Cat Chit Chat: Sphynx Cat Photo

Thursday 4 March 2010

Sphynx Cat Photo

Sphynx cat Photo by Mario Izquierdo

(Flickr)

This is an amazing photograph of a cat but Sphynx cats do make amazing photographs because you get beautiful tones particularly in black and white as is the case here and as the cat is hairless or nearly so you get all those lovely wrinkles that produce such rich texture and interesting shapes.

This though is a particularly good example of a Sphynx cat photo as it is slightly mysterious. It is hard at first to figure out exactly what is going on. Yet on close inspection we can see that this is a small cat as it is in the hand of the owner (unless I am completely mistaken!).

Another thing about this photo that is a bit mysterious is that although this cat has its digits extended (the phalanges of its paw extended) as if to grab something to stabilise itself as it has been held by the person, there are no claws that I can see.

You would normally see claws under these circumstances in my experience. If I am correct, that means this cat has been declawed and if that is the case and only if that is the case my admiration for the photographer due to his photographic skills are diminished by his desire to declaw his cat. I would criticise for that (if that is the case) but this photographer is very good indeed.

Declawing cats is simply horrible to anyone who really cares about cats and animals as it is the removal of the last phalanx of the paw, which is called the distal phalanx. In other words it is an amputation of part of ten toes (see cat paws and declawing cats).

OK, I hope that I am wrong. Lets not forget that the Sphynx cat is particularly monkey like in its agility and athletic skills and it relies in claws to do a lot of that.

The Sphynx cat is also named as the most intelligent of the cat breeds. That assessment though probably is not very scientific and probably does not take into account the wild cat hybrids particularly the first fillial wild cat hybrids who are very intelligent having inherited the intelligence of their wild parents. Wild cats are considered more intelligent that domestic cats because they have to use their brains more to survive as domestic cats have everything on a plate!

Another interesting thing about the Sphynx cat (that does have some down like hair by the way and is not hypoallergenic) is that the colour patterns of the hair were it in existence is mapped out on the skin of the cat as pigmentation in the skin – how about that?

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