The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger
                    The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
                    Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
                    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
                    Nor all your Toes wash out a Word of it.
                    – From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
                    as translated by Tomato the Cat

Marianne gives her High Seven!

Twinkletoes seems more interested in making history than writing it.

With 24 toes, Pharaoh has the makings of a great historian.

With 25 toes, Poly will be able to write a book about veterinarians and feline medicine.

With 26 toes, Scooter is giving Twinkletoes a paws-down on her record.

Slugger's family can only count 21 toes, but Slugger is working on the problem.

If Bugsy can get all his fingers working properly, he'll be able to write a history of feline exaggeration and hyperbole!

People often say that “history is written by the victors.” But on a more fundamental level, history is written by those who have the right kind of fingers.

Cats are good at many things, but they have never had the right fingers or toes – nor indeed enough of them – to be able to write history. So, most of their history has been written by other species, which means it’s no surprise that human history books are entirely silent about the First Great Feline Empire and other such important eras.

Happily, it now seems that a small group of feline revisionist historians are attempting to correct this injustice by working on a better configuration of fingers and toes that will enable them to produce their own, correct version of their remarkable past.

This important work began with Twinkletoes, a cat from Saginaw, Michigan, who has been trying to rewrite history (or, at least, her history) by claiming to have the most fingers in the world – 25 of them. Twinkletoes, as we reported in our last magazine, went so far as to submit her claim to the Guinness Book of World Records.

However, like other would-be celebrities of our modern age, Twinkletoes does not seem to be interested in writing history so much as in making it. So, she never stopped to check whether any other cats might have as many fingers or toes as she has – or, indeed, more. Move over, Twinkletoes! Here come the other historians.

Here at the sanctuary, Marianne jumped into the ring with 24 toes – not enough to challenge Twinkletoes, but enough to get the ball rolling. If she learns to use them all properly, she may become a great historian in her own right.

Pharaoh, who hails from Ketchum, Idaho, has 24 toes, too – certainly enough to write the history of the other great feline pharaohs.

And Slugger, from Pagosa Springs, Colorado, sent in a photo. His person, who sees a great future for Slugger, apologizes for the fact that “no matter how many times I count them, I can only come up with 21 toes.” My advice: Keep counting – Slugger is clearly working on the problem.

Best Friends veterinarian Dr. Virginia Froehlich introduced us to one of her cats, Poly (short for Polydactyl, which means “lots of fingers”). Poly has a full complement of 25 toes, thus enabling her to take her place alongside Twinkletoes in the Guinness Book of World Records. After some practice with all these toes, Poly is expecting to produce a famous book on the history of veterinarians and feline medicine.

No sooner had we heard from Poly, than photos arrived from Scooter, who lives in Gig Harbor, Washington.

“We have to give Twinkle Toes a paws down on her Guinness record!” wrote her family. “Scooter, a four-year-old domestic long-haired, orange tabby, has seven toes on each forepaw and six on each hind paw. That makes 26!”

And, finally, we got a call from Stacey Hall, who told us that her cat, Bugsy, had 31 toes. Thirty-one?

Bugsy lives in the small town of Page, Arizona, next to Lake Powell, just an hour’s drive from Best Friends. So we went over to meet Bugsy and take his photo. A slightly concerned Stacey told us that Bugsy certainly used to have 31 toes, “but it seems like some of them have fallen off, or he’s pulled them out.”

Bugsy may not be able to claim a galactic record, but we counted 26 toes, which still puts him in the front rank, and will enable him, if he can get all his fingers working properly, to write a history of feline exaggeration and hyperbole.