Animal House

For kitty sympathizers, there is an online petition in support of the Hemingway cats at www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?MCPI.

For those curious about the genetic mutation that gives them extra toes -- a condition formally called polydactyly -- here is a column I did on the subject last year:

These cats have fancy footwork

By Denise Flaim

Hemingway had a lot of them. And we're not talking about hangovers.

Though they sound like something out of the Mesozoic Era, polydactyl cats are, literally, "many toed," having more than the requisite five front toes (including the dewclaw, which does not touch the ground) and four rear toes. (Ironically, the noun form of the word, polydactyly, resembles the condition it describes, with that last "y" looking for all the world like a superfluous appendage.)

While the most famous of these big-footed felines reside at the "Old Man and the Sea" author's Key West home, polydactyl cats aren't as rare as one might think. Colonies persist in certain cities - many of them port towns such as Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia - and polydactyl cats have been noted in Britain and Scandinavia.

The murky history of these "mitten kittens" suggests they were favored by sailors, who, depending on what you read, thought them lucky, equilibrially enhanced or well equipped for ratting. Hemingway's first six-toed kitty was supposedly a gift from a ship's captain.

But seafaring isn't the only cause of their far-flung popularity. "Polydactyly crops up rather frequently" in cats, says Leslie Lyons, an assistant professor and geneticist at School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California at Davis. In some instances, she says, it is a mutation that just spontaneously arises.

In some breeds, such as Maine Coons, polydactyly is thought to be a simple dominant trait: Only one parent needs to be polydactyl in order to pass it on, with each offspring having a 50 percent chance of being "digitally enhanced." This is presumably how Hemingway's extended cat family earned its tropical snowshoes.

And conversely, such dominant traits are easy to breed away from, which is how polydactyl Maine Coons - by some estimates comprising 40 percent of the breed in its early days - were curtailed in that purebred population: Modern breeders simply decided not to breed cats with the trait.

Today, some Maine Coon breeders have revived these "polycoons," and are lobbying to have them accepted. In only one breed, the Pixie-Bob - created in the American Northwest to resemble the wild look of the native bobcat - are polydactyl cats considered as acceptable as "straightfoots." (Though seven toes is the official limit.)

Some of the bias against polydactyly may come from a concern that the extra toes adversely affect a cat's health or functioning.

This does not seem to be the case, says Lyons. "I see it as a rather innocuous variant," compared to others, such as Munchkin cats, which exhibit a form of dwarfism that can arguably make life more physically challenging. The extra digits even come in handy - literally. "Some polys actually use and manipulate them to grasp and pick up food."

Predictably, polydactyls are popular, "just because they're different," says Pixie-Bob breeder Amy Peterson of LegendTales Cattery in Everett, Wash. Her only caveat is that owners need to carefully trim all those excess claws, which can become overgrown and curve into the paw pad.

A footnote in this polydactyl discussion is an unfortunate phenomenon dubbed Twisty Kats by the Texas horse breeder who created a Web site about them five or so years ago. Produced from pairings of bobtailed polydactyls, these deformed cats had radial hypoplasia, resulting in underdeveloped, missing, misshapen or flipperlike forearms. The "kangaroo cats" caused a furor on the Internet, and the breeder is not offering them for sale.

Lyons stresses that the twisty mutation is "the more extreme expression" of polydactyly, and it is not a foregone conclusion that poly breeders will produce it.

But as breeders seek to revive and even create more polydactyl breeds - polys crossed with Bengals, for example, are now dubbed Mojave Spotteds - they need to be especially vigilant.

"Breeders should be responsible and breed carefully to make sure there are no health issues," Lyons says, adding that too close inbreeding and a focus on the more toes, the merrier might lead to trouble down the line.

"At some point," she concludes about the impulse to add "just one more" toe, "you have to ask yourself, 'When do you call it quits?'"

Write to Denise Flaim, c/o Newsday, 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville, NY 11747- 4250; or e-mail denise.flaim@newsday.com.

(c) Newsday

Photo credit: Amy Peterson