What I GOT for Mother's Day

Well, folks, a week ago I put up a post to describe what I wanted for Mother's Day. Want to see what I got today as a belated present?

That's right, two beautiful little black manx kittens, Moxie and Foxy. Aren't they gorgeous little girls? Looks like I'm Friday Cat Blogging just like Bookishgal. Sweet!

There are two sisters and, actually, their story is pretty interesting. As many of you know, Hurricane Ike came through last September and flooded some areas only a few miles from here. Some have bounced back, but some are still empty and messed up. Well, in February, someone found two mother cats with their litters trapped inside a wall in one of these houses. Truly, if they had not been found, they might not have survived. Any way, these two mother cats, one a domestic longhair and one a manx tortoiseshell, fed each others babies indiscriminately and that continued even after they were rescued.
(You can find this story and more pictures on Aviva's adoption page on petfinder.com. Even after both litters were weaned, when a litter of six more kittens were brought in motherless, she nursed them, too.)

Anyway, I have two of her remarkable litter. Now, it's generally a bad idea for manx cats to breed other manx'. The manx gene is dominant, however, two manx genes and the kitten is not viable. So, most manx litters are a mix of tailed and untailed kittens. She had six kittens and at least four are manx (not sure about the other two; they're already adopted). There's a little ginger boy who's a stumpie. Another tortoiseshell with an odd minitail (not exactly a stump, but not a normal tail either), and my two babies are also stumpies.

You also need to make sure they're over a certain age before adopting a manx, especially a rumpy. If their spines are just a little too short, they can have a moderate to fatal nerve disorder that can make them walk funny, stop walking and also have continence problems. Or, more commonly, leave them dead. I had a five week old kitten lost that way. Devastating.

These kittens, however, are about three months old so, if they had a problem, it should have manifested by now. Whoopee! Manx cats have unusually long legs, almost like rabbit legs in the back, to make up for the lack of balance from the missing tail. They're exceptional jumpers and run, in some ways, like rabbits. But put your money on the manx if they get in a fight. My kittens' back legs are so long they bow in a little until the front legs grow out a bit more; on the other hand, for three month babies, they're unusually graceful. Teehee!

This is Foxy. She's kind of quiet and shy, calm, happy to play with her sister, but a little more leery of people. But she'll snuggle up if she's sleepy. She's the smaller of the two.


This is Moxy. She's intrepid, always exploring, seeing what's what. So far, she hasn't want to sit for nothin'. Too much to do.

I'm a very happy mama and they both seem comfortable around the babies, Alex and Roxy.

As for the kids, I don't know. What do you think Roxy thinks?