Finally, somebody answers the damn question
I figured if anybody was going to know the answer to the question, a cattery that breeds sphinx cats would. So I wrote to a couple of them. I didn’t sound like a nutter or anything. I write enough business email that I can sound reasonably sane when I choose. But nobody wrote me back.
Now, someone has actually written a book called Do Cats Have Bellybuttons? The answer is yes, they do. They aren’t neat round holes, on account of mama cats don’t have scissors, but they have a little scar there.
I feel better.
Posted: September 25th, 2007 under animals, cats, personal.
Comments: 36
Comments
Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: September 25, 2007, 1:30 pm
Apparently the mother cat eats the placenta after they’ve squeezed it out. You know, whilst it’s still warm and…bloody. I’m not going to bother finding out if this is really true because of my fear of birth (the most unnatural thing in thew word, ever), but I read it in a Sci-Fi book (Farnham’s Freehold), so it must be true.
Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: September 25, 2007, 1:40 pm
Oh, and I put it to you all that cats are further down the evolutionary, uh, doodad, than we humans are. Their bellybuttons are little scars, rather than weird-looking holes. So while you are wasting your precious time picking lint out of it and saying to yourself, ‘why is it always blue?’, cats are using their time more efficiently by sleeping.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 2:05 pm
My mom always made me “help the cat” when she was in labor. Probably, leaving her the hell alone is all the help the cat wanted from me, but I had to sit with her until she was done popping out kittens. Something around the house always seemed to be pregnant. Mother considered motherhood the better part of valor, probably because it was her main accomplishment.
Anyhow, I don’t remember much about the afterbirth. Generally, I played with the kittens, not the squidgy bits.
Comment from jwpaine
Time: September 25, 2007, 2:36 pm
They eat the placenta sometimes. Horses do, too–sometimes. But the horse can choke to death on it, so you have to take it away before they skarf. Another similarity between cats and horses: both share dual-lobed uteruses (uterii? uterim?); laid out, a horse’s placenta looks like a silhouette of Mickey Mouse.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 2:42 pm
“So I wrote to a couple of them (about cat bellybuttons). I didn’t sound like a nutter or anything. I write enough business email that I can sound reasonably sane when I choose. But nobody wrote me back.
Heh. When I read your question and intent the first thing I thought of was “what to do about a 6 ft feather boa”.
Weasel, some questions cannot be asked without sounding like a nutter. I know this: I’ve searched for such questions most of my life, and – believe me – there are plenty.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 2:55 pm
jw –
I can testify to the dual-lobe nature of a cat’s uterus: years (geez – decades) ago I had a cat who – after giving birth to 6 strapping kittens proceeded to give birth to her uterus. “Prolapsed uterus” is what its called. Lethal was what it was, poor mama. It had two “lobey” things rather than being the uni-baggy thing one would imagine.
Sooo…every morning for about 4-5 weeks McGoo had to bottle-feed 6 squirmers. McGoo missed going out to lunch every workday because McGoo had to go home for the noon feeding. Much shit was given to McGoo at work for this unmanly activity – to which McGoo responded with a rousingly cheerful, “Piss off, jackasses! Chew my shorts!”
(McGoo has always been of a cheerful nature)
However, McGoo’s young sex life improved dramatically when he began bringing dates over for the “feeding”.
(McGoo – looking pure as the driven snow) “Listen, ____, I forgot to feed my baby kittens. Before we go to ______, would you mind dropping by the house for a minute while I feed the little hellions?”
Worked every time.
Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: September 25, 2007, 4:36 pm
The reason you don’t see belly buttons on animals is nobody did the rodeo tie off when they’re born. It just withers away.
Comment from porknbean
Time: September 25, 2007, 4:40 pm
Weasel, you should have asked your own cats for a peek at their underbellies.
Comment from jwpaine
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:01 pm
Steamboat, you magnificent bastard!
The best I ever did was once, I had prostatitis, and the doctor told me that to hasten the healing process, I needed to ejaculate as often as possible. I of course asked him to write that down for me, which he did.
I carried that note for five (semi)glorious years.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:03 pm
You had a doctor’s prescription?! Whoa.
After five years, did it just fall to bits from overhandling?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:05 pm
Ummmm…the piece of paper, I mean.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:26 pm
Hmmm. Mine simply got tough!
March-May of that year was known in McGoo memory as the famous Nooky Spring.
“The reason you don’t see belly buttons on animals is nobody did the rodeo tie off when they’re born. It just withers away. -CT-
The reason I never noticed kitty bellybuttons is they’re covered in fur and I never looked! But I will next time.
The Mama chewed them off my kittens pretty well I guess, ’cause I have no memory of noticing them.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:31 pm
jw-
I also had a bout of inflamed prostate way back when. I mentioned it to several (older) engineers at work and every damned one of ’em said matter-of-factly, “Jerk off more.”
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:37 pm
Bellybutton here!
Underneath this belly fur!
On/off switch for purr?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:44 pm
Definitely not the “on” switch for purr. I tried serruptitiously feeling up my cats for bellybuttons. They both gave me the “what the sam hill is the MATTER with you?” look before clamping down on me good.
And, no, you can’t feel a cat’s navel under all that luxuriant belly fur.
Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: September 25, 2007, 5:58 pm
All eutherian mammals (aka placental (but that’s not really the right word)) have belllybuttons. Marsupials don’t really b/c they are “born” in the embryonic stage and finish gestating/developing in the pouch. Incidentally, not all marsupials have proper pouches, some create invaginations (isn’t that a cool word) on the underbelly to hold the little dudes. Here’s some more useless knowledge. Marsupials are identified, not by the pouch or by the method of development, but by the shape of the uterus. In a marsupial the uterus is bisected by the urethra. It ends up looking like an innertube w/ another tube running down the middle. And yet one more trivial factoid, most wild mammals eat the placenta b/c it’s a huge source of protein which they need to produce milk. And if the mom doesn’t the scavengers will.
K, lesson’s over 🙂
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:01 pm
“And, no, you can’t feel a cat’s navel under all that luxuriant belly fur.” – Weasel-
Thanks for the heads-up. I was just now trying to decide whether to expose the kids across the street to my headcold just so I could quietly grab their new kitten and feel it up for bellbutton traces. Thanks to you their health is not at risk.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:06 pm
Oooo! “Eutherian”! Nice.
McGoo, give the little bastards your cold anyway. Kids are just big squishy germ-bags…it’s about time somebody pushed back a little.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:14 pm
Omigod! We all speak fluent Spanish! Somebody tried to get a simultaneous Google/translate on “fuck lady.” Check it out!
S. Weasel = comadreja del S.
peanut lady fuck = de la cogida de la señora del cacahuete
supernumery nipple = entrerroscas del supernumery
adorable fluffy boobs = boobs mullidos adorables
It oddly switches back to english partway through. How come nobody else’s name got translated?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:18 pm
Translating that back from Spanish to English, “peanut lady fuck” comes out “of taken of the lady of the peanut.”
“Taken” must be a literal translation of whatever the slang term is. Anybody’s Spanish colloquial enough to comment?
Comment from Belle Lee Butoun
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:27 pm
Gee, I never knew that Omphaloskepsis could be so
educational.
It makes me want to break into song!
Ohhhhhh!
Navel, how I love ya, how I love ya –
My dear old outie!
I’d give the world to see
All the lint down in my old B-el-l-i-E-E !
Button – cuter than than a Bumble Bee!
Down on my ol’tummieeee!
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:30 pm
Okay, who’s got Swanee running in a loop and is simultaneously pissed to be old enough to recognize a Swanee imitation?
Comment from jwpaine
Time: September 25, 2007, 7:01 pm
The verb “coger” means to grab or to seize; in slang it means to fuck. The past tense, cogido, means to gore.
Comment from jwpaine
Time: September 25, 2007, 7:12 pm
Ai, Papi! Métemela!
Let’s see it translate that!
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 8:29 pm
Lokki! I know that was you! There was a serious disturbance in the Muse. It felt like millions of beings suddenly burst into helpless giggling whilst uncontrollably breaking wind.
No, wait. My fly’s unzipped. never mind.
Translating dogfart haiku into spanish is seriously risky. It could shatter the continuum of space/time, resulting in etherial flatule emergance. And you know that’s gonna sting a bit.
The Lady of the Peanut. That has class. We could call her “Her Nibs”.
Weasel, I went across the street to watch my neighbor repack his wheel bearings and the kids came over, so a) they’re fully infected now since both gave me huggys and I sneezed repeatedly, and b) the kittens bellybutton was undetectable by these fingers.
I probably got the headcold from them anyway. Li’l Carriers – all of ’em.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 8:32 pm
jw-
Does Ai, Papi! Métemela! mean “chew my jock strap”?
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 8:36 pm
jw-
Does Ai, Papi! Métemela! mean “chew my shorts”?
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 25, 2007, 8:38 pm
jw-
Does Ai, Papi! Métemela! mean “May your digestive efforts be rewarded with success”?
Comment from iamfelix
Time: September 25, 2007, 11:53 pm
The things Stoaty makes me look up (rolls eyes):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Hill_%28euphemism%29
Actually, my mom used that one a lot … but I always wondered who he was. 🙂
Comment from Dawn
Time: September 26, 2007, 12:31 am
My name got translated amanecer
Did a google image search for it. Pretty!
Comment from lizardbrain
Time: September 26, 2007, 7:10 am
Oh, great!
For the rest of the day, I’ll be hearing this in my head:
I’ve been away from you a long time
I never thought I’d miss you so
Somehow I feel
Your love is real
Near you I want to be
The birds are singing in the sunshine
The banjos strumming soft and low
I know that you
Yearn for me too
Swanee, you’re calling me-ee-ee…
Swanee how I (etc. etc.)
Reminds me of when I was way down upon the Suwannee River a few years ago. No banjos, plenty of birds: black vultures. I have pitchers of ’em. They don’t sing so much as croak.
It’s too bad the only thing people remember about Al Jolson is the blackface. He was a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant who had an incredible career as an entertainer.
Now I gotta go figure out how to flush the song outta my brain.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 26, 2007, 8:13 am
Sam Hill?
Whoa – that’s interesting, felix.
Comment from Yor freind
Time: September 27, 2007, 11:28 am
Link without comment
http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20070925.html
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 27, 2007, 12:12 pm
Ha! Sez you, my dyslexic freind.
Funny, I was thinking this morning about the time I dragged long-suffering Uncle B to a rat show. No, I didn’t win anything.
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