A tail's tale

Neither of my Singapore Specials have tails.

 

 

 

When we picked them up from the SPCA, we were told they were born like that. They said it was a genetic mutation very common among Singapore stray cats. We had seen quite a few tail-free street cats so I didn't have any reasons not to believe it.

 

That was until a few weeks ago when two different people in completely unrelated contexts told me that, apparently, the Chinese in Singapore have been breaking the poor cats' tails. I was told that according to a common belief, the Chinese consider cats to be too perfect. They break their tails so that they aren't perfect anymore and don't take so many places in heaven.

 

Ok, I was pretty horrified when I heard this.

 

But then I made some further research and found about the Japanese bobtail cat. That type of cat doesn't have a tail and was introduced some time back in Singapore. Our Singaporean streets cats with no tails are more therefore more likely to be descendants / mix of the bobtail cat. Phew.