Dog fan falls for a tiny rescue cat 'down a leg, two ears and a tail' but full of love and personality

This interesting looking small cat was bred in China and adopted by a couple in America which is very unusual in itself. It looks like the Chinese breeder is creating Chinchilla Persian-like dwarf cats. She is called Mochi. It is the first time I have heard of a Chinese cat breeder exporting internationally from the country where they eat domestic cats in the south.

Mochi. Image: Instagram (Greg McDouglas).

Mochi has become bit of a star because of her unusual appearance. And that has come about because of a very severe illness she suffered after she arrived in America. She developed ischemic dermatopathy. 

My understanding is that this was an autoimmune response which attacked her body leading to widespread inflammation which further led to necrosis in parts of her body. That's why her ear flaps were amputated and her tail. She also lost the paw of one leg

But, of course, it hasn't slowed her down one bit. She's made a full recovery and is flourishing in a home where she is deeply loved. The power of love is immense.

Mochi ended up in a shelter where she spent two months recovering.

A Boston couple, Greg and Natalia, were thinking about adopting a rescue cat and they hit the jackpot in adopting Mochi. That "jackpot" description refers to the possibility of them becoming celebrities vicariously on social media because sometimes interesting looking cats can become quite famous on social media.

Mochi in her nice home. Image: Instagram.

Greg McDouglas and Natalia have taken super care of her. When she arrived, she weighed 2.5 pounds as a tiny kitten but has grown to a healthy 4 pounds in weight. It is a very nice home. You can feel the love.

She is infectiously cute and people love cuteness. Greg is appreciative of the luck he had in being able to adopt Mochi. And Mochi is appreciative of the luck she had in being adopted by him and his partner.

Apparently, they were selected by the shelter because they had no kids or pets and they were young adults. That's an indication of the kind of profile that you might have if you want to be selected by a shelter to adopt a shelter cat.

The shelter by the way is the MSPCA Angell shelter in Boston.

Tiny rescue kitten with a big personality 😺
Down a leg, two ears & a tail but full of love. Link to Instagram page.

The video doesn't work very well but you'll get the story just fine.

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Kate Beckinsale dances in a sports bra for her chinchilla Persian cat Willow

Judging by her Instagram account, as far as I can tell, Kate Beckinsale lives with two Persian cats and a brown, fluffy toy dog. The Persian cats appear to be a chinchilla Persian which is near white with some grey streaks and a grey tabby. They are both what I would call contemporary, flat-faced, punch-face, Persian cats. She likes to dress them up and make them look pretty.

She lives in a very nice modern home and last Friday the actress, 47, posted on her Instagram page a video of herself dancing in her kitchen to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". She was wearing a Niki sports bra and some fancy sweatpants over some fancy underwear which she flashed in copious quantities. Perhaps it wasn't underwear but it kinda looks like that.

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Her beautiful little Persian cat Willow was, as expected, completely disinterested in Kate Beckinsale's attempts to stimulate some sort of excitement in her. Persian cats are well known to be rather inactive. Sometimes people refer to them as pieces of furniture. I can remember being at cat show with the cat photographer Helmi Flick photographing various cat breeds and you noticed then how some are more active than others. Persians are inactive compared to Bengals.

Ms Beckinsale says that her effort of "Trying to hype Willow up about winter woolly has been low yield so far". Her Instagram page is full of pictures of her cats so she is definitely a cat lover which I like. The other Persian is called Clive, he's the one with a grey coat.

Kate Beckinsale and Clive her flat-faced Persian one of 2 that she lives with. Photo: Kate Beckinsale on Instagram.

She has admitted that she is "very much a cat person". When she was growing up she had cats and a big dog she says. For her, cats are easier than dogs because "you don't have to walk around with a bag of poo like you do with a dog, which I hate to walk around with a bag of poop".

Clive is about 11 or 12-years-of-age. He had cancer and sometimes she shaves him. Shaving a cat with very long hair is not a bad thing to do but you may have to put the cat under a full anaesthetic which is a bad thing to do because it is potentially dangerous.

She inherited Willow from a friend. She describes Willow as "insane". That's why her friend gave Willow to her. They have completely different personalities. Clive likes suitcases and boxes and bags. He likes to climb into things. He has a suitcase bed which suits him perfectly. Willow prefers to "sleep in creepy, psychopath places like the back of a drawer, places that she could die [in]".

Apparently Willow is more difficult but she's pretty so she's forgiven!

Chinchilla Persian Cats

Chinchilla Persian Cats are Persian cats with chinchilla coats (I guess that sounds obvious but it might not if you are not part of the cat fancy). So, what is a Chinchilla coat like? Chinchilla is one of a range of tipped coloration of the hair of a cat. Tipped coloration means that the tip or top of the each individual hair shaft is a different color to the rest of the hair strand. The color near the top of the hair strand is called the "top color" and the different color below the top extending to the base of the hair strand is called the "under color".

China the greedy Chinchilla Persian who loves Coco Pops. Picture: Kennedy News.

The hair shaft is then made up of two colors. In tabby cats the hair shaft is also more than one color but the shaft is banded all the way down. The Chinchilla though is genetically a tabby cat despite the "banding" of the hair being very different. In Chinchilla Persian Cats the tipping is very light. This is because the very tip of the hair shaft is colored and the rest of the hair shaft is colored silver giving a light sparkly appearance. 

Chinchilla Persian cats are probably the most well known and desirable of all cats with this type of coat. The Silver Chinchilla has fur with a black tip and white under color. A short haired cat with the same markings is the Burmilla. The degree of tipping can vary. When the top color extends about half way down the shaft of hair the tipping is called "shaded". When the top color almost reaches the bottom of the hair the tipping is called "smoke". 

 Persians are the obvious choice of cat to show of this kind of coat pattern because their fur is the longest in the cat fancy (as far as I am aware - sometimes, it could be argued, too long). This allows the tipping of the hair to take on a very interesting, fine and exotic appearance.

A rescued Chinchilla Persian shaved for health reasons. Photo: Rex/Shutterstock.

Tipping, shading and smoked coats in Persian cats go back a long way to the earliest moments of the cat fancy. Apparently, the origin is in a female named Chinnie in 1882. The word "chinchilla" also describes a type of cloth or fabric. I am not sure if the name for the cat coat came from this or the other way around. The name of the tabby cat comes from a type of silk found originally in a particular area of Baghdad in Iraq so I am guessing that the cat coat called Chinchilla followed the name of the cloth - wrong? please tell me.

Chinchilla Persian Cats to Burmilla Cats