Twisted, gnarled and stubby
In my novella Change of Lifestyle, a stressed London teacher suffers a personal and public betrayal and moves to Jakarta. He is promptly adopted by an Indonesian cat called Marshall Law. Like many Indonesian cats, Marshall’s tail is described as “twisted, gnarled and stubby.”
But why do so many Indonesian cats have these strangely deformed tails?
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
Well, of course, there are the myths and legends. (Spoiler alert, they’re more fun than the science section).
There’s the story of the Indonesian king who wanted to drink a cup of tea that had had been poisoned. Luckily, his loyal cat knew it had been poisoned and wrapped its tail around the cup to stop him. Sadly, the king couldn’t take a hint and pulled the cup so hard the poor cat lost half its tail.
A similarish story tells of a princess who wanted to wash her hands in a river, but she had nowhere to put her rings. A cat offered its tail as a ringholder, and the sheer amount and weight of them deformed its tail.
Another myth is the Chinese belief that there are only a certain amount of spaces in Heaven for perfect creatures. In this myth, cats are the height of perfection (certainly, my two Indonesian cats believe that) – but there wouldn’t be enough spaces for all of them. Therefore, some cats had to have their tails cut off.
WHAT’S THE SCIENCE?
“But what’s the science?’ I hear you cry, somewhat boringly.
In all likelihood, the Indonesian cat’s kinked, crooked tail is caused by a dominant genetic flaw, meaning that if only one parent has it, it gets passed to the next generation. On top of that, Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of 17,000 islands. So when the flaw is introduced, other cats can’t simply cross a land border and weaken this genetic defect.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
While we lived in Indonesia, we adopted two street-kittens who were way too young to have been separated from their mothers. Both have full tails, but the second, and naughtier one, is called Bertie, and he has a very pronounced kink at the end of his. When we took him in, a vet said the end of the tail would probably drop off at some point, although it never has. Marshall Law is very much based on Bertie, who, now we have moved back to England, is very much the hoodlum of our street.
Change of Lifestyle is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
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