Claws

Claws, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Hungry for knowledge.

Comments

[Uncle Kvetch]

Terrific shot!

Have you thought about pet photography? I imagine it can be a lucrative sideline. My cat's pushing 20, and while we've taken some nice pix of her over the years, I've often wondered whether a professional photographer might "capture" her in a way that we never could.

[Ktesibios]

That's not a bad idea, Uncle K. There's a photographer near where I live who is apparently making a decent business out of doing portraits of people and their pets.

The kitten with the book reminds me of a cat I once lived with who liked to lie on the back of the couch and read over my shoulder. Blob was on his way to being the most well-read cat in town, until I moved and got rid of the couch.

[The Crapture]

looks like my next door neighbor's pair of kittens. 'cept instead of regular Siamese markings, their color-points are a mix of pale ginger and black/grey tabby stripes

[Brian B]

Adorable!

/likes kitties

[shrimplate]

Very well composed, the way the light color of the cat counterpoints the open book on the right, with the book and claws in the low center.

Excellent shot. Not just the scene, but the subject matter too of course! Those focused blue eyes, such a striking color.

I'll buy a print. I'm serious.

[Julian Elson]

I wonder what the tattered book is. When I looked at that shot, I imagined that you must have been trying to read the book, so Lan Lan tried to block it out of jealousy. At least, I find that cats tend to be rather peeved by humans who read and sometimes try to put an end to the practice. Nice shot.

[cfrost]

Ouch! More like talons!

cats tend to be rather peeved by humans who read and sometimes try to put an end to the practice

My cat never tires of plopping down with a self-satisfied purr on whatever I'm reading.

my next door neighbor's pair of kittens - instead of regular Siamese markings, their color-points are a mix of pale ginger and black/grey tabby stripes

The Siamese/Burmese coloration is a result of a mutation that codes for a defective enzyme that won't catalyze one of the steps of melanin production at normal body temperature. Hence whatever color and pattern the cat would ordinarily have is only expressed on those areas where the skin is cool and the enzyme functions properly. Siamese cats have one flavor of allele that does this, and Burmese cats have another allele in the same locus (gene) that codes for a not quite so defective enzyme: thus Burmese are generally darker than Siamese. So, newborn Siamese & Burmese cats are white or at least lacking color-points (hot womb), Siamese/Burmese barn cats in Minnesota in January will be rather darker than the same cats would be in Miami, and a Siamese or Burmese cat that has been patched up at the vet's will have hair grow in initially dark where skin has been shaved. There is a rabbit breed and, as I recall, a lab mouse and guinea pig breed that also have point coloration that work the same way.

There's no reason I suppose that a human couldn't have point coloration. The Siamese/Burmese alleles in cats are recessive so you don't get the point coloration unless the animal is homozygous for the Siamese or Burmese allele, or unless it has a copy of both the Siamese and Burmese (both recessive) alleles. There may be a defective Siamese-like allele floating about in the human gene pool but it may be so rare that it practically never meets up with its double in one person to yield point coloration.