Friday, May 1, 2009

A New Word For Precious Paws - Polydactyl




Kitten Season 2009 is here and I've been getting a heartbreaking record number of emails from the shelter. It's rainin g kittens!! This is the worst I've seen it and the shelter says they've had seven volunteers ask to be removed from the list. I still have six from last year and really shouldn't take more. It is so hard to see the faces in the photos. I did get one on Saturday from a lady who came to our adoption event. Now yesterday I picked up 4 week old brother and sister polydactyl kittens.

Polydactyl just means extra digits. They are also called thumb cats or Hemingway cats because Earnest Hemingway had several (cats not thumbs). A wonderful woman witnessed a terrible man throwing these two into a dumpster. The woman (who's name is Celeste and I will call her Mamma Celeste because she was their first human foster mamma) had to wait for a neighbor to get home to climb into the dumpster to get the kittens so she stayed vigil making sure nobody dumped any garbage on top of the babies.Sadly this lady is battling cancer and is on Chemothrapy ten hours a day so she couldn't care for them. So I picked them up yesterday. As you can see, the boy has an eye infection. They are on antibiotics and eye ointment and are doing well. They understand their litter box and are showing interest in solid food.

Polydactyls have an extra pad under that "thumb" and one or several digits
I wonder if polydactyls inspired the three little kittens nursery rhyme as these cats look like they have mittens.
So they are upstairs in the nursery now, toddling around like little drunkards. Already purring when held. Now think of the irony:
The wonderful woman who rescued these babies has cancer and the horrible man who dumped them is probably in good health.