Cat - Black Manx cat - postcard c.1990s

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Manx Cat
• Publisher:  Manx Inspirations, Isle of Man
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Manx cat (/'mæ?ks/; Manx language: kayt Manninagh), in earlier times often spelled Manks, is a breed of domestic cat (Felis catus) originating on the Isle of Man, with a naturally occurring mutation that shortens the tail. Many Manx have a small stub of a tail, but Manx cats are best known as being entirely tailless; this is the most distinguishing characteristic of the breed, along with elongated hind legs and a rounded head. Manx cats come in all coat colours and patterns, though all-white specimens are rare, and the coat range of the original stock was more limited. Long-haired variants are sometimes considered a separate breed, the Cymric. Manx are prized as skilled hunters, and thus have often been sought by farmers with rodent problems, and been a preferred ship's cat breed. They are said to be social, tame and active. An old local term for the cats on their home island is stubbin. Manx have been exhibited in cat shows since the 1800s, with the first known breed standard published in 1903.

Tailless cats, then called stubbin^[1][2] (apparently both singular and plural) in colloquial Manx language, were known by the early 19th century^[3] as cats from the Isle of Man (Mann), hence the name, where they remain a substantial but declining percentage of the local cat population. The taillessness arose as a natural mutation on the island,^{[citation needed]} though folklore persists that tailless domestic cats were brought there by sea.^[3] They are descended from mainland stock of obscure origin.^[4] Like all house cats, including nearby British and Irish populations, they are ultimately descended from the African wildcat (F. silvestris lybica)^[5] and not from native European wildcats (F. s. silvestris), of which the island has long been devoid.^[6] In the Manx language, the modern name of the breed is kayt Manninagh literally 'cat of Mann' (plural kiyt)^[1][2][7][8] or kayt cuttagh lit. 'bob-tailed cat'.^[8][9] Manx itself was often spelled Manks well into the late 1800s.^[1][6] There are numerous folktales about the Manx cat, all of them of ""relatively recent origin""^[10]:7 as they are focused entirely on the lack of a tail, and are devoid of religious, philosophical, or mythical aspects found in the traditional Irish–Norse folklore of the native Manx culture, and in legends about cats from other parts of the world.^[10]:7

The dominant trait of taillessness arises from a spontaneous mutation, the Manx taillessness gene, that eventually became common on the island because of the limited genetic diversity of island biogeography (an example of the founder effect and, at the sub-specific level, of the species-area curve).^{[11][12][verification needed]}

The name of the promontory Spanish Head on the coast of the island is often thought to have arisen from the local tale of a ship of the Spanish Armada foundering in the area, though there is no evidence to suggest this actually occurred.^[13] Folklore has further claimed that a tailless cat swam ashore from said shipwreck, to found the established breed.^[14] However, tailless cats are not commonly known in Spain, even if such a shipwreck were proven.

Regardless of the genetic and historical reality, there are various fanciful Lamarckian folktales that seek to explain why the Manx has a short to no tail. In one of them, the biblical Noah closed the door of the Ark when it began to rain, and accidentally cut off the tail of the Manx cat who had almost been left behind.^[15] Over the years a number of cartoons have appeared on postcards from the Isle of Man showing scenes in which a cat's tail is being run over and severed by a variety of means including a motorcycle, a reference to motorcycle racing being popular on the island,^[16] and an update of the Noah story. Because the gene is so dominant and ""invades"" other breeds when crossed (often without owner knowledge) with the Manx, some have believed that simply being in the proximity of a Manx cat could cause other breeds to somehow produce tailless kittens.^[17]

Another genetically impossible account claims that the Manx is the offspring of a cat and a rabbit, purporting to explain why it has no or little tail, long hind legs and a sometimes hopping gait.^[14] The cat-rabbit halfbreed tale has been further reinforced by the more widespread ""cabbit"" folktale.

Populations of tailless cats also exist in a few other places in Europe, most notably Cornwall,^[4] only 250 miles (400 km) from Mann, an easy sail. A population on the small, isolated Danish peninsula (former island) of Reersø in the Great Belt may be due to the arrival on the island of shipwrecked cats of Manx origin.^[18] Similar cats are also found in Crimea,^[4] a near-island Black Sea peninsula, though whether they are genetically related to maritime Manx cats or are a coincidentally similar result of insular genetic diversity limitations, like the unrelated Kuril Islands Bobtail, Karelian Bobtail and Japanese Bobtail, is unknown. The Manx gene may be related to the similarly dominant tail suppression gene of the recent American Bobtail breed, but Manx, Japanese Bobtails and other short-tailed cats are not used in its breeding program, and the mutation seems to have appeared in the breed spontaneously.^[19] Possible relation to the Pixie-bob breed, which also ranges from rumpy to fully tailed, is unknown.

Manx cats have been exhibited in cat shows, as a named, distinct breed (and with the modern spelling ""Manx""), since at least the late 1800s. In that era, few shows provided a Manx division, and exhibited specimens were usually entered under the ""Any Other Variety"" class, where they often could not compete well unless ""exceptionally good in size and markings"".^[17] Early pet breeding and showing expert Charles Henry Lane, himself the owner of a prize-winning rare white rumpy Manx named ""Lord Luke"", published the first known (albeit informal) breed standard for the Manx in his 1903 Rabbits, Cats and Cavies,^[17] but noted that already by the time of his writing ""if the judge understood the variety"" a Manx would be clearly distinguishable from some other tailless cat being exhibited, ""as the make of the animal, its movements and its general character are all distinctive.""^[17] Not all cat experts of the day were favourable toward the breed; in The Cat: Its Points and Management in Health and Disease, Frank Townend Barton wrote in 1908: ""There is nothing whatever to recommend the breed, whilst the loss of the tail in no way enhances its beauty.""^[4]

The Manx was one of the first breeds recognised by the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) (the predominant United States-based pedigreed cat registry, founded in 1908), which has records on the breed in North America going back to the 1920s.^[20]

type=printed

animal subject=cat

period=post-war (1945 - present)

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=continental/ modern (150x100mm)

county/ country=isle of man