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'Winged' Cats (Feline Cutaneous Asthenia)

How unpleasant is it? I like cats of any sort but I'm squeamish too.

I'm sure that there used to be a winged cat in Rupert the Bear, at least in the annuals.
 
Does "three-headed cat corpses" come under cats of any sort? :cross eye
 
Winged Cat “From Hell” Put to Death in Central Russia

Created: 29.07.2004 12:06 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:49 MSK

MosNews


A winged cat has been killed by villagers near the Central Russian city of Kursk. The locals drowned the deformed puss after believing it was a messenger of Satan, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports.

On entering her yard, Nadezhda Medvedeva saw how a stray cat stood up and, just like a chicken, stretched out two wings. She said that at that moment her hair stood on end. The locals had no doubt the unlucky cat was a messenger of the devil, the Vlasti.net website writes.

Where the cat came from and why it appeared in the village of Bukreyevk nobody knows. Nadezhda Medvedeva, whose home is located on the edge of the village, said she initially heard a soft meowing.

“We poured some milk into a bowl,” Medvedeva recounted. “A tom cat came out — ginger, huge, twice as big as normal. He drank greedily and started meowing again…asking for more. We started feeding him. After a couple of days my daughter came running in all scared and whispered: ’Mom, come and look at the cat! He’s got wings!’”

Nadezhda Medvedeva went out and saw how the cat slowly moved its wings exactly as a chicken would. The woman immediately came to the conclusion that the cat was sinister, “just like a sort of devil”.

The daughter, having already named the cat Vaska, claimed he was affectionate and had obviously been a pet.

The rumor of the winged cat soon reached Kursk, but by the time a correspondent got wind of it the cat had already been killed by a local drunk, who drowned the unique feline. A sack with the animal’s body was recovered later from a pond near the Medvedev’s home. Despite the fact decomposition had already set in, the correspondent form the local Komsomol newspaper confirmed the cat did actually have wings.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/07/29/devilcat.shtml

Isn't the photo with that article and old one that has possibly appeared in FT (and elsewhere) before?
 
There was a good (children's) short book about cats with wings by Ursula LeGuin.
 
Emperor said:
Isn't the photo with that article and old one that has possibly appeared in FT (and elsewhere) before?

Yep - it's the uncropped version of the one credited as the 1960's Manchester Winged Cat on the website cited by The Yithian above.

On entering her yard, Nadezhda Medvedeva saw how a stray cat stood up and, just like a chicken, stretched out two wings. She said that at that moment her hair stood on end.

Call me old and cynical if you like (especially when it comes to Russian news reporting - Pravda, anyone?) but this doesn't sound like journalism, this sounds like Scooby Doo

"Look Uncle Scoob, it's a winged cat that looks a bit like a chicken, and has made my hair stand on end"

"Rikes! Raggy!"


There was quite a good section on winged cats in The Rough Guide book on the unexplained, but from memory doesn't seem to add amything to the info above.
 
Cats with wings

page 24 of September 2004s 'Your Cat' Magazine has a letter about cats with wings. Seeing as how I do not own a scanner or whatever heres a typed extract from the letter;

(cat dies) '... it was all very peaceful but not what i had planned for him.
That evening I was sitting in my lounge looking out on to the patio and saying 'hello' to all the cats in the Neighbourhood, but that evening a strange cat walked across the patio. I had never seen him before and have only seen [him] once since then-nothing strange about that you may think, except that the cat had 'wings'! They may have been fur mats but they stood up and were half way down his back and looked like wings...
Sarah Hadwin
Northampton.

Cat guardian angel come to comfort a griving owner?, or a genetic mutant come to scrag food? You decide!
 
I've seen photo's of cats with 'fur mats' and they can look like wings from a distance.

Either that or Jhary a-Conel is visiting this realm!
 
there has definitely been photographs of winged cats in the ft many years ago, all hoaxes if i remember rightly. they were basically furry small wings :rolleyes:
 
Just what the heck is this? A photoshop deal? A rare cat disease? An evolutionary throwback?

LINK

It's from ananova, which craps out my ability to cut and paste, but the pix is of a cat with wing-like growths coming out it's back.....
 
It's a skin disease usually. Google "winged cats" even Wikipedia covers it.
It's been covered in FT but I can't find reference to it on the site.
 
Yes it shows up kind of often. As I remember it is an clumping together of hairs, usually happen for the cat races that shed a lot.
 
I also remember being told (by who?) about a mutation that causes the cats' skin to very elastic and stretches, much like that guy on Ripley's who could pull his neck skin over his head :cross eye
If you're talking about the one on the breaking news page though, from what I could see the 'wings' seemed bony, which is weird.

PS. Might help if you closed the first link tag :D
 
From the picture the cat looks like a long hair, which would make the explanation that these are hair growths more likely. I'm puzzled by the reference to bones in the structures, but suspect, from experience with long haired cats that got matted fur, that these 'bones' may in fact be tightly wound strands of hair - think dreadlocks - which do occur if grooming isn't done by the cat or its tin opener, and can result in the need for removal under anaesthetic, if they get really bad.

Incidentally, the business about 'sexual harassment' doesn't ring true. If the cat is neutered I don't think females would even register him as a potential sexual partner - no scent/pheromones, and if he's 'whole' there'd be no question of disinterest!! (Unless you get gay cats?)
 
I wouldn't be surprised if there are gay cats, there's homosexuality in most species or so it would seem. It may sound silly but we've always kind of assumed that one of our cats is a lesbian, or at least she would be if she hadn't been "done".
Or maybe I'm being anthropomorphic, it's an easy trap to fall into. I suspect the owner of the cat in the first post is being so.
 
Feline oddity (cats with wings)

Re: FT 226 Strangedays Feline Oddity.


Over the years I have seen many pictures of Cats with wings. I am not too sure why I have never bothered to ask my wife about this oddity as she is a very accomplished Vet with many years standing in the profession.
According to my missus the wings are nothing more then matted fur and contain no bone or muscle tissue or even flesh. My wife claims that the matt growth is synchronistic in that it is the shape of the matt which gives the impression of wings. In other words if the matt had grown looking like a simple string or clump it would simply be removed as a matt. She also would like to point out that matts should be removed as they can lead to discomfort but only by a Veterinary pro.
 
There was a cat with wings in Oxford in the '30s. The photos show a cat with that disease, but the witness swore that it was flying around the back garden!

Ursula le Guin wrote some childrens' books about cats with wings, probably inspired by these stories.
 
Good find, Blinky
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Here's a more complete photo of the Manchester cat (click to enlarge): -

 
Just having a look at some old threads and this reminded me of a winged cat I saw I saw whilst on my postal delivery.
There’s also a coincidence involved in the sighting. The sighting occurred between ‘95 and ‘99. I had read an article in the Fortean Times with a reference to winged cats. I had never heard of this before. Then literally a few days later I was on my delivery and saw one sitting in somebody’s front garden.
This was my regular delivery and you get to familiarise yourself with the cats and dogs. The thing is I’d never seen this this cat before and I never saw it again. It was a strange sight seeing a cat running along with these two lumps bouncing up and down. I got a good view of it and would estimate the “wings “ were about 8 inches long and about an inch thick. They were positioned just behind the shoulders.
 
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