How did Spice get blue spots on her tummy?
Spice likes to be a roly-poly kitty. When I get out of my car she greets
me with an extravagance of roly-poly maneuvers on the sidewalk.
Bijou and Thisbe like to join her.
Spice, who may well be a Maine Coon, also likes to have her tummy
petted. That is how I noticed a blue marking, near where a kitten might
nurse. Was it a bruise? Something told me it was: what else could it be?
Yet something told me it was not: could a bruise really be so bright a blue?
It almost seemed inky, but there was no trace of the color on her fur.
The only thing I could come up with from looking around online had to do
with humans, and breast cancer. And the next day, while examining Spice’s
mysterious spot, I noticed there was another one just across from the first.
I was duly concerned and took her to the vet.
Spice is fine. Her ears have no sign of mites, her teeth are good and she
is a healthy girl. Except she has gained 2lbs since her last visit a year ago.
Those markings? They are tattoos!
Some of the cats were taken in as feral youngsters for vaccinations
and spaying or neutering. The idea is to trap feral cats then release
them back to their domain. (I did that, and domesticated the greater
majority of them over time.) Their ears are clipped as a way to identify
which cats have already been through this. I never understood why
some of them didn’t have clipped ears.
It was only today that I learned there is another method to mark spayed
female cats: tattooing. One small dot is tattooed on either side of the incision.
The vet told me that many times these marks cannot even be seen, even by him.
And so Spice, with her intact ears, was given tattoos. These are the largest
tattoos the vet has ever seen, and they are so visible now because of her
weight gain. She weighs 14 lbs. If she loses weight, they will remain the same
size. I don’t care in the slightest how they look. I’m just happy she’s okay!
And that is how the kitten got her spots!*
How The Leopard Got His Spots by Rudyard Kipling
