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6th page of Maine Coon Cat Polys
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| Furkats Thelma P Thacker, silver tabby poly Maine Coon Cat |
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To my knowledge there has never been a breed of cats with the polydactyl characteristic accepted for show status. As documented above this characteristic is basically not harmful. It is unclear why this harmless variation is not accepted, yet other breeds with lethal characteristics are accepted for show status.
There have been many famous polys. Our President Theodore Roosevelt had a poly named Slippers. Slippers was one of the first feline residents of the White House. At press conferences and official functions, Slippers was often the center of attention. The author Ernest Hemingway had a Maine Coon poly who was named Snowball. He reportedly had 6 toes on his front paws. The author had an estate on the island of Key West in the Florida Keys. One story sited that Snowball was a gift from one of Hemingway's drinking buddies who was a sea captain named Stanley Dexter. Another chronicle claims that a sea captain gave Hemingway a female double pawed cat who was named Princess. Sailors believed six-toed cats were lucky. Cats arrived on Key West in the early 19th century in the company of sailors looking for sunken treasure.
It is interesting to note that for approximately 100 years the descendents of Hemingway's poly Maine Coon were allowed to free breed with the local cats. This population produced poly cats with the ratio 50/50 or one poly to every small-footed cat. If the gene was going to cause crippling or deformities this population should have produced many such cats. The cats would certainly have bred poly to poly so that the poly gene would have been homozygous in many animals. Link to Definitions
continues on 7th page of Maine Coon Cat Polys
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