Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [77]
Someone has taken a Scottish Fold from its cage for a quick touch-up, and I’ve never seen one of these before either. The fancy-cat world moves too fast for me. They’re one of the genetic accidents, descended from a farm cat named Susie born in 1961 in Perthshire with her ears folded down. This struck the neighbors as interesting, and they put her into the kitten business. Breeding from only a single, accidental cat, they ran into problems and some of the Folds were born with skeletal deformities and some were born deaf, but the breeders, so fiercely do we lust for peculiar cats, persevered, and they’re well established now, with fifty or more catteries doing business in the United States. They’re said to be gentle and playful cats who like to sleep on their backs and to sit around on their haunches with their tails stuck out behind like beavers.
Now I hear we’re about to have something similar of our own, the American Curl, whose ears bend inward as if it were standing in a private eddy of wind.
This Fold submits to a small plastic blade that scoops and peaks up the fur on its nose to a jaunty ridge, visible at close quarters and lasting only until the first paw swipe. The folded ears alter its expression so much that I can’t tell how it feels or what it’s thinking. What do other cats make of it? It looks a little like an owl and a little like a Beatrix Potter cat wearing a bonnet; Tom Kitten’s mother, maybe.
One problem, I understand, is that the female’s ears straighten out when she goes into heat, and may or may not fold up again afterward. While I’d love to be around at the onset of estrus to watch the ears unfurl with longing, it still seems less cat than conversation piece, and I always worry that there may be a God somewhere who doesn’t like us fooling around with His cat like this.
At least it wears fur, though, fur like a cat. This show has a generous share of curly Rexes and wrinkled, naked, suede Sphynxes; it even turns out that there are two kinds of Rex, Cornish and Devon. “Elfin” is the word the booklet uses, and perhaps elves are what they look like, elves from outer space. I study them with quick glances and look away again as my mother told me to: “Don’t stare, darling, it’s rude.” They’re tiny cats with ears bigger than their heads and bulging out sideways like loaded saddlebags. How did we make them look like this in such a short time, starting from a farm in Cornwall in 1950 and an accidentally curly kitten named Kallibunker? And, of course, why? From the corner of my eye I stare at a cat intended to be black and white but actually, thanks to our tireless efforts, black and pink; the rows of short, soft, poodley curls are so sparse that pink skin shows through. Its face is a tiny dog’s face under the absurd ears; we’re ambivalent about ears, apparently, so that Persians and Folds are admired for having almost none, while these poor creatures must need guy ropes on a windy day. Its whiskers are gnarled stubs, as if a wicked child had singed them with a match.
Embarrassed for it, I go off to watch the judging of Norwegian Forest Cats. Now, these are cats, real cats, these Norsk Skaukatts, an honest armful of cat with honest whiskers and long, solid fur. For some reason we humans were pleased with them just as they were, and no effort has been made to make them twice as much like themselves. I check my pocketbook to make sure I have indeed left my checkbook at home.
There’s one in particular, a female (even I can see that some of the numbers are on pink cards and some on blue) whose mix of cream and dark fur, whatever it’s called, is pleasing to look at and whose charm and cheerfulness flow from her cage. Behind the judge’s back she has hooked a prize ribbon