Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Ten kitties: friend or foe?


Judging by the terrible howls we hear at night, cats here fight constantly over their territory. These two decided to be friends, at least temporarily.

Both of these kitties have short tails with a kink at the end, which is very common here. There are various theories for this, including some involving human cruelty, but I suspect it's genetic.


Here's a closer look at the kinky tail.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

i've always suspected that it's genetic. i had one cat before, gave birth to five kittens, some of them had the kinky tails, nothing was done to them whatsoever, Mowgli took good care of them little ones (we've since given them away, i can't take care 6 cats)

it'll be interesting to investigate further tho.

Anonymous said...

i was told that it was a buddhist thing: that cats embodied a close-to-perfect state (grace, cleanliness, beauty, true understanding of the wonders of sunlight and string, etc.) and so to keep them from being too content and thus never achieving enlightenment, the monks would break their tails.

it's much nicer to think it's genetic, and perhaps more probable. I heard this in Thailand, where all the cats looked that way. Jakarta isn't particularly buddhist, like Thailand. I have to say that, while I never liked thinking badly of buddhists, I am a bit discomfited to find that I've swallowed this tale of tails whole.

jdh

Trish said...

Ya, I'd hate to think people around here could be cruel to cats on such a massive scale. Furthermore, I kind of question whether you could get the tails to kink permanantly like that. So I'll stick with the genetic theory. (I have to say, though, that from what I've heard being Buddhist doesn't always mean being nice to animals.)

Mowgli sounds like a good ole pup. Is he a Jakarta dog? Did you get him off the street? How do the neighbors relate to him?