Some unfortunate cats acquire shortened or kinked tails accidentally. Whatever the cause, several of the approximately 900 cats at RAPS’ cat sanctuary have weird tails. Here are just a few of them.Playful little Stanley has a short tail – about half the normal length. Maybe he has some Manx genes, but he doesn’t have any other Manx-like characteristics.
Pee Wee and Sweet Pea are extreme cases of cats born with short tails. In fact, these two dear cats really have no tails at all. Sadly, their lack of a tail is accompanied by a nerve defect at the base of their spines, which results in them having no control of their bowel or bladder sphincters. Pee Wee and Sweet Pea don’t seem to notice that anything is missing “back there”, but they require daily baths to keep their hindquarters clean and healthy.
Poor T.J.’s shortened tail is the result of an accident. A few inches of his tail had to be amputated after it was caught in a door.
Aptly-named Kinko has a normal length tail but it has a few odd kinks in it. It’s just part of Kinko’s unique charm.Duffy is a friendly little youngster with seriously large plumed tail which she likes to flaunt around her less flamboyantly-tailed feline friends whereas Liam, a large, masculine cat has a skinny little rat-like tail. I’m happy to report that both tails, although rather out of proportion with the size of their owners, are in perfectly good working order, thank you very much.
Several cats at the sanctuary sport what is known as a “gay” or “husky dog” tail, which is usually carried curved jauntily over their backs. Shelley, a friendly little guy, has a tail like this.
There must have been a Japanese Bobtail cat somewhere in Lincoln’s family tree, because his tail is curled exactly like cats of this breed. For obvious reasons, this real sweetheart of a cat is sometimes affectionately referred to as “Cinnamon Bun”.
Morgan probably has the most unusual tail at the sanctuary. Cats with curly tails, like Lincoln, can’t straighten them but Morgan is an exception. She’s a pretty beige cat who may sometimes be seen with her tail completely straight but, when she likes to be more formal, she’ll wear it in an elegant spiral!
Except for the daily baths that Pee Wee and Sweet Pea don’t like much, none of these cats seem to be the least disadvantaged by their weird tails, and the other sanctuary cats don’t even notice that there’s something different about them. Isn’t that just another good lesson that we humans could learn from cats?
