McPolys

Right is Furkats Air P Jordon who is a blue tabby and white Maine Coon poly. He has a double dewclaw and a dewclaw on his back legs  Photo is by Lou Kritz of Pro Pet Photography.  He is the type of cat that I remember from my youth. I would have called her a mitten pawed grey tabby. As an adult I have come to learn that there is no such thing as a grey tabby and that the mitten pawed cat is not a treasured characteristic for a Maine Coon Cat. It is the purpose of this article to help to correct some of the misinformation about Maine Coon cat polys and to support the statement that the polydactyl is a part of our American Heritage. An article from Cornell University, Cat Watch, (1998) stated that studies done on polydactyl cats, beginning in the 1940's and continuing into the 1970's, showed that the trait probably initially occurred in cats who came over from England to the Boston area with the Puritans in the mid-1600. This article also speculated that it was possible that the mutation developed in cats already in the Boston area. Scientist surmise that the immediate descendents of these cats may have lived on board trading ships, and soon found their ways to Halifax, Yarmouth MA, and Nova Scotia, which now have sizable multi-toed cat populations. In Europe, polydactyl cats are virtually non-existent, because during Medieval times any cat which was unusual was put to death due to superstitions regarding witchcraft (Kelly, Larson, 1993). A reliable source in Sweden (1998) reported that they do see polys in the household pet population and a reliable source in Europe (1998) reported never having seen a poly household pet. The only polys that my European source had seen were registered Maine Coons. (It should be noted that any type of cat can be a polydactyl not just the Maine Coon.) When researchers were taking censuses of polydactylous cats, they found that areas close to Boston had greater populations of polydactylous cats than New York City or Chicago.

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