June 17th composite picture of the kits

I spent the afternoon of June 17th attempting to get good photos of the kittens to show off their Ring Tail like tail traits. My first attempts were in our living room. Unfortunately our carpet is the same color as the blue kittens. I then moved the kittens on to my bed. The backdrop is more colorful and shows them off a bit better. Taking photos of kittens is literally herding cats. I managed a few really good photos, unfortunatly catching them at their best moments of ring up is difficult. In almost all of these photos realize the kitten in question shows more ring then is currently in the photo. They only ring up for fleeting moments. I believe that this is due to development of their tail muscles.

I noticed something curious while shooting the photos. When I picked up and placed Cinnamon ( the unrelated kitten ) he waved his tail out behind him to catch his balance. This is normal in my experience with cats. When I pick up and quickly place down any from my bunch, they ring up! They find their comfortable center of balance with their tails over their bodies just like Solomon.

I am hampered by the delay of the shot with my digital camera. Each time I snap a photo it takes 20 seconds or so to process. There is also a delay between depressing the shutter button and the photo snapping. Why use a digital camera? Well, the quality of the photos I do get is better then from my 35mm and they are already digitized into the computer at the highest scan rate possible. My digital camera shoots at 1680x1200. My scanner only scans at 600 X 400.

When I was photographing the kittens at 6 weeks old and still a bit wobbly on their feet I noticed something unusal. As they raced down the stairs they held on to the bottom rung of the bannister with their tails to slow their descent. I managed to get a quick shot of this. The kits also wrap their tails around your hand in pleasure when you pet them ( as does Solomon). It appears they take full advantage of whatever their tail can do.

I wanted to post a near adult picture of one of the kittens. The picture on the lower left was taken at 4 months, the other pictures are at 8 months. You will notice that Max here is not ringing his tail up in the picture. Max can and does ring his tail on occasion.

Unfortunately none of the kittens have Solomon's exact tail carriage. All of the kittens however show some traits of the ringtail tail. It appears we are either a) working with a dominant gene with variable expression b) working with a recessive gene in which case we should see exact ringtails in the next generation c) more then one gene is involved in creating the ringtail d) the ringtail is not a genetic trait. ( this seems highly unlikley due to the number of ringtail cat reports locally that are now coming in. Look for updates on the other known ringtails page, as photos of 2 new cats from local areas will be joining the crew. One of these cats is 7 years old and belongs to my neighbor!)

Max is one good looking little boy. Max is a blue self with underlying mackeral tabby carrying classic tabby. Max has deep amber eyes.