Are Polydactyl Cats a Separate Breed?

CatChannel veterinary expert Arnold Plotnick, DVM, explains polydactyly and some of its history.

By Arnold Plotnick, DVM | Posted: July 10, 2009, 3 a.m. EDT

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Q: Can you tell me if six-toed cats are a rarity, or is there a breed?

A: Polydactyly (extra toes) is somewhat common in cats. My cat, Mittens, is a polydactyl cat. Her rear feet have one extra toe. Her front feet have the usual five, but her thumbs are gigantic. I confess that it was her freaky feet that attracted me to her in the first place. 

Polydactyl cats are not a separate breed. Historically, however, the original unregistered Maine Coon cats had a high incidence of polydactylism — around 40 percent! It has been written that the extra toes evolved as a “snowshoe foot” to help Maine Coons walk in the snow, and local folk tales claimed that these cats used their big mitts to catch live fish right out of the streams, taking them home to feed their owners. These stories are charming, however, there is no evidence that polydactylism confers any natural selective advantage to affected cats. Breed standards required a normal foot configuration, and did not allow polydactyly in Maine Coons, and so the trait was deliberately bred out of this breed. In the Netherlands and Belgium, there is currently a move to restore the polydactyl form of the breed.

Although polydactylism is alluring, breeding cats deliberately for polydactylism is controversial. Some cat enthusiasts fear that unscrupulous breeders would try to produce cats with excessive and disabling numbers of toes on each paw. Fortunately, polydactyl genetics doesn’t work this way; you can only fit so many toes on a cat’s foot. Even so, a good compromise would be to write breed standards to define the maximum number of toes allowed, to discourage such attempts.

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Are Polydactyl Cats a Separate Breed?

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m    Lake City, FL 12/12/2012 11:33:44 PM Thanks for the intelligent and interesting article! Christine    Boston, MA 10/28/2012 4:55:59 PM I myself have a polydactyl cat. She is 7 years old and has an extra digit on her two front paws, and a limp inactive extra digit on her two rear paws. That I know of her parents were not Maine Coon cats, but tiger cats, or short hair domestic. It is possible that somewhere in her ancestry was a Maine Coon. I must say she has a similar body build. Shirley    Tucson, AZ 8/1/2012 3:51:21 PM Thank you, CC Editor for your comments. It is reprehensible what this "Rev Ron" is doing and I feel sorry for all the cats. And putting a bobcat in the mix?! Isn't this illegal, even in KY? CatChannelEditor    Irvine, CA 7/5/2012 10:45:35 AM Rev Ron -- Your comment raised some concern. What are you doing with the cats from your six generations of experimental breeding? You mentioned that "if allowed to go feral" cats exhibit particular behavior traits. Are you letting some of your six generations of cats go feral? That would be alarming, to the staff and visitors of this website both. We work to educate readers about avoiding this very situation. (LINK LINK LINK ) Other animal enthusiasts, particularly wild bird fans, would also find this reprehensible. Please reconsider your project. If one cat from each generation had an average of four kittens, you have more than two dozen cats -- at least. Thank you for rethinking your contribution to the unowned cat population.