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Outrage about deformed cats overlooks larger problems

By Gina Spadafori

published 01/10/1999

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The Cat Fanciers’ Association put out a special media release to vilify her. Newspapers, magazines and television news shows are hot on her trail. And thousands of people have called, written or e-mailed her from all over the world to tell her — often in crude and threatening language — what a terrible person she is.

It’s the hottest pet story around, and Vickie Ives Speir of Marshall, Texas, is at the center of it, because of her interest in breeding deformed cats.

She calls them “Twisty Kats,” and the animals take the controversial short-legged munchkin cat one step further, with legs that are not only short but bent, with paws the breeder described as “vestigial” — and in some cases missing. The mutation arises when two of her polydactyl — a fancy name for “extra-toed” — cats are bred. The animals that result can’t walk normally, and bounce instead like kangaroos, using their front elbows for balance as they move.

Is a handful of cats in Texas worth the furor? Emotions aside — and these cats surely do trigger emotions — it’s hard to say.

It can be argued that all this anger and energy aligned against the breeder could be better put into the bigger problems that cats face in our society, primarily homelessness and overpopulation. Like the munchkin breed before it, the “Twisties” will always be rare, and the total impact of the breeds will always be small compared to the larger numbers of needy cats. What’s even a few dozen problem cats compared to the tens of thousands killed as “surplus” every year? Why don’t we care more about them? Pedigreed cats in general make up a tiny fraction of the general cat population, less than 10 percent by some estimates. If Speir launched her breed full-force, few of us would ever find ourselves in the company of a Twisty, and few Twisties would ever end up in shelters.

Maybe the furor is a bit overblown, and certainly those who have threatened Speir have no business doing so. But what she is doing is most certainly wrong.

As animal lovers — and Speir claims that she is one — we have a pact with those animals in our care. It involves proper stewardship, making sure their physical and emotional needs are met, and they are protected from harm. But it also involves respect, and the arrogant act of meddling with an animal’s functionality shows very little of that.

A cat’s very nature is about movement, graceful and smooth, on four good legs. It’s one of the things we love about them, one of the things that makes them what they are. Running, jumping, stalking: These are natural to a cat, and anyone who would deny them these behaviors is no friend to cats, and no animal lover.

Speir is welcome to care for her deformed and crippled cats for the length of their natural lives, and by all appearances she cares for them well. But when they are gone, let us hope they are the end of a line, and that we will have heard the last of one woman’s twisted idea. Let us hope, too, that some of the people who are so vocal against her will be equally pro-cat when it comes to the larger issues.

One cat-lover has put together a thorough site covering the Twisty Kats controversy (www.delmars.com/kitcats/twisted.htm), complete with links to newspaper articles, letters, humane groups and other related Web sites. The site also contains the breeder’s own original — and now defunct — Twisty Kat Web site, with pictures of the animals.