Manx cat


The Manx cat is a breed of domestic cat originating on the Isle of Man, with a mutation that shortens the tail. Many Manx have a small stub of a tail, but Manx cats are best known as being entirely tailless; this is the most distinguishing characteristic of the breed, along with elongated hind legs and a rounded head. Manx cats come in all coat colours and patterns, though all-white specimens are rare, and the coat range of the original stock was more limited. Long-haired variants are sometimes considered a separate breed, the Cymric cat.
Manx are prized as skilled hunters, and thus have often been sought by farmers with rodent problems, and been a preferred ship's cat breed. They are said to be social, tame and active. Two local terms for the cats on their home island are stubbin and rumpy. Manx have been exhibited in cat shows since the 1800s, with the first known breed standard published in 1903.

History

Origin and folklore

Tailless cats, then called stubbin in colloquial Manx language, were known by the early 19th century as cats from the Isle of Man, hence the name, where they remain a substantial but declining percentage of the local cat population. Some folklore stories claim that tailless domestic cats were brought there by sea. They are descended from mainland stock of obscure origin. Like all house cats, including nearby British and Irish populations, they are ultimately descended from the African wildcat and not from native European wildcats, of which the island has long been devoid.
The dominant trait of taillessness arises from a spontaneous mutation, the Manx taillessness gene, that eventually became common on the island because of the limited genetic diversity of island biogeography.
In the Manx language, the modern name of the breed is kayt Manninagh, literally 'cat of Mann', or kayt cuttagh lit. 'bob-tailed cat'. Kayt, used as both a masculine and feminine noun, is also encountered as cayt, and depending on the exact construction, it may be lenited as chayt or gayt. The diminutive word is pishin or pishyn, 'kitten'. Manx itself was often spelled Manks in English well into the late 1800s.
There are numerous folktales about the Manx cat, all of them of "relatively recent origin"; they are focused entirely on the lack of a tail, and are devoid of religious, philosophical, or mythical aspects found in the traditional Irish-Norse folklore of the native Manx culture, and in legends about cats from other parts of the world.
The name of the promontory Spanish Head on the coast of the island is often thought to have arisen from the local tale of a ship of the Spanish Armada foundering in the area, though there is no evidence to suggest this actually occurred. Folklore has further claimed that a tailless cat swam ashore from said shipwreck, and thus brought the trait to the island. However, tailless cats are not commonly known in Spain, even if such a shipwreck were proven.
Regardless of the genetic and historical reality, there are various fanciful Lamarckian folktales that seek to explain why the Manx has a truncated tail. In one of them, the biblical Noah closed the door of the Ark when it began to rain, and accidentally cut off the tail of the Manx cat who had almost been left behind. Over the years a number of cartoons have appeared on postcards from the Isle of Man showing scenes in which a cat's tail is being run over and severed by a variety of means including a motorcycle, a reference to motorcycle racing being popular on the island, and an update of the Noah story. Because the gene is so dominant and "invades" other breeds when crossed with the Manx, there was a folk belief that simply being in the proximity of a Manx cat could cause other breeds to somehow produce tailless kittens.
Another genetically impossible account claimed that the Manx was the hybrid offspring of a cat and a rabbit, purporting to explain why it has no or little tail, long hind legs and a sometimes hopping gait. The cat-rabbit halfbreed tale has been further reinforced by the more widespread "cabbit" folktale.
Populations of tailless cats also exist in a few other places in Europe, most notably Cornwall, only from the Isle of Man. A population on the small, isolated Danish peninsula of Reersø in the Great Belt may be due to the arrival on the island of cats of Manx origin, by ship. Similar cats are also found in Crimea, a near-island peninsula in the Black Sea, though whether they are genetically related to maritime Manx cats or are a coincidentally similar result of insular genetic diversity limitations, like the unrelated Kuril Islands Bobtail, Karelian Bobtail, Japanese Bobtail, and Indonesian Lombok cats, is unknown. The Manx gene may be related to the similarly dominant tail suppression gene of the recent American Bobtail breed, but Manx, Japanese Bobtails and other short-tailed cats are not used in its breeding program, and the mutation seems to have appeared in the breed spontaneously. Possible relation to the Pixie-bob breed, which also ranges from rumpy to fully tailed, is unknown.

Recognition as a breed

Manx cats have been exhibited in cat shows, as a named, distinct breed, since the late 1800s. In that era, few shows provided a Manx division, and exhibited specimens were usually entered under the "Any Other Variety" class, where they often could not compete well unless "exceptionally good in size and markings". Early pet breeding and showing expert Charles Henry Lane, himself the owner of a prize-winning rare white rumpy Manx named Lord Luke, published the first known breed standard for the Manx in his 1903 Rabbits, Cats and Cavies, but noted that already by the time of his writing "if the judge understood the variety" a Manx would be clearly distinguishable from some other tailless cat being exhibited, "as the make of the animal, its movements and its general character are all distinctive." Not all cat experts of the day were favourable toward the breed; in The Cat: Its Points and Management in Health and Disease, Frank Townend Barton wrote in 1908: "There is nothing to recommend the breed, the loss of the tail in no way enhances its beauty."
The Manx was one of the first breeds recognised by the Cat Fanciers' Association , which has records on the breed in North America going back to the 1920s.

Appearance

Tail (or lack thereof)

Although tail suppression is not the sole characteristic feature of the breed, the chief defining one of the Manx cat is its absence of a tail to having a tail of long length, or tail of any length between the two extremes. This is a cat body-type mutation of the spine, caused by a dominant gene. As with the sometimes-tail-suppressed Schipperke dog and Old English Sheepdog, tail suppression does not "breed true" in Manx cats. Attempting to force the tailless trait to breed true by continually breeding tailless Manx cats to tailless Manx cats has led to increased negative, even fatal genetic disorders '. Tail length is random throughout a litter of kittens. Manx to non-Manx breeding will usually produce some Manx-type tail varieties in kittens. Whether the shorter tailed kittens of these varieties are labeled Manx is up to the breed standard consulted. Manx cats' tails are classified according to proportional tail length as kittens :
  • Rumpy or dimple rumpy – having no tail at all, though often a small tuft of hair where the tail would have grown from the rump
  • Riser or rumpy riser – having a bump of cartilage under the fur, most noticeable when the animal is happy and raising its tail end
  • Stumpy – having a partial tail of vestigial, fused vertebrae, up to about long
  • Stubby, shorty, or short-tailed – having a short tail of non-fused bones, up to about half an average cat tail
  • Longy, tailed, or taily''' – having a half- to normal-length tail.
Since the early days of breed recognition in the late 19th century, Manx show cats have been rumpy through stumpy specimens, with stubby and longy Manx not qualifying to be shown except in the "Any Other Variety" or household pet class. Kittens with complete tails may be born in a purebred Manx litter, having not inherited the taillessness appearance at all. Depending on the country and cat organization referenced, rumpy, rumpy risers and stumpies are the only Manx cat tail types that fit the breed standard for Manx cats. The longer cat tail lengths seen in some Manx cats are considered a breed fault, although they occur as naturally in the breed, but not as often, as the shorter tails. Although these longer tail types are of purebred Manx ancestry, they do not possess the dominant gene so cannot pass it on. However, since the Manx tail mutation gene is dominant, these longer-tailed purebred Manx cats may still be used in breeding programs and may even be considered in an effort to help avoid the fatal spinal deformities that sometimes result in tailless Manx cats.
The Manx breed is genetically distinct from the Japanese Bobtail breed, another naturally occurring insular breed. The Japanese Bobtail always has at least some tail, ranging from a small "pom" to a stubby but distinct tail, which is kinked or curled and usually has a slightly bulbous and fluffy appearance; by contrast, the Manx has a straight tail when one is present at all. The Japanese Bobtail has a markedly different appearance from the Manx, and is characterized by almond-shaped eyes, a triangular face, long ears, and lean body, like many other Asian breeds. The gene responsible for the bobbed or kinked tail in that breed is recessive and unrelated to the dominant Manx tail-suppression gene; the bobtail gene is not connected to any serious deformities, while the tail-suppression gene can, under certain conditions, give rise to a pattern of sometimes lethal [|health problems]. The Pixie-bob breed also has a short tail, and may be genetically related to the Manx. More will be clear about tail genetics as more genetic studies are done on cat populations and as DNA testing improves; most domestic animal genetic work has been done with dogs and livestock breeds.
Manx do not exhibit problems with balance; balance is controlled primarily by the inner ear. In cats, dogs and other large-bodied mammals, balance involves but is not dependent upon the tail.
Since Manx kittens are naturally born with any tail length, from none to long, it was formerly common to surgically dock the longer tails a few days after birth. Although illegal in many jurisdictions, the practice was formerly recommended, although with the caveat that the commonness of the practice meant that many spurious Manx cats – i.e., random British cats – were altered to resemble the Manx, to defraud unwary buyers.