Meet Bolt

Our Maine Coon mascot — and the only member of the team who naps through every meeting.

His story

Bolt is a Maine Coon — the big, shaggy, famously good-natured breed that behaves rather more like a dog than a cat. He walks on a harness, rides happily in a stroller, travels through airports without complaint, and has never once been bothered by a waiting room full of strangers.

He is registered with TICA, The International Cat Association, as a Maine Coon Polydactyl, and shows in TICA cat shows. Which means that between the grooming, the travelling and the judging, he keeps a busier schedule than most of us.

Bolt, doing what Bolt does.

BreedMaine Coon Polydactyl
Registered withTICA
Toes26
RoleMascot
Travels byStroller

Count his toes

Most cats have eighteen

7Front left
7Front right
6Back left
6Back right

A standard cat has five toes on each front paw and four on each back — eighteen in all. Bolt has seven on each front foot and six on each back. He is polydactyl, and the extra digits sit on the inner edge of the paw, which is why cats built like him are known as thumb cats. He has a proper separate thumb on each front foot, and he uses it.

You do not often see this in a show ring. Most pedigree registries bar polydactyl cats from registration and showing outright. TICA is the exception: it registers them as a sister breed, the Maine Coon Polydactyl, and caps the count at seven toes on any one foot. Bolt is at that cap on both front paws.