It’s been a while since we have discussed Manx cats in these articles, and so to redress the balance the next two will be dedicated to this iconic breed.

This week will focus on its history and next week will bring us up-to-date with the Manx cat today.

Cats are not native to the Isle of Man.

No-one knows when they were first introduced, but the Vikings probably played a large part in increasing the island’s feline population.

The Vikings liked cats and would give them as presents and, according to Norse legends, Freyja (the goddess of love) rode in a chariot pulled by two wild cats.

The breed that was probably most familiar to the Vikings was the ‘Norsk Skogkatt’, or Norwegian Forest cat, which had hind legs longer than its forelegs, as do Manx cats.

Both breeds also have double coats (a soft undercoat of thick, short hairs overlaid with coarser, longer hair), share a liking for water, and tend not to be very vocal.

The first references to Manx cats being tailless occurred in the early 18th century.

‘Cat’ in Manx is ‘kayt’ and all cats on the island appeared to have been referred to as such until around 1750 when a new word ‘stubbin’ crept into Manx from the English ‘stubby’.

‘Stubbin’ in Manx is a cat with no tail or only a short stump, and so it seems likely that tailless cats became common enough at this time for people to need a word to distinguish them from their tailed cousins.

The shortening of the tail in Manx cats appears to have arisen spontaneously and to be the result of what is known in genetics as the ‘founder effect’, where distinctive differences arise from a limited gene pool.

If there is little variation in the gene pool then the differences can become fixed, and as the gene pool of cats on the Isle of Man was relatively small, short tails (or no tails) became much more common as a result of inbreeding.

Inbreeding was, of course, part and parcel of being on an island.

The Manx cat was seen as a welcome addition to most farms because of their excellence as hunters, and they were often kept as working animals and used as rodent control.

Before the days of neutering, colonies of feral Manx cats thrived such as the one at the Douglas horse tram stables that established itself in the 1950s.

Cats from this colony were regularly observed tackling herring gulls, assisted by their longer back legs which enabled them to jump to catch their prey.

The Manx cat wasn’t just a popular choice for farmers – it was normal for in-town businesses, both on and off the island, to have their own felines. For example, Dumbell’s Bank in Castle Rushen, the English House of Lords, and the Home Office in Whitehall.

Apart from their hunting ability, Manx cats were particularly popular ships’ cats because a common naval belief was that a cat could bring on a storm using magic stored in its tail.

And if you don’t have a tail you can’t start a storm! In 1963 a tabby Manx cat was presented to the Queen Mother when she visited Castletown, and this cat then became the ship’s cat on the royal yacht Britannia. He was called ‘Schickrys’ which is Manx for ‘certain’.

Manx cats had another purpose. In the 19th and 20th centuries the Manx government used them to promote the island.

They were given as gifts to famous people such as John Wayne, Walt Disney and Edward VIII, and tourists were encouraged to take one home.

To maintain a supply of Manx cats the Isle of Man Government set up a cattery at Knockaloe farm in 1961, but the farm was difficult for tourists to visit and so in 1964 the cattery moved to Noble’s Park, where it stayed for the next 30 years.

The cattery closed in 1992 due to spiraling costs and concerns about cat welfare, but Manx cats are still prevalent on the island.

The ManxSPCA occasionally has a Manx cat for rehoming – the overweight Stubbin, for example, came to us last year and found a loving new family who put him on a strict diet!