What breed of cat is this

fionasmom

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DSH mackerel striped tabby? Is there not a tail or only a little stump of one?
 

fionasmom

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There is a feral who comes to my house for food and has been in the neighborhood for years who has a stump of a tail. None of us believe it was an amputation but just the way that he was born. I am completely a rescuer of dogs and cats, so am not up on genetics or breeds but someone here probably knows if that means there is any Manx in him, or some other variety, or if this occurs once in a while in nature.
 
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Nick1302

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There is a feral who comes to my house for food and has been in the neighborhood for years who has a stump of a tail. None of us believe it was an amputation but just the way that he was born. I am completely a rescuer of dogs and cats, so am not up on genetics or breeds but someone here probably knows if that means there is any Manx in him, or some other variety, or if this occurs once in a while in nature.
I thought it was a max all my life, but I took it to the vet recently, and the papers said american shorthair. I looked up pics of an american shorthair, and this cat to me looks so much closer to a manx. Do you think the vet could have been wrong?
 

vince

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I think I see extra toes on his feet too. If so, in addition to what the others have said, he's a polydactyl cat. It's a fairly common mutation and some of them can grip things with their paws, sort of like a thumb.
 

StefanZ

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There is a feral who comes to my house for food and has been in the neighborhood for years who has a stump of a tail. None of us believe it was an amputation but just the way that he was born. I am completely a rescuer of dogs and cats, so am not up on genetics or breeds but someone here probably knows if that means there is any Manx in him, or some other variety, or if this occurs once in a while in nature.
This happens now and then in nature.

Also, inbreeding is quite common in many milieus, and if so, we may get some quite odd results.

This cat has the stumpy tail, extra toes, visibly longer hind legs... It may be some local natural breed, it may be an occasional result, it may be an inbreeding...
 

i see fire.

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I thought it was a max all my life, but I took it to the vet recently, and the papers said american shorthair. I looked up pics of an american shorthair, and this cat to me looks so much closer to a manx. Do you think the vet could have been wrong?
If I recall correctly, DSH / DLH is just their way of saying how long the animal's fur is (I had a vet mark my cat as Angora/DLH even though I put Angora mix) but also DSH/DLH are essentially mutts of the cat world, or another term for it with coat length in mind.
 

Kieka

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If I recall correctly, DSH / DLH is just their way of saying how long the animal's fur is (I had a vet mark my cat as Angora/DLH even though I put Angora mix) but also DSH/DLH are essentially mutts of the cat world, or another term for it with coat length in mind.
Domestic Shorthair and Domestic Long hair are the breed assignment for domestic cats in general. Purebred cats have only been a concept in cats for a few hundred years with most breeds being less than 100 years old. True purebred cats represent only 5-10% of the worldwide cat population (and that is an extremely generous estimate), which means that more than 90% of the cats out there are either domestic Shorthair or domestic longhair. If you want to call them the equivalent of a mutt, that would be a moggy but a moggy is still a domestic Shorthair or domestic longhair.
 

Kieka

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I thought it was a max all my life, but I took it to the vet recently, and the papers said american shorthair. I looked up pics of an american shorthair, and this cat to me looks so much closer to a manx. Do you think the vet could have been wrong?
Manx is a very specific breed of shorttailed cats, but they were developed from domestic Shorthair cats with naturally occurring shorter tails. There is an area in Japan where most of the cats have shorter tails too. When it comes to cats, appearance does not define a breed, lineage does. So looking like a breed doesn't mean being that breed since the traits can appear randomly in the general cat population with no link to that breed. Since he has extra toes he is most likely not related to any specific breed but just happens to have a shorter tail. It also could be a birthing injury (mom's sometimes bite of tails or limbs removing the placenta and cutting the cord) or injury later in life.

He likely isn't an American shorthair as that also is a specific breed. Vets often will mark down the breed a cat most closely looks like because they either are used to doing that with dogs (who have much smaller genetic diversity and often do look like specific breeds on their lineage because features and colors are refined from aggressive breeding) or they are trying to describe the cat by associating it with something known. Everytime I go to a vet I say "seal point with white domestic Shorthair" and the receptionist takes one look at my cat and marks Siamese or snowshoe. They are not either, but look close enough that it's easier to write it down. I also knew a receptionist who thought that American shorthair just meant a cat with shorthair from America so she would mark all cats as that at intake. The only (seriously only) way to say your cat is anything but domestic Shorthair or domestic longhair is to have paperwork from a breeder. Any other breed assignment from a rescue or vet or even here is just a lookalike or similar appearance and doesn't mean the cat has even a distant relative that is that breed not does it make a cat that breed.
 
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lutece

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This happens now and then in nature.
Also, inbreeding is quite common in many milieus, and if so, we may get some quite odd results.
This cat has the stumpy tail, extra toes, visibly longer hind legs... It may be some local natural breed, it may be an occasional result, it may be an inbreeding...
Short tail can be caused by many different mutations, but these mutations are generally dominant traits. Polydactyly (extra toes) is also dominant as far as I know. These traits don't have anything to do with inbreeding.
 
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