Polydactyl cat have a total of 18 toes, with five toes on each fore paw, and four toes on each hind paw; polydactyl cats may have as many as eight digits on their front and/or hind paws. Both Jake, a Canadian polydactyl cat, and Paws, an American polydactyl cat, were recognised by Guinness World Records as having the highest number of toes on a cat, 28. Various combinations of anywhere from four to seven toes per paw are common. Polydactyly is most commonly found on the front paws only, it is rare for a cat to have polydactyl hind paws only, and
Cat senses when a cat is unable to see its prey because it is too close to its mouth, its whiskers move so as to form a basket shape around its muzzle in order to precisely detect the prey's location. A cat whose whiskers have been damaged may bite the wrong part of its prey, indicating that they provide cats with detailed information about the shape and activity of its prey. The cat family was shown in 2005 to lack the TAS1R2 protein, one of two required for function of the sweetness sensory receptor; a deletion in the relevant gene ("Tas1r2") causes