An odd convergence of topics

[fenchurch]

How curiouswombat and speakr2customrs led to a revelation about one of my dad's barn cats...

At lunch today, I was extolling the virtues of online communities to my dad... telling him about all the wonderful people I've met here and how it's led to doing things like sending Christmas cards hither and yon, including to places like The Netherlands and the Isle of Man. At which point I then had to explain exactly where and what the Isle of Man was and how cool it's been to get to know that part of the world a little bit through CW and Speaker... and I finished up with "And you've heard of Manx cats, right? That's where they're from." Just to give him something a little more concrete to tie to it.

Flash forward to later tonight when the apparently very rusty gears in my brain finally started to creak and I grabbed my laptop, googling Manx Cats...

My dad inherited a barn cat when he bought this place, and she's just a regular old tabby. My folks have finally gotten her tamed to a point where they're going to be taking her into the vet to be fixed... but earlier this year, she'd had a litter of kittens that my dad managed to find and was watching (planning to bring them into the house when they were old enough to be taken from their mother, in an effort to tame them before they went completely wild). He ended up missing a few when the mother cat started taking them elsewhere to hide them... well, one of the wild ones recently started following the tame ones into the house. She's still really skittish around people, but will occasionally play with you if you dangle string, and every once in awhile will consent to be petted. They named her Bob, because she didn't have a tail (my dad is into descriptive names, they've got Callie (a calico), Socks, Patches, Squeak and Bob).

Well, they thought Bob was deformed... because she isn't just missing a tail, she's also got an odd gait, stocky legs (with her hind legs looking taller than her front ones), a stout and short body and a rounded head. Sure enough, my googling tonight led to a page with this description: "Manx Cats can be described as robust and rounded, with compact body, big bones, and wide chest. The Manx cat is known to have a sweet expression. They have a rounded head, rounded cheeks, and rounded eyes. The ears are broad at the base and taper to narrower tips. The back is short and forms an arch. The back legs of a purebred Manx are much longer than the forelegs, so the rump is higher than the shoulders."

And then there were the pictures. Including a few that looked just like Bob. So, somehow, my dad ended up with a part-Manx cat from his pile of barncats. Not sure how that happened...

Now I'm wondering if the idea had been tickling in the back of my brain all weekend and had just been waiting for me to bring up the Isle of Man in order to figure it out. Funny how things make connections like that!

Comments

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Yay! Manxies will occasionally crop up in litters of cats with tails - she will have a manx cat somewhere in her ancestory. As soon as you said, apart from mentioning her tailessness, that your Dad had thought her deformed, I though 'she'll have long back legs'. Local tradition used to have it that they were a crossbreed between a normal European cat and a rabbit!

If she breeds she may well have some tailess kittens and some with tails, that's what happens with the locals. We do have quite a lot of farm cats and domestic moggies that are 'manx', but the 'thoroughbreds' have pedigrees, and breed true (probably!).

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Genetics is a subject of endless fascination. I've known people who discovered old photos of long ago ancestors and discover that a current family member is the spitting image.
I've seen the Manx cats at a cat show and they are very different from the local DSH.

[slm76.livejournal.com]

LJ - and other communities - can be a wonderful tool in meeting folks from all over the world. Curiously enough, you're one of the few folks I have met in real life and not just in the realms of cyberspace.

As for your cat, there's a lot of things we'd not know if not for online folks. And I'd have never known that Manxies can breed cats with tails or can crop up in litters with tales. Thanks to curiouswombat's comment below, now I do :)

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

I followed some of those links on Manx cats out of curiosity. I have seen one of two Manx's, but, of course, not as many as DSH or DLH, like the cat in my icon. The wealth of information that the internet puts at your disposal is amazing. In spite of that, there is still lots that one cannot find.

[tenel.livejournal.com]

I have two barn kitties. Help! They are really wary, neither of them meow, they hiss real well but I ignore it. I am able to pet one but the other is skittish and beyond. I want to tame them but they look about 8 months old. What to do?