Science: Winged Cat

Citizens of Portland, Ore., flocked to see a curious creature publicly exhibited by one Arthur Kingery of Wapato, Wash., who said he had captured it in his chicken-yard. It was a cat, thrice the size of a house cat, with a tail heavy and furry, like a coyote’s. On each side of its spine, beginning just back of the shoulders, grew a pair of muscular ridges, for all the world like two pairs of rudimentary wings, furred heavily. The feline’s hind feet measured five inches, spreading out like the feet of a snow-shoe rabbit.

Old settlers were reminded of Paul Bunyan’s “minktums” and “tigermonks.” Natural scientists suspected it was a cross between a lynx and a house cat. Nature lovers recalled that Naturalist Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden mentioned a “winged cat.” It was the pet of a farmer-neighbor, d scribed as “dark brownish grey color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her ‘wings,’ which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them.”