Pets

I learned about them in a round about way.

Ember does not have the spotted coat of a pedigree Mau. Her coat pattern is tortoiseshell tabby with gray and black tabby stripes and random streaks of red. As a kitten she resembled the embers of a fire so that's how she got her name.

But Ember has the eye shape and color of a Mau. Also the head and ear shape. As a kitten, she had the sleek body shape of a Mau. But since I had never heard of a Mau, I didn't know where those traits came from.

I got more curious because her behavior was so different from any other cat that I had known. So I looked online for various cat breed pictures and behaviors. Except for Ember's coat pattern, she fit the Mau description. But Maus are a rare and expensive breed. I got Ember from a co-worker who had her mother.

So I asked the co-worker about it. She got Ember's mother from a friend who knew a cat breeder who had some accidental mixed kittens to give away. I looked up the breeder and discovered that they bred Bengal cats. Bengals are a mix of a wild cat with a domestic cat. The domestic cat used in breeding Bengals to domesticate them is the Egyptian Mau. Voila! Mystery solved. One of the breeder's Maus apparently had an unplanned mating with an ordinary "street cat."

The kittens from that litter could not be bred or sold, so they gave them away. Ember's father is unknown, but her mother looked even more like a Mau than Ember does. Ember's mom had the perfect body shape, eyes, and ears of a Mau. But the mom's coat was a very beautiful, symmetrical calico pattern of patches that looked like a designer quilt.

So I learned all I could about Maus and it explained a lot about Ember's behavior, especially the Mau "wiggle tail."

Good thing I did because there is medical knowledge that her vet needed to know about Ember. Maus are sensitive to sedatives and need to be sedated very carefully for surgery.

All cats are unique and precious, IMO, but Ember's behaviors are a treat that arrived in a surprise package for me.