My neighborhood is home to several families of feral cats, and I recently discovered a grey tiger-stripe and her little black kitten living in a woodpile in my back yard. I started feeding them, and though the mom remained wary, the kitten was still too young to know better, and let me pet him while he ate. After licking the plate clean, he playfully pounced on a twig I teased him with. Perched on a stack of old 2×4’s a short distance away, his mother watched our nightly antics with a mixture of suspicion and mild interest.

The first thing I noticed about this spunky kitten was his huge feet. Real waffle irons. Extra toes maybe? I’d had a “mouser” years ago and really loved his quirky personality and manual dexterity. Cats with extra toes are called “polydactyl” (latin for ‘many toed’) or “Hemingway cats,” because Ernest Hemingway had a bunch of them – in fact their descendents still live in his home-turned-museum in Key West. There’s much lore surrounding these mutant felines: back in the day, they were thought to bring good luck to ships, so residents of English ports would give their extra-toed cats to captains and crews headed for Boston. That may explain why the largest numbers of America’s six- and seven-toed cats are found in the Northeast; they’re rare in other parts of the country. And almost non-existent in continental Europe where, legend has it, they were burned as “witch’s familiars.”

Well I’m no witch but I’ve been without a familiar for two years now and, yeah, I grabbed the little fella. My partner and I have been “socializing” him for five days now, and, considering he was completely feral, he’s made great progress. At first we couldn’t even approach him – but step by step he’s becoming a housecat. The first (and crucial) sign that we had a winner: he took to the litter box right away. Not surprising really: I’ve observed wild cats defecating, and they prefer loose soil. But it’s still a relief.

Another big milestone was achieved when he let me brush him with a baby brush. He still loves to play, and as he gets more confident he’s demonstrating amazing (sometimes alarming) acrobatic abilities. And he grabs things! I mean really grips things! With the SEVEN toes he has on each paw!!! Two of them seem to form a thumb, an opposable thumb. Wild Thing.

For the first two days this frightened but curious creature peered out at us from the darkest places in the kitten-friendly detention cell we’d created for him. My partner suggested we call him “Shadow.” I like it.

TOE-COUNT UPDATE: After several careful inspections we’ve determined that Shadow has six toes on his front feet and seven on his rear feet, for a total of 26 toes. Because most cats only have five in front and four in the back, Shadow is eight toes over the limit. What’s going on here? Is this a trend? Are cats evolving hands?