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Six-toes

1K views 17 replies 15 participants last post by  Kaia Cat 
#1 ·
Hello, just found your forum...

Here's "Six", my polydactyl cat. Six toes on each foot and a sweet little girl. Almost like she has opposable thumbs. She thinks this makes her the smartest of the 3 cats we have. (The other 2 cats are 'normal') Once she learns how to turn the door-knob with that 'thumb' we all better watch out!

the 'thumbs'


look of wisdom...
 
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#10 ·
She is so sweet!

We have a polydactyl too! He's got thumbs on the front and his back extra toes are almost where dog's dew claws are...but in different spots. LOL He's a manx too, so he has a 3 inch tail and it has a hook in the end of it. His name is Razzle.

Here he is!


My sister also has a polydactyl that has so many toes I lost count. He's a maine **** and this is a pict of him when he was a kitten...he's HUGE now. His name is Wasabi.





My other sister always talks about Razzle's thumbs and that one of these days he's gonna let himself outside.

My husband and I had him outside on a harness and lead and he kind of went under the deck and somehow got out of the harness! I said he had planned it and stuck his little thumbs under it and wriggled out! LOL
 
#12 ·
Wiki article

there's a bit of description on the polydactyl wiki article but it doesn't give a good explanation of why.

I'd heard one story based on the fact that Polydactyl cats are also sometimes called "Captain's Cats". Theory being that cats' kept on ships over long voyages to keep the mice out of the cargo ended up being inbred (because of the closed environment) thus tending to produce more genetic abnormalities. If you believe the wiki article, it says polydactyl feet actually may give the cat more dexterity. So it may actually be a benefit to the cat and thus so, helping to keep the trait around. That is instead of some genetic abnormality that would hinder the cat and thus make it less likely to survive the long, hard sea voyages and thus less likely to pass on the trait.
 
#13 ·
Effect rather than cause

One of the articles referenced in the wiki takes a different twist of the sailing ship idea. says that ship captains thought that six toed cats where 'lucky' so people tended to give them to them, thus building the relationship between polydactyl cats and ship captains.

So your choice, cause or effect. They ended up on ships because they had six toes or they ended up getting six toes because they were on ships!
 
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