The Anatomy of a Manx Cat

Unfortunately, my Manx cat has been sick this weekend. Sick enough that he’s having to spend the next couple of days in the hospital. I’ve featured him here and here, if you’re interested in catching a glimpse of him in his more typical appearance!

One positive to the whole terrible experience is that the emergency vet sent me home with the x-ray above. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at human (chest) x-rays, but never seen an x-ray of a Manx cat before. I haven’t been able to find any on the internet, so I thought I’d provide one–with my own annotations.

Pollux is a Manx cat, and he is considered a “rumpy riser.” This means he doesn’t have any visible tail, but still has some remnants where his tail should be. You can feel where his spinal cord ends rather abruptly, and I always imagined that the vertebrae just stop–like his tail has been amputated. But this x-ray has shown me otherwise. If you look carefully, it seems that he really does have a little tail–vertebrae and everything–just in miniature. I never would have imagined!

Pollux has had health problems all his life, and one of those problems is that he makes “poopy balls” (as I affectionately call them) that are a little too big for him to poop readily. Because of this, he had surgery as a kitten and now has to take medication twice a day to help make it easier.

When I look at the x-ray, it’s almost like these little poopy balls are all lined up and ready to be shot out–like from a cannon. (They are really almost perfectly spherical, as you can see from the x-ray.) Too bad this isn’t something you could weaponize and use against your neighbors when they misbehave!

Tags: Abdomen, Anatomy, Manx, Manx Cat, medicine, Vestigial, X-ray

• July 15, 2012
• Cat, Photography, Photos
• 6 Comments