a distinctive physical appearance and valuable hunting skills. It is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically native to the state of Maine, where it is the official State Cat....
Polydactyl, and named regional populations include the Boston thumb cat, Cardi-cat, Ithacat, and Vermont snowshoe cat.
Occurrence
The true polydactyly is a congenital abnormality, geneticallyGenetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
inherited as an autosomal
Autosome
An autosome is a chromosome that is not a sex chromosome, or allosome; that is to say, there is an equal number of copies of the chromosome in males and females. For example, in humans, there are 22 pairs of autosomes. In addition to autosomes, there are sex chromosomes, to be specific: X and Y...
dominant
Dominance relationship
Dominance in genetics is a relationship between two variant forms of a single gene, in which one allele masks the effect of the other in influencing some trait. In the simplest case, if a gene exists in two allelic forms , three combinations of alleles are possible: AA, AB, and BB...
trait of the Pd gene with incomplete penetrance
Penetrance
Penetrance in genetics is the proportion of individuals carrying a particular variant of a gene that also express an associated trait . In medical genetics, the penetrance of a disease-causing mutation is the proportion of individuals with the mutation who exhibit clinical symptoms...
.
Normal cats have a total of 18 toes, with five toes on each front paw and four toes on each hind paw; polydactyl cats may have as many as seven digits on their front and/or hind paws. Tiger, a Canadian polydactyl cat with 27 toes, was recognised by Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
as having the highest number of toes on a cat. (However, unofficially, this title goes to Mooch, a 28-toed American polydactyl cat from the New England state of Maine. Mooch's owners, Bob & Becky Duval, have submitted evidence to the Guinness Book of Records.) Various combinations of anywhere from four to seven toes per paw are common, and the number of toes on either the front or rear paws is typically the same. Polydactyly is most commonly found on the front paws only, it is rare for a cat to have polydactyl hind paws only, and polydactyly of all four paws is even less common.
The nickname "double-pawed cat" is a misnomer since there is a specific double paw condition, although this condition may be interrelated with polydactyly.
Feline radial hypoplasia (see squitten
Squitten
A squitten is a cat with unusually short forelegs or unusually long hind legs that resembles a squirrel. It is an example of a cat body type genetic mutation...
) is a mimic of polydactyly and is considered a severe condition. Radial hypoplasia may cause the formation of extra jointed toes, but it is not a result of the Pd gene normally associated with polydactyls. It thus does not cause the "mitten cat" or "thumb cat" condition where the extra toes occur separated from the normal ones just like a dewclaw
Dewclaw
A dewclaw is a vestigial digit on the foot of many mammals, birds, and reptiles . It commonly grows high on the leg so that in digitigrade species, when the animal is standing, it does not make contact with the ground...
, usually associated with an additional pad which makes them look like an underdeveloped foot sticking out near the base of the normal toes. Rather, radial hypoplasia-related extra toes are immediately adjacent to the normal ones, giving the cat overly large, flat feet -— colloquially known as "patty
Patty
A patty is a flattened cake, often of meat.Patty may also refer to:* Patty , a family name* Patricia, a female given name, in all forms of English* Patrick , a male given name, in Australian English and Hiberno-English...
feet" or "hamburger feet". Though this looks less serious than true polydactyly (as the feet appear "normal" apart from having one or two extra toes), breeding such cats will eventually result in severely crippled offspring. Cats used in polydactyl breeding programs can be screened by x-ray for indicators of radial hypoplasia, and cats suspected to have radial hypoplasia should not be used for breeding.
History and folklore
The condition seems to be most commonly found in cats along the East Coast of North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
(in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
) and in South West England
South West England
South West England is one of the regions of England defined by the Government of the United Kingdom for statistical and other purposes. It is the largest such region in area, covering and comprising Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. ...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and Kingston-upon-Hull. Polydactyl cats have been extremely popular as ship's cat
Ship's cat
The ship's cat has been a common sight on many trading, exploration, and naval ships, and is a phenomenon that goes back to ancient times. Cats have been carried on ships for a number of reasons, the most important being to catch mice and rats. These rodents, when aboard, could cause considerable...
s. Although there is some controversy over whether the most common variant of the trait originated as a mutation in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
or was brought there from Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, there seems to be agreement that it spread widely as a result of cats carried on ships originating in Boston, Massachusetts, and the prevalence
Prevalence
In epidemiology, the prevalence of a health-related state in a statistical population is defined as the total number of cases of the risk factor in the population at a given time, or the total number of cases in the population, divided by the number of individuals in the population...
of polydactyly among the cat population of various ports correlates with the dates when they first established trade with Boston. Contributing to the spread of polydactyl cats by this means, sailor
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
s were long-known to especially value polydactyl cats for their extraordinary climbing and hunting abilities as an aid in controlling shipboard rodent
Rodent
Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....
s. Some sailors also considered them to be extremely good luck
Luck
Luck or fortuity is good fortune which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense...
when at sea.
Genetic work studying the DNA basis of the condition however indicates that many different mutations can all lead to polydactyly and since samples from the UK and USA were shown to possess different mutations it seems likely that these cats have originated multiple times independently, rather than spreading from a single origin.
Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
–winning author Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
was one of the more famous lovers of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship's captain. Upon Hemingway's death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida
Key West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, "Hemingway Kitty Cat", or simply "Hemingway Cat", is a term which has come to describe polydactyls.
Some sources state that these cats are rare in Europe because they were killed as witches' familiar
Familiar spirit
In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits were supernatural entities believed to assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic...
s, but other sources indicate that they are quite common in southern Britain.
Caring for a polydactyl cat
This type of polydactyly is not life-threatening and usually not even debilitating to a cat. Some polydactyl kittenKitten
A kitten is a juvenile domesticated cat.The young of big cats are called cubs rather than kittens. Either term may be used for the young of smaller wild felids such as ocelots, caracals, and lynx, but "kitten" is usually more common for these species....
s initially have more difficulty in learning to walk than normal animals; however in some cases polydactyly appears to improve the dexterity of the animal. For example, a common variation with six toes on the front paws, with two opposing digits on each (comparable in use to human thumb
Thumb
The thumb is the first digit of the hand. When a person is standing in the medical anatomical position , the thumb is the lateral-most digit...
s), enables the cat to learn and perform feats of manual dexterity generally not observed in non-polydactyl cats, such as opening latches or catching objects with a single paw.
Cats usually "file down" their nails, thereby removing the outer layer. However, some of the claws of polydactyl cats are in awkward positions, so they are not able to trim them down by scratching. If proper trimming is not done, then these claws could grow into the cat's flesh and cause infection.
Breeding
American Polydactyl cats are bred as a specific cat breed, with specific physical and behavioral characteristics in addition to extra digits.The American Polydactyl is not to be confused with the pedigree Maine Coon
Maine Coon
The Maine Coon is a breed of domestic cat with a distinctive physical appearance and valuable hunting skills. It is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically native to the state of Maine, where it is the official State Cat....
polydactyl. The polydactyl form of the Maine Coon is being reinstated by some breeders.
A particular strain of polydactyl cats native to Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
is known as the Ithacat. Polydactyls are very common in the Cardigan area of Wales, where they are known as "Cardi-cats."