I came home one day last week and heard a meowing sound. I looked inside my apartment but the evidence of the noisemaker wasn’t there. I looked under the window and picked up my motorcycle helmet from the bench where helmets are stored and found the source of the noise. (pictured below)
A recent arrival to Taiwan observed that a lot of cats and dogs here are missing tails. I’ve really been in Taiwan too long to really notice. I’ve been informed by a local that some people here do the rubber band treatment and in some cases it is just the breed. Could it also be due to the key controlled sliding doors? What other reasons are there for the animals here in Taiwan not having a tail or having only a partial tail?
Thais cut cats tails off for being too aloof, they say it’s a crime in Buddhism. I’ve heard it said the Chinese think that cats are more efficient at catching mice if they are de-tailed.
I don’t know why the Taiwanese cut them. Probably some nonsense like “Oh, but we’ve always done that”. It could just be malice. You don’t meet many Taiwanese that like cats.
I’ve never heard of people cutting off cat’s tails here. You very often see strays like this. Do you mean to tell me there are people here who spend time trapping these animals (itself no easy task), only to cut off their tails and let them go again? And the kind of numbers of deformed cats you see on the streets, that would mean a whole hell of a lot of folk spending a whole hell of a lot of time doing this.
Colour me skeptical. Its a genetic abnormality caused by excessive inbreeding, according to my vet, which I find a much more plausible explanation. That, plus I used to have a cat with a stumpy tail. I saw it coming out of its mother like that and can guarantee there were no crazed knife-wielding obasans in the whelping box at the time.
[quote=“sandman”]Plus, there are analogies in the human world, too. One need look no further than the Windsor family for that.[/quote]Dude, I only hafta look in the mirror.
What I’ve heard more than once now is that crooked tails are caused by inbreeding. So yes, it’s genetic. I have never heard of amputation although it wouldn’t surprise me either.
Out of about seven cats we adopted out just recently, 2 of them had a crooked tail and so does one of our cats. One of them actually got it bad, he’s got a Z shaped tail. There are a lot of them in Taiwan, to the point where it stands out.
I tend to believe it’s from inbreeding. I visited a tiny island in Malaysia a few years back and it was infested with feral cats. Pretty much 100% of them either had crooked tails or no tails at all.
Our cat, found as a baby, has a hooked tail. Our vet said it is a trait that comes from Japan. I wouldn’t say it is “caused” by inbreeding, as these cats are generally street cat mixes that likely come from a well-circulated gene pool. It depends on your definition of inbreeding.
On dogs… our dog, also found abandoned (of course) has had his tail removed. Asking around, we’ve heard a few theories as to why people do this to dogs. The best theory, in my opinion, is that people fear the tail will cover the dog’s nose at night making it less effective as a watchdog. I don’t think it’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake, although that does seem to happen at times.
I have seen a number of dogs, both in Taiwan and in Hong Kong, that had obviously lost their tails to the knife. I’ve seen quite a few dogs in new territories whose tails had clearly just been cut off. I asked a couple of their inbred hick humans why they did that, and the answer both times was “it’s good for them and that’s just the way we do it.” When pressed for an explanation as to how it was good for a dog to have one of his appendages hacked off without anaesthetic or any attention to sanitation, I just got the original answer repeated. I’m a bit surprised that some people here have never seen or heard of this. Lots of country folk think that any kept dog should have it’s tail lopped off. Do the same dipshits have their dogs desexed? Of course not.
I’m not saying that all tailless dogs or dogs with crooked or stubbed tails became that way because of what a human did. I’ve seen plenty of dogs and cats in Taiwan and HK that had these sorts of deformities and they seemed congenital. I question whether it is due to inbreeding, though. Inbred deformities would be much less likely to show up in stray dog populations since, well, they are the least likely to be inbred. I wonder if it has more to do with the mother’s diet or because of prenatal diseases that cause birth defects of this sort.
Hmmm… I’ve been here 12 years, but I have little or no contact with ‘country folk’. That might explain it.[/quote]
You should be sent down for re-education. Maybe while you’re there, they’ll let you in on the reason for cutting off dog tails. Post here if you find out.
Well, you, 914 and I did see that poor cat hanging by its leg from a trap outside a window… the one that you released from the trap on our way back from the camping trip in Neiwan. It wouldn’t surprize me if some of those folks would take a knife to a cat tail now and then.
Well, you, 914 and I did see that poor cat hanging by its leg from a trap outside a window… the one that you released from the trap on our way back from the camping trip in Neiwan. It wouldn’t surprize me if some of those folks would take a knife to a cat tail now and then.[/quote]That may shed some light on cats with missing tails but it doesn’t say much about the crooked tails which in my experience is far more common.
The crooked tail in cats here comes from the Japanese bobtail. When you see the ceramic cat with the paw going up and down perched on some counter in a restaurant, you are looking at a ceramic Japanese bobtail.
In my short time here in Kaohsiung, I’ve noticed an abundance of cats with small stubby tails. Is this because of unfortunate accidents with cars and scooters resulting in a need for an amputation, or is this a case of tail “docking” for aesthetic reasons, similar to what is done with certain dog breeds. Either way it’s pretty sad. After seeing it the first few times, I attributed it to accidents. But now that I’ve seen it on at least 10 occasions I’m starting to wonder.
Not that it makes me feel any better to know its because of street accidents, but at least it doesn’t seem to be the case of docking, which I find barbaric. No win situation.
