20 Responses to “Weird Cat News”

1. Ceroill responds: September 5th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

   Ahhh, interesting. More incidents of ‘winged’ cats! I’ve found this occasional phenomenon very interesting for years. I read about the liger elsewhere. Thanks for the info, Loren.

2. bugmenot responds: September 5th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

   It looks as if they still have four legs. That is really amazing, so they have six limbs looking symmetric/healthy which is more astonishing than wings for a vertebrate.
   Luckily they are heavy and the wings are small, otherwise a hard time for birds would be coming.
   If someone will try to breed them? Or perhaps they are from genetically experiments?

3. wdsasquatch responds: September 5th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

   Interesting.
   Do you think the ‘winged cats’ have a genetic throwback, like people with tails and hair all over their bodies?
   Maybe cats flew inthe past. Ha Ha Ha

4. Shelley responds: September 5th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

   For more on winged cats, see here.

   This particular cat has been hanging around the news media since early this year, and was in Fortean Times a few months ago. I am not aware that anyone has been able to examine him, as the owner was against anyone touching him when it first came out.

5. Kalli responds: September 5th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

   Some other weird cat news from Kingsport TN. I grew up in the Virginia county mentioned in the article and big cat sitings are common.
   Enjoy
   Kalli

   Reports of mountain lions in Scott County

   Some residents believe game wardens have purposely set mountain lions loose, attempting to stave off the rampant deer population.
   Ghastly calls are heard along the North Fork of the Holston River. Shadowy figures are seen stalking the forest’s edge at dawn. Grainy photos purport to prove something that does not exist is real and active in our area.

   This isn’t UFOs or Bigfoot — though, from the reluctance of some eyewitnesses to be quoted, you could liken it to the paranormal.

   Rather, these are reports received from Scott County claiming mountain lions are on the loose.

   The last confirmed sighting of a cougar in the commonwealth dates back to 1882. But over the past three weeks the Times-News has spoken with several Scott County residents, all believing they’ve seen big cats roaming their hills.

   Weber City’s Bobby Clark, 66, says he’s heard the haunting scream-like cries of these cougars, which, aside from a small population in Florida, are supposedly not located east of the Rockies. He identifies people who have seen the animals along the Holston River, but none want to go on the record.

   One of Clark’s neighbors is willing to be quoted and promises pictures he has taken of the animals in his back yard.

   When they are delivered, red foxes seem to be the subject — a hunch later confirmed by Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Regional Wildlife Manager Allen Boynton.

   Even John Lutz, a puma proponent in West Virginia who has clashed with officials on the existence of “phantom cats” in the commonwealth, concurred with the state’s analysis.

   But the stories of mountain lion sightings, both old and new, continue to surface. Over breakfast at Gate City’s Campus Drive-In, former Scott County School Board member Mack Gilliam, 70, shares his experiences.

   He says about four years ago, from the confines of a hunting blind in the Snowflake community, he watched through binoculars as cougars stalked deer. He adds that calves keep disappearing from his farm, and he hears the cougars’ cries between 2 a.m. and daybreak. He compares it to screams of a woman being beaten.

   “We’ll never get rid of them, and they’re getting worse and worse,” Gilliam says over his coffee at the diner. “We keep seeing more and more every year.”

   As if on cue, a man at the next table turns his head. He asks if we’re talking about mountain lions, then relays the sightings his brother and father had in nearby Nickelsville.

   “Oh, they’re here,” says Clark in support. “There’s too many people that’s seen them.”

   Chasing phantom cats and conspiracy theories
   Before departing the Gate City diner, Gilliam tells of a local business manager who was the first to see a big cat. That’s followed by Clark leading the way to Weber City, where a prominent professional recently found peculiar tracks and droppings.

   Both decline to go on the record with the Times-News. Those who do, such as Gilliam and Clark, say they fear for the safety of the community, particularly children.

   But according to Scott County Sheriff John Puckett, even if cougars are present in our region, there is no need to panic. Citing the population of bears in Southwest Virginia, and relatively little interaction they have with humans, he said people just need to be cognizant of the dangers all wildlife impose.

   “We may have some (cougars), I’m not saying we don’t,” Puckett said. “But the thing about it is it doesn’t matter if we’ve got them or not. What’s people worried about? We’ve got probably 50 or 100 bears in the county , and it’s no different. People are as afraid of bears as they are mountain lions. I don’t understand why people are worried about it.”

   Puckett speaks with a firm base of knowledge. As a game warden who served Scott and surrounding counties for two decades, he received about 15 to 20 calls a year reporting mountain lion sightings.

   None were ever verified.

   “If there’s one (mountain lion) or a hundred, it doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “You just have to be more careful with your kids and watch what you do around your house outside.”

   Boynton, from the VDGIF office in Marion, also acknowledged supposed sightings in the region. Boynton said he “regularly gets reports of puma” in Southwest Virginia. Again, none have been verified.

   Still, the stories persist. Macabre cries are heard here; a dog is killed there.

   And for locals who believe big cats are in their midst, conspiracy seems afoot. Three people who spoke with the Times-News believe game wardens purposely set the mountain lions loose, attempting to stave off the rampant deer population.

   As fantastic or bizarre as this may sound, game officials across the country have heard the theory before. A former biologist with the state of Missouri, Dave Hamilton, now deceased, wrote a paper in 2006 for the nonprofit research organization the Cougar Network. It was titled, “Cougar Hysteria: Mania in the Midwest & East.”

   Intended to educate game officials in regions that cougars supposedly do not inhabit, but with reports flowing in, Hamilton writes: “Many accuse the natural resource agencies of being inept and uncaring, or involved in conspiracies ranging from ‘cover ups’ of predator presence to ‘covert stocking programs’ to control deer populations.”

   Hamilton believed that deep down in our psyches, people want cougars to exist in their environments. However, almost all submitted evidence of cougars throughout the Eastern United States turns out to be misidentifications of common animals, such as bobcats, foxes, coyotes and even house cats.

   Suggesting such mistakes to those who submit reports, such as Snowflake’s Gilliam, is often met with disdain.

   “Uh, uh,” he curtly says of his sighting through binoculars. “I know what I saw.”

   According to Boynton, when he receives mountain lion calls to his Marion office, he’s careful not to tell people they are mistaken. The problem in verifying such sightings is the lack of concrete evidence.

   Biologists need tracks or a body. Those filing reports simply want to be believed.

   Mountain lyin’
   According to Hamilton’s “Cougar Hysteria” paper, the mountain lion “game” is: “largely played out in local bars, coffee shops, restaurants, the local media, and Internet chat rooms (the modern-day ’electronic taverns’). All of these are perpetual minefields for government workers.”

   In the instance of recent Scott County sightings, electronic misinformation has fueled the mountain lion murmurings. Everyone who spoke with the Times-News cited an article and picture on the Internet. It claims to show a Virginia game official alongside a cougar stuck by a car in Wise County .

   But the story is a hoax. The photo actually shows an Arizona game warden with a cougar hit on that state’s roads. The exact same picture, with caption slightly altered, has circulated the Web from unknown origins, claiming it was taken in West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

   According to game officials, it is extremely unlikely that undiscovered cougar populations exist in Virginia. As pointed out in Hamilton’s article, even where mountain lions are know to roam, bona fide sightings are uncommon. But evidence of their existence — tracks, scat, road kills, prey kills, photographs — are easily obtained.

   “In fact,” Hamilton writes. “The case can be made that all across the Midwest and the East, the system of roads and highways provide a continuous ‘cougar detection network’ operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

   The VDGIF continues to keep an open ear to reports of sightings while awaiting that crucial, hard evidence needed for verification.

   Local law enforcement issues by-the-book, common-sense warnings.

   “It don’t really matter to me (if they are present),” said Puckett, the Scott County sheriff. “I wouldn’t tell people no different than what I’m saying right now: If they’re around, or if they’re not, you’ve got to be careful around any wild animals.”

   Believers like Gilliam keep fighting skepticism.

   “What gets me is so many people have seen this thing, and the game warden acts like you’re crazy.”

6. shumway10973 responds: September 5th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

   So, the first cat just sprouted the wings? Something like that usually is there from birth. It sounds kinda strange that they just sprouted wings. Maybe the original idea of the Greek Sphinx wasn’t that far off from the real thing. As for the bobcats, of course they are there. If you look at the location of the house in question I can guarantee it sits in the foothills. The article did say the house sat up against the chaparral covered hills. We are moving into their territories.

7. BunniesLair responds: September 5th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

   I would like to see an x-ray of the winged protrusions to verify that it is in fact bone, and not a rose brush twig.

   I have a long hair cat who loves to be outside, and she also loves the roses, and she will get thorny twigs in her fur that make the hair mat and could feel like a fine bone.

   She doesn’t like to be groomed, so needless to say, the mats get quite bad before we don the welders gloves and begin to trim them out.

8. Shelley responds: September 6th, 2008 at 12:54 am

   Almost all of the cats examined in fact did not have any underlying structure under the “wings.” They are usually masses of matted fur that appear if the cat, usually a long haired one, has not been groomed for a long time. This cat appears to have some solid structure under the fur pieces, but as far as I have read no one has actually touched the wings to verify this or taken any x-rays or scans of them.

   Cats have the usual incidence of being born with extra limbs and incomplete twinning as other mammals, and occasionally these are sprouting in areas where they could be construed to be wings.

   The whole idea of winged cats comes from mythological drawings and the supposed link between cats and the devil, since cats were seen to be familiars of witches, serving as intermediaries between witches and the devil.

9. Spinach Village responds: September 6th, 2008 at 1:08 am

   yeah my cat gets these sticker bushes and monkey balls stuck in her fur, and next thing u know ….every summer she has a few ‘dreads’

   … this is kind of ironic for me, because i just cut off her latest nats a few days ago

   ps. I’m a big sucker for cat stories thanks

10. sschaper responds: September 6th, 2008 at 1:33 am

    Surely it is either a hoax like the ‘feejee mermaid’ or else some parasite.

    At least they aren’t winged monkeys! Those gave me nightmares as a child!

11. kittenz responds: September 6th, 2008 at 6:52 am

    The “winged cats” that I have seen don’t really have bony growths. They are normal longhaired cats that have not been groomed - maybe ever. Any longhaired cat develops the “winglike” mats if they go uncombed for a long time. It’s fairly difficult to get to the skin under a mat that has been on a cat for a year or more. I can see how someone could mistake the mats for wings at first, but, using the correct groomimg tools, the “wings” can be easily removed without any damage to the cat’s skin.

    Very rarely, cats can have a hereditary condition, feline cutaneous asthenia, in which the skin grows into abnormally thick, stretchy, fragile folds. Possibly a cat with this condition could also produce mats that look like the “wings” shown here. More information about feline cutaneous asthenia, along with a synopsis of one of the initial case studies from Cornell, can be found here.

    I seriously doubt if any of these “winged” cats have bones in the “wings”. I’d have to see the complete veterinary workup, with Xrays and biopsies, before I would believe it.

    I suppose that a kitten born with extra legs might just possibly have those legs in a position such that they could be mistaken for “wings”, but I’ve never heard of a case, and most kittens with extra limbs are stillborn.

12. Aztec Raptor responds: September 6th, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Maybe cats are evolving at the moment. They could be evolving wing like growth that would get so large they could possibly glide using it.

13. Ceroill responds: September 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am

    In the reports I’ve read of in the past, many do indeed seem to be simply hair mats. Some of those have been reported to just ‘fall off’ or however you wish to put it. Others are, as Kittenz has said seem to be extended folds of skin. A few supposedly (allegedly?) have some traces of bone and/or cartilage in them, though no real support or muscles. A very few, perhaps dubious (moreso than the rest) are said to have been able to be spread wide by choice of the cat, and allow a sort of very abbreviated glide (more of a slightly elongated jump). But in no cases that I’ve seen has it ever been claimed (that I recall, and it’s not like there have been thousands) that the ‘wings’ had enough structure and function to be able to flap like real wings (as if with that small of a surface area it would do much good).
    Ok, I’ll sit back down now.

14. Galea responds: September 6th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Actually, alot of these cats CAN move their wings.

    In the skin condition called feline cutaneous asthenia or FCA, which is related to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (elastic skin) in humans. In winged cats that are due to FCA, the wings only occur on the shoulders, haunches, or back. Winged cats that are due to FCA can often actively move their wings, suggesting the presence of neuromuscular tissue within the wings, which is not present within clumps of matted fur alone.

    There have been multiple account of cats actually flapping these wings when jumping or performing other activities.

15. cryptidsrus responds: September 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Funny-looking critters, these “winged” cats…

    I agree the cat should be examined closely.

    I seem to remember a report of one who sort of “flew.”

16. Shelley responds: September 6th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    For those of you who are not cat people [in the generally understood sense, not with tails of your own!] here is the complete website for feline medical curiosities.

    There are a surprising number of cats who survive into adulthood with extra limbs these days, thanks to advanced veterinary science. There are also a number of cases of the brittle skin condition, although any “wings” in these cases tend to fall off when handled.

    Some of these rather shocking deformities have been caused by selective breeding to maintain established breeds or to create new ones, which is why cats have a high incidence of these genetic problems. Even well-known breeds like the Manx routinely produce a high number of kittens with deformed spines, rear limbs or non-functioning kidneys and bowels. The creation of dwarf cats in recent decades has produced a whole new spectrum of deformed kittens and stillbirths, as well as surviving kittens living in pain.

    Those of you who are really cat people, with tails, claws and vertical pupils, see me about a lucrative career in show business!

17. Ceroill responds: September 6th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Galea, ok, thanks for the correction. Good to know..

18. pitbulllady responds: September 6th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Aside from FCA, which is very rare, all the “winged” cats are long-haired. As the owner of a Persian, and many previous Persians, I’ve seen many develop “wings” when I got a bit lax in grooming, as the “wings” were nothing but hair mats. Often, they would contain a “core” of rolled-up undercoat hair, making it appear as though they contained a solid “bone” inside, but they were still just hair. Reports of “bones” inside the “wings”, from the Chinese media, must be taken with a grain of salt, as the news article also reported that the cat in question was a MALE, when it is, in fact, a FEMALE, since she is a calico, and due to the sex-linked nature of that pattern, all calico cats are female, with a few very rare exceptions, which are often “chimeras”-examples of twins, one male and one female, contained in the body of one animal. I saw one such animal at a cat show last summer, and its nature was verified by vets at UGA’s veterinary school. Such animals are invariably sterile, and have odd facial markings that set them apart from normal, run-of-the-mill calicoes like the Chinese “winged” cat.

    As for the bobcats living in the foreclosed house, I’ve often stepped out to go to work and found a big male lounging on the hood of my car under the car port; it’s just part of life when you live out here in the sticks! I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the dirty paw prints all over my car.

19. Shelley responds: September 7th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    When the story first came out, the owner said her male cat grew the wings due to the constant harrassment of male cats wanting to mate with him. The entire thing reeks of someone wanting press attention, perhaps for financial reasons, which is why I am very suspicious of the structure that seems to hold these “wings” together, combined with the cat’s relatively short fur.

    There are other photos with the web site I mentioned in my first post, and they look far more like the “clumps of matter hair on a longhaired cat” explanation than this one does.

    And we complain about having to clean the little footprints from the feral kitties off our cars! I’d love to see some of those wild big guys laying around here, but I guess it would make mornings even more complicated!

20. jtm_kryptos responds: September 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    well, i love this who focus on mystery felids, but i’m of the scientific mind, so winged cats are a big no no! yet remember black pumas are oddly accompanied by maned big cats (ATROX) {loren coleman, mysterious america},

Leave your comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.

|Top | Content|