I know we’ve had a surfeit of felids this week, but I couldn’t resist posting this one because it’s so weird. Could it be a sign from God? Polly, a ten-week-old tabby from Staffordshire in England, clearly has the word “cat” spelled out in her fur. (Click to enlarge.)
All the clues are there: the whiskers, the purring, the miaowing and even the toy mouse under her front paws.
But just in case you were in any doubt as to what sort of animal Polly is, the ten-week-old tabby is happy to help out, thanks to her unusual markings, which spell out the word ‘cat’ on her left flank.
Garry Marsh and wife Joan, both 57, adopted Polly from a local cat rescue centre last weekend.
But it was only as they admired their new pet’s colouring three days later that they noticed the marks.
Mr Marsh, a teacher, said: ‘We were commenting on how symmetrical her tabby patterns seemed when Joan suddenly noticed the letters.
‘Once somebody points it out, it is obvious – the word stands out a mile.’
The couple, who live with their sons Simon, 28, and Alex, 23, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, also have a seven-year-old cat called Katina.
The article helpfully suggests other signs of divine intervention in tabby coats:
Tabbies have an ‘M’ marking on their forehead, between the eyes, with various legends suggesting why this is the case.
One suggests that the Virgin Mary made the mark of her own initial out of gratitude after a tabby snuggled up to the baby Jesus in the manger to stop him from shivering.
And an Islamic legend says that the Prophet Mohammed had a tabby called Muezza that saved his life by killing a snake which had crawled up his sleeve.
When the cat later fell asleep on his arm, he cut his sleeve off so as not to disturb the cat.
From that day on, all tabbies were born with the ‘M’ marking to signify that Mohammed held the animals in high esteem.
I doubt that there’s an “M” in the Arabic word for Mohammed.
The odds of a species’ name being spelled out on an individual’s fur is, like, 100 bazillion to one against?
Therefore, Ceiling Cat!
Ah but think of all the times that the word “cat” was spelled out in the fur of a dog—and the papers didn’t print it!
Depends on the specie’s name I guess.
A cat or dog .. probably have better odds than a Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides.
That settles if for me. What more proof could you ask for?
Praise Ceiling Cat!
Did Hitler own a cat? If so, then followers of Ceiling Cat need to apologize for the Holocaust.
Hitler owned a dog. Dog is god backwards. Therefore Hitler was the anti-Christ. QED.
And all you Nazi-atheists didn’t realise how bad Hitler was until ex-Hitler youth member Ratzi pointed it out.
Where’s my medication. I need to lie down.
It would seem the God is getting senile.
I mean, how dim do you have to be to write “cat” on a cat in order to remember that it’s called a “cat”?
That Mohammed story sounds familiar . . . ‘cut sleeve’ is a long-standing epithet for homosexuals in China:
(from Wikipedia)
Emperor Ai was also famous for being the most effusive of ten homosexual emperors of the Han Dynasty. Traditional historians characterized the relationship between Emperor Ai and Dong Xian as one between homosexual lovers and referred to their relationship as “the passion of the cut sleeve” (斷袖之癖) after a story that one afternoon after falling asleep for a nap on the same bed, Emperor Ai cut off his sleeve rather than disturb the sleeping Dong Xian when he had to get out of bed.
see for more detail –
Passions of the Cut Sleeve:
The Male Homosexual Tradition in China
by Bret Hinsch
So adorable. Comes with a name tag, too.
Do you ever think: “That cat is so cute, I could just swallow it whole?” I’m serious. I sometime want to stick a kitten’s head in my mouth and just chew on it for a while. Of course, I don’t do that.
Ewww. Stick to licking them. You might have to have some spikes surgically implanted in your tongue so that you groom them properly though; cats always get a combing as they get a licking.
The arabic M is مـ when word-initial,م when alone. That story makes no sense.
Of course, it spells cat. How else is god supposed to keep track. I wonder where he spelt cockroach? On the inside?
No need to mark a dog, though, little doubt what they are.
“little doubt what they are”
Sure about that?
http://hubpages.com/hub/panda-dog
I have the same doubts. There’s a suspicious lack of striping surrounding the label.
Were crop circles common in that area? If so, they may simply have gotten arthritic and moved the operation inside.
Fifty bucks that it’s not photoshopped.
If you click on the picture you can read the name ‘Bruce Adams’ next to the copyright ‘c’. He’s a “visual artist”.
Bet still on? 😉
ABSOLUTELY! Confirm it here in a post and the bet is on. Fifty bucks!
I don’t think I’ve ever posted an amazing picture that someone hasn’t said was Photoshopped.
It sure doesn’t look photoshopped. Then again, the allegation is that it’s a professional photoshop job, in which case it makes sense that it wouldn’t look photoshopped. heh…
I’ll bet ANYONE fifty bucks that it’s real. (But I’ll bet only once.)
I don’t think it’s photoshopped – the folks @ DM surely inspected it in person. I do suspect it was done with black hair coloring, like the panda dogs Jack posted about, probably enhancing some natural coloring in the direction of cat. Look at the field around the label – it’s overall blacker than the black regions elsewhere.
Oh yeah–the panda dog. Saw that on tv a while back. Everyone on the show was all “kawaiiiiiiiii!!” and all the 20-something girls looked ready to run right out and hair dye their dogs:))
Can’t you guys READ?
Look closer at the second picture:
it CLEARLY says ‘calf’, not cat. I can understand the cognitive bias, but we HAVE to remain scientific about these things and go with the data, not mold the data into what we want it to be!
Jeepers!
Well, god calls the whale a fish – what a moron – so I wouldn’t be surprised if he called the cat a calf. Next thing you know he’ll be asking for the fatted calf to be sacrificed – at which point god should be given the bird and told to go away. I wonder if he’s like Tinker Belle – if you don’t believe he just disappears.
“if you don’t believe he just disappears”
It’s the other way around: If you don’t believe, he never shows up”
Ah, “God of the gaps” – he fills that gap between Tinker Belle (who disappears if you don’t believe) and Godot (who doesn’t appear if you do believe).
That is not latin script saying “cat” in English. That’s a profile of an Easter Island head! And that proves ancient astronauts, and that proves …. er, uh … they say drinking lots of wine affects … I can’t remember.
(I did pick up a 750ml bottle of St. Bernardus Abt.12 today! It was calling my name …)
Until I read the text I saw Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene (looking to the right, rotated anticlockwise by 40°).
Wait! It’s Jesus! No, the virgin Mary! WTF?
“I don’t think I’ve ever posted an amazing picture that someone hasn’t said was Photoshopped.”
I don’t quite (< 1 % chance)) think it's photo-shopped myself. I was just going for the initial "Oh shit" reaction. I'm mean that way.
😉
I, mostly seriously, wondered if someone dyed (bleached) the fur. “Cat” appears to be in cursive, which would make some sense if you’re applying a liquid dye.
A surfeit of cats?
Is that possible?
Clearly an irrefutable proof of God’s existence. The only remaining questions is – which one of the bazillion Gods out there?
Sure there’s no “M” in Mohammed, but he obviously used the Latin alphabet to spell “Muezza”.
Pareidolia again.
Just like the barcodes on the Zebra I bought at the zoo the other day…
S.K.Graham
Posted September 17, 2010 at 2:10 pm | Permalink
This clearly proves two things:
(1) All animals received their names from Adam.
How else was the word “cat” encoded in it’s DNA, cleverly programmed to reveal itself now, when we know what DNA is?
(2) American was the language of Eden, the original language, spoken by everyone prior to Babel.
How do I know it was not Australian or Canadian? Surely you’re joking, right?
Not entirely off-topic, I think, but Andrew Sullivan has a Youtube thing up of Rossini’s Duet for Two Cats being performed. The cats perform very well, and they appear to be Christian.
It’s in Times New Roman! God uses Office… this explains so much…
If you squint your eyes real hard (like I did), the mark would read co2. God is trying to warn us about global warming, it seems.
Big deal. One time I saw a snake that had Pituophis melanoleucus clearly spelled out in its dorsal markings, but wouldn’t you know it–I didn’t have my damn camera.
I know someone who cites the gypsy leg lengthening trick and regrowth of a missing thumb as evidence of god. Of course, this can’t be verified. So, even when god does “substantial” miracles, it still must be taken on faith.
Did anyone else see the sign for the pound sterling?
Everybody is nuts! It’s clearly an ancestral form for the Chinese character for “mountain” or 山.
http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E5%B1%B1&submitButton1=Etymology
Note especially L06202. Or maybe even L31719.
Of course, it could also be 臣 partially completed and sloppily written.
Actually, it look much more similar to 巨, meaning large, great, enormous, mega.
Wow–you’re right! Well, if you tip your head left it looks like 巨, but if you tip your head waay the other way it does look kind of like 山. Weird–as soon as you said that, I stopped seeing “cat” and saw 巨 instead.
I think it says Allah
الله
Clearly the cat’s from Berkeley. It doesn’t read “cat”, it reads “Cal”.
Or maybe it says “eat”. Hard to tell.
As far as writing things’ names on them, there was the episode in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” when everyone stopped sleeping and started forgetting…
Clearly this is natural selection; they tossed all the other cats that didn’t have such markings back into the pound. Breed and iterate. They’ll find more and refine the process, and before long you’ll be able to order a kitteh with the message of your choice emblazoned on its fur.
Then you can skin it and mount the pelt to preserve your message for eterniteh!
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=203701
If you believe the word “cat” can appear on a cat, then you should also believe that Satan can appear on a tile in your bathroom.
Clearly it is Satan in-tile-nate. Why else would that man pose in the picture like that?
a friend observes
“Misspelled “kat”. Fail”
Cat smat, it ain’t spell’n no cat.
It spell’n c.o.t, picture of fishy.
Decoded it is (c)an (o)f (t)una with a fish picture on the end.
Whatz haz to do to senz subliminalz messagez to human slavez anywayz?
Clearly, this shows divine preference for serif fonts.
Hello everyone, thank you for all the great comments about our new kitten Polly Pepper. I can assure you that Polly nor any photos have been tampered with in any way whatsoever. It just says ‘cat’ in her fur ‘cos it does! Obvious cat is obvious, obviously! Emma Bayles, noted kitten scientist reckons that it is at least a gazzillion to one that Polly has the word ‘cat’ in her fur. I am told that there are 29 bazzillion in a single gazzillion; but anyway there is only ONE Polly Pepper, world famous tabby cat.
Love and Peas,
Garry and Joan Marsh, Simon and Alex Marsh, and Emma Bayles.
My friend has a cat that seriously has “No God” written on her fur. Hence, her name is Nogod.