I have something in common with Ernest Hemingway. Can you guess what it might be? Literary genius? Well, you are kind, but no. Propensity for alcohol? Oh, you apparently do not know me very well. Love of Key West? As I have only been to Florida once and it was not to Key West, no.
Give up? I have a polydactyl cat and so did Hemingway. He was famous for having polydactyl cats. Apparently, he was given one while living in Key West by a ship’s captain. He liked it, and a colony was born. Descendants of the original cat still live at Hemingway’s home in Key West.
A polydactyl cat is sometimes referred to as a Hemingway cat. It is also referred to as a mitten cat, a thumb cat, and a boxing cat.
What is a polydactyl cat? It is a cat with a genetic trait that gives extra toes. Cats usually have four toes on each paw. However, cats with polydactyly have five or more toes per paw.
Most commonly, the extra toes are found on the front paws. According to Wikipedia, it is uncommon for the extra toes to be on the hind paws. The rarest polydactyl cats have extra toes on all four paws. My cat is the rarest of them all, according to Wikipedia.
Here are a few picture of one paw:
These pictures are all of his front left paw. The first one is just taken from the front instead of the side.
The “thumbs” do not seem to hinder him at all. He is very fast, but I am not sure if that is just because of the thumbs. I find it strange to think that so many places, like Germany, find the extra toes so concerning. From what I read, they rarely cause problems for the cats or their humans. (I guess an exception would be when they were thought to be witches’ familiars in the 1600’s).
Although the thumb-like extra toes makes him somewhat unusual and was one of the first things I noticed about him, it is certainly the only unusual thing about this cat.
At first I thought his one brownish eye and one blue eye was unusual. (His former owner said he was blind in one eye, but the more I get to know him the less I think this is true). However, from my Internet research, I found that it is fairly common in white cats to have two different eye colors.
Indeed, his other oddities are all personality/habit driven and I do not think they are related to him being a polydactl. I will save those for another time.
Yes, I have very little in common with Ernest Hemingway. However, I also find the polydactl cat very interesting.
If you would like to know more about Hemingway and his cats, there is a book:
If you want to know more about my cats, keep reading this blog.
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