Reilly the Many-Toed Kitten, Fall, 2001,
courtesy of Nancy Grover

Reilly is a kitten found in a drainpipe near the Engineering Building on the SIUE campus. He was adopted at about four weeks by Nancy Grover, and spent two weeks in the biology dept. office until he could feed himself. Reilly is a polydactyl kitten--during embryological development, polydactyl cats develop extra toes, a dominant characteristic. In Reilly's case, he developed an extra "paw" on each front foot with three toes and a "palm" pad (a total of 7 toes on each front foot!). His back feet just have one extra toe (making 5 on each back foot). All his paws and claws are fully functional! We miss him now that he is living at Nancy's home and hope for more pictures soon! More information about polydactyl cats is available at these links: http://home.sprynet.com/~azhart/polydact.htm http://www.breedlist.com/articles/polydact/polydact.html

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