Remembering another genius cat
Aug. 16th, 2005 07:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sugarplumkittyI responded to someone in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
cat_lovers who asked if breeds had anything to do with a cat who loves water. Since I don't know if I ever talked about Patches the cat here, I thought I'd take my answer and expound upon it a little. After all, my interest in genetics was born with my cat's kittens in 1971.
My answer:
I don't think it has to do with breeds, but then I've always had mixed breed cats. The first cat I remember loving water was Patches, the offspring of my cat and the neighbor's. This was back in 1971 when we still believed a cat should have a litter of kittens to mature her. Both cats were "fixed" soon after the litter was weaned. Patches also reached maturity before he was neutered.
He had a fascination with water. He did physics experiments with a leather bootlace we used for a toy. He'd start by dragging it in patterns around and through the table and chair legs in the dining room while watching the end flip around. When he got tired of that, he'd drag it in a circle around the pot pie tins that held his water or milk and jerk it to see if he could flip the pie tin over. It took him a few tries to succeed. Sometimes he gave up and tipped the tin over with his paw to watch the liquid flow over the uneven floor. He'd chase the leading edge watching it intently and touching it with his paw if it slowed down.
When someone brought us a water turtle thinking it was one of our desert tortoises, we used to fill our wheelbarrow with water every few days to feed it hamburger in its natural environment. Patches loved it. He didn't care about the turtle at all. He liked to stand up on his hind legs and splash the water with his front paws.
Patches had a bob-tailed white grandfather, a calico grandmother and a mom (Binky) who was white with odd eyes. He was white except for two black patches on the top of his head when he was a kitten. The patches disapppeared with his adult fur. His father (Spooky) was a huge pure black cat with a keen mind and mellow personality. Our current genius reminds me a lot of Spooky in his physical build.
We have a cat now who also performed physics experiments with fluids until he was about two years old. Lee-Roy didn't have the tools to do Patches's experiments, so he would use his paw to carefully tip over any unattended mug or glass containing liquid just to watch the liquid pour out. Lee-Roy is half Siamese. When my hubby found him at the pound, he was in with his two seal-point Siamese sisters. He still tries to open all the cabinets and drawers on a regular basis. He taught the other cats how to open unlatched doors, no matter whether they push or pull.
I think it has more to do with active intelligence than breed.
*******
More about Binky and Spooky:
I knew who Binky's parents were because my friend Joyce owned her mother. Her father first ran a strawberry farm and then started a gardening service (with employees) when the farmland turned into apartments. He considered cats to be barn cats. You let them breed to keep the rodents down. That wasn't unusual back then.
Binky's dad was a neighborhood cat, the only white tomcat around, so it was obvious when Ginger's litter was four white cats and one black and white cat that he was the dad of at least four of them.
I fell in love with the little odd-eyed girl and talked my parents into letting me adopt her. Binky had one green eye and one blue eye. She nearly died from distemper before we got her vaccinated. We were under a lot of misconceptions about cat care back then. We thought she had to be older to get vaccinated. My mom pulled her through by force feeding her and making her drink water from a dropper. Poor Binky was a little crazy after that. I think she may have had epilepsy or something, plus she never could keep a lot of food down. Still, she and Spooky grew up together and loved each other. When she went into heat, they mated several times and rested on the step outside my parents' bedroom with all the other male cats in a semi-circle around them. It looked like the king and queen with their court. LOL
I'd had high school biology by this time and learned about Gregor Mendel's experiments with genetics. We learned a little about human genetics and recessive traits. Going by that, I expected proportions three black and one white kitten. To my surprise, Binky's four kittens didn't match that. The first kitten was Dribbles, a black and white "tuxedo" male with a black blotch on his chin. He woke me up crying with cold while she had the second one, a pure white male I named Bingo because he looked just like his mom. I woke my mom and we set Binky up in the birthing box I'd intended her to use. She used my bed for the first. Under the bed for the second. The third was Patches. The fourth was the only female, another black and white tuxedo cat we called Scooter. I had to break the afterbirth on her little face. Binky was a small cat and was totally exhausted from birthing four 5 ounce kittens. They were two ounces larger than average according to the cat magazine I had at the time. All of the kittens kept their names for life, except Dribbles morphed into Doobers for reasons my cousin never would say.
That confused me. I expected at least one all black kitten. A study of cat genetics gave me the answer. The odd-eyed gene carries white spotting with it. Since odd eyes are a recessive trait, Binky got the odd-eyed gene from both parents. The white spotting part is dominant. All the tuxedo cats you see have the odd-eyed gene. In pure white males with odd-eyes, there is also a chance of deafness.
It was interesting seeing their personalities develop. Patches was the most mellow. At first we thought he might be a mentally retarded because he didn't play with the energy of the others. The other three were typical hyperactive kittens. They'd leap and try things and fail. Then Patches would get up and succeed at the challenge with his first attempt. We caught on pretty quickly that he was observing and thinking. He grew faster than the others, maybe because he wasn't burning off as many calories! My mom fell in love with him and we kept him.
I don't know if it was the odd-eyed gene that did it, but both Binky and her brother Malcom were a bit crazy. You could be petting them and suddenly their eyes would glaze over and they'd visciously attack your arm, holding it with their teeth and front claws while repeatedly gouging with their back claws. The only way to minimize damage was to stay calm and not fight them while speaking calmly and soothingly. Binky would slowly come out of it, look disoriented and slink off to hide
All three of Binky's boys lived 17+ years. The two tuxedo cats went to my cousin. The little girl was hit by a car in front of her home before she was six months old. :( A friend at school took the pure white boy. She told me at our 20th reunion how long Bingo had lived and how wonderful a cat he was.
Right after Patches was neutered, someone dumped a pair of kittens at the school across the street. One was black and white and one was grey and white. I found a home for the black and white kitten by sitting outside a grocery store. A little girl with deaf parents talked them into letting her have the kitty. They went right back into the store and bought everything for the kitty, so I knew they were a good family to take her. The only person interested in taking the grey and white one was a teenaged boy who said he'd just dump her if things didn't work out. I turned him away.
The little kitten knew who she had to convince and sat on my dad's lap purring. She's verbalize with a hum instead of opening her mouth. When he named her Mazda after the car commercials, "The car that goes Hummmm" we knew Mazzie was there to stay. Patches was thrilled. A little girlfriend of his own to play with! He didn't understand his odd feelings and they had a game where he'd call her in the hallway when everyone was in bed. She'd wake up and come to play. They'd chase up and down the hall until he caught her, holding her by the scruff of the neck and sitting on her. ("What was that I used to do? I just can't remember!") Finally she'd kick him off and they'd do it again. Their love for each other was obvious. That went on until he was 17 and she got too sick with feline leukemia to play anymore. He never caught it from her. He'd wash her face and sit by her. After Mazzie died, Patches suddenly got old and died about six months later. We think he died of a broken heart.
His mom, Binky, never did get healthy. One evening when she was five years old we saw her chasing moths under the street light. The next morning she was lying dead by the cat door in the side yard. An autopsy showed bleeding around her pancreas and kidneys. The vet didn't know what could have caused it. There was no sign of trauma. He said the bleeding could have been chronic. It's a good thing her kittens seemed to get their health from their dad. He lived to be 17 himself.
cat_lovers who asked if breeds had anything to do with a cat who loves water. Since I don't know if I ever talked about Patches the cat here, I thought I'd take my answer and expound upon it a little. After all, my interest in genetics was born with my cat's kittens in 1971.My answer:
I don't think it has to do with breeds, but then I've always had mixed breed cats. The first cat I remember loving water was Patches, the offspring of my cat and the neighbor's. This was back in 1971 when we still believed a cat should have a litter of kittens to mature her. Both cats were "fixed" soon after the litter was weaned. Patches also reached maturity before he was neutered.
He had a fascination with water. He did physics experiments with a leather bootlace we used for a toy. He'd start by dragging it in patterns around and through the table and chair legs in the dining room while watching the end flip around. When he got tired of that, he'd drag it in a circle around the pot pie tins that held his water or milk and jerk it to see if he could flip the pie tin over. It took him a few tries to succeed. Sometimes he gave up and tipped the tin over with his paw to watch the liquid flow over the uneven floor. He'd chase the leading edge watching it intently and touching it with his paw if it slowed down.
When someone brought us a water turtle thinking it was one of our desert tortoises, we used to fill our wheelbarrow with water every few days to feed it hamburger in its natural environment. Patches loved it. He didn't care about the turtle at all. He liked to stand up on his hind legs and splash the water with his front paws.
Patches had a bob-tailed white grandfather, a calico grandmother and a mom (Binky) who was white with odd eyes. He was white except for two black patches on the top of his head when he was a kitten. The patches disapppeared with his adult fur. His father (Spooky) was a huge pure black cat with a keen mind and mellow personality. Our current genius reminds me a lot of Spooky in his physical build.
We have a cat now who also performed physics experiments with fluids until he was about two years old. Lee-Roy didn't have the tools to do Patches's experiments, so he would use his paw to carefully tip over any unattended mug or glass containing liquid just to watch the liquid pour out. Lee-Roy is half Siamese. When my hubby found him at the pound, he was in with his two seal-point Siamese sisters. He still tries to open all the cabinets and drawers on a regular basis. He taught the other cats how to open unlatched doors, no matter whether they push or pull.
I think it has more to do with active intelligence than breed.
*******
More about Binky and Spooky:
I knew who Binky's parents were because my friend Joyce owned her mother. Her father first ran a strawberry farm and then started a gardening service (with employees) when the farmland turned into apartments. He considered cats to be barn cats. You let them breed to keep the rodents down. That wasn't unusual back then.
Binky's dad was a neighborhood cat, the only white tomcat around, so it was obvious when Ginger's litter was four white cats and one black and white cat that he was the dad of at least four of them.
I fell in love with the little odd-eyed girl and talked my parents into letting me adopt her. Binky had one green eye and one blue eye. She nearly died from distemper before we got her vaccinated. We were under a lot of misconceptions about cat care back then. We thought she had to be older to get vaccinated. My mom pulled her through by force feeding her and making her drink water from a dropper. Poor Binky was a little crazy after that. I think she may have had epilepsy or something, plus she never could keep a lot of food down. Still, she and Spooky grew up together and loved each other. When she went into heat, they mated several times and rested on the step outside my parents' bedroom with all the other male cats in a semi-circle around them. It looked like the king and queen with their court. LOL
I'd had high school biology by this time and learned about Gregor Mendel's experiments with genetics. We learned a little about human genetics and recessive traits. Going by that, I expected proportions three black and one white kitten. To my surprise, Binky's four kittens didn't match that. The first kitten was Dribbles, a black and white "tuxedo" male with a black blotch on his chin. He woke me up crying with cold while she had the second one, a pure white male I named Bingo because he looked just like his mom. I woke my mom and we set Binky up in the birthing box I'd intended her to use. She used my bed for the first. Under the bed for the second. The third was Patches. The fourth was the only female, another black and white tuxedo cat we called Scooter. I had to break the afterbirth on her little face. Binky was a small cat and was totally exhausted from birthing four 5 ounce kittens. They were two ounces larger than average according to the cat magazine I had at the time. All of the kittens kept their names for life, except Dribbles morphed into Doobers for reasons my cousin never would say.
That confused me. I expected at least one all black kitten. A study of cat genetics gave me the answer. The odd-eyed gene carries white spotting with it. Since odd eyes are a recessive trait, Binky got the odd-eyed gene from both parents. The white spotting part is dominant. All the tuxedo cats you see have the odd-eyed gene. In pure white males with odd-eyes, there is also a chance of deafness.
It was interesting seeing their personalities develop. Patches was the most mellow. At first we thought he might be a mentally retarded because he didn't play with the energy of the others. The other three were typical hyperactive kittens. They'd leap and try things and fail. Then Patches would get up and succeed at the challenge with his first attempt. We caught on pretty quickly that he was observing and thinking. He grew faster than the others, maybe because he wasn't burning off as many calories! My mom fell in love with him and we kept him.
I don't know if it was the odd-eyed gene that did it, but both Binky and her brother Malcom were a bit crazy. You could be petting them and suddenly their eyes would glaze over and they'd visciously attack your arm, holding it with their teeth and front claws while repeatedly gouging with their back claws. The only way to minimize damage was to stay calm and not fight them while speaking calmly and soothingly. Binky would slowly come out of it, look disoriented and slink off to hide
All three of Binky's boys lived 17+ years. The two tuxedo cats went to my cousin. The little girl was hit by a car in front of her home before she was six months old. :( A friend at school took the pure white boy. She told me at our 20th reunion how long Bingo had lived and how wonderful a cat he was.
Right after Patches was neutered, someone dumped a pair of kittens at the school across the street. One was black and white and one was grey and white. I found a home for the black and white kitten by sitting outside a grocery store. A little girl with deaf parents talked them into letting her have the kitty. They went right back into the store and bought everything for the kitty, so I knew they were a good family to take her. The only person interested in taking the grey and white one was a teenaged boy who said he'd just dump her if things didn't work out. I turned him away.
The little kitten knew who she had to convince and sat on my dad's lap purring. She's verbalize with a hum instead of opening her mouth. When he named her Mazda after the car commercials, "The car that goes Hummmm" we knew Mazzie was there to stay. Patches was thrilled. A little girlfriend of his own to play with! He didn't understand his odd feelings and they had a game where he'd call her in the hallway when everyone was in bed. She'd wake up and come to play. They'd chase up and down the hall until he caught her, holding her by the scruff of the neck and sitting on her. ("What was that I used to do? I just can't remember!") Finally she'd kick him off and they'd do it again. Their love for each other was obvious. That went on until he was 17 and she got too sick with feline leukemia to play anymore. He never caught it from her. He'd wash her face and sit by her. After Mazzie died, Patches suddenly got old and died about six months later. We think he died of a broken heart.
His mom, Binky, never did get healthy. One evening when she was five years old we saw her chasing moths under the street light. The next morning she was lying dead by the cat door in the side yard. An autopsy showed bleeding around her pancreas and kidneys. The vet didn't know what could have caused it. There was no sign of trauma. He said the bleeding could have been chronic. It's a good thing her kittens seemed to get their health from their dad. He lived to be 17 himself.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 06:40 pm (UTC)My other cat Rascal (a half angora, half persian) would sit on the side of the bath tub and put her tail in the water and watch it float.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 10:42 pm (UTC)we force bathe them once a month....much to their unhappiness....so they've become acclimated.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 11:46 pm (UTC)Aiko doesn't mind water one bit. She's gotten into the tub with me before.
My first cat ever was named Patches.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 03:21 am (UTC)