TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to <jmayson@nyx.net> in message
news:telecom23.505.2@telecom-digest.org:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, no matter how many teeth you
> saw in the mouth of some particular horse, there can always be
> exceptions. For example, how many toes does a cat have on its paws?
> Some people would say 'five', which is normally the correct
> answer. But some cats have *six* toes on one (or all four) feet. The
> vernacular name for such cats is 'polydex' and my first cat 'Nicholas'
> (the one who was so warm and loving, not the later Nicholas who was
> always hateful with humans) was that way. Nicholas had six toes on
> each of his two front paws, five toes on each of his back paws. I
> guess it is some genetic thing going back a million years or so. PAT]
Polydactyl cats are particularly common (not just if you count them by
their toes) around Boston and Halifax; must have been some good
mousers in the first lot of ships to come over.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With Nicholas it appeared to anyone who
saw him that he had his 'shoes on the wrong feet'. If I held him on my
lap and crossed his legs, then it appeared normal. Nicholas was *too*
domesticated, *too* mild mannered. He would have not known what to do
with a mouse if he had seen one, he was so well fed. Now one of my
present two cats, the older one, a DLH (Domestic Long Hair) is very
friendly and peaceful, but *she* knows what to do. Although she is
also well fed she chases after the birds and insects in my back yard,
but only rarely kills the birds if she gets hungry. Only once have I
found any evidence of it: I found *half* of a sparrow in the back yard
the other day and I feel certain she did it. I think she waited until it
was at the bubbly fountain back there they drink from and bathe in,
then she pounced. I don't mind if she gets the mice which come around
now and then, and the insects (both flying or crawling) are for her,
but she loves to play with them, bat them around, etc, but is never
hungry enough to eat them. But she learned her lesson last summer from
a wasp she tried to bat around which stung her. When I heard her
squall then come limping back with her paw swollen I rushed her over
to the animal hospital. PAT]
jtaylor (jtaylor@hfx.deletethis.andara.com)