What flavor cat is this?

[BoBettie]

My friend Cindy has this cat- and I’ve never seen one quite like it. He looks like a normal grey striped critter, but as you can see in this picture:
http://fff.fathom.org/pages/zette/buter.JPG

he holds his tail curled up over his back. Her vet said that it was some kind of submissive behavior thing, but I saw a TV commercial a few weeks ago and they had a cat that looked exactly the same holding his tail in the same manner.

He CAN straighten his tail- when he sits or something, so it’s not a deformaty. It just curls up that way, much like my Shar-Pei’s tail does. He has a thin frame and yellow colored eyes- a pretty petite cat.

Thoughts? I tried to get a front pic, but he was too fast. I’ll post one if I can get him to slow down a bit

[Siemsi]

Looks like a tabby cat to me…

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

It’s apparently not a breed as such (except for the Japanese bobtail), just a genetic “something” that crops up from time to time.

http://messybeast.com/bobtail-cats.html

The bobtail trait ranges from a normal-length tail with a distinct kink, through to a short twisted pom-pom and just about anything between those two extremes. The degree of kink is variable and the vertebrae are affected so that the tail cannot be straightened. It is often possible to feel a bony knot inside the kink where vertebrae have fused. The bobtail mutation is widespread throughout Asia, extending as far as Russia.

The magic Google words seem to be “curly tail cat” rather than “curled tail”.

It doesn’t look like a Japanese bobtail kind of curly tail to me (it’s way too long), so you can eliminate all the Google hits for that.
http://www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/japanese.html
http://www.moggies.co.uk/breeds/btail.html

And–my understanding of Cat Body English was that a cat with its tail in the air is a Happy Cat. I was not aware that Cat Body English even included a word for “submission”.

[BlackKnight]

I prefer the BBQ flavored cats. Yums!

It’s almost certainly a behavioral thing, although I’m not sure if it’s indicative of submissiveness. Just because you saw another cat that looked the same acting in the same manner doesn’t mean it’s a trait linked to a particular breed of cat.

This site (and numerous others) lists submissive tail behavior as:

Tail lowered fully and possibly tucked between hind legs: Signal of defeat to totally submissive cat showing its lowly social status.

so it’s probably not a sign of that.

None of the sites I Googled explained this exact form of tail posture. The closest thing I could find was the behavior of holding the tail straight up, which indicates a very friendly greeting.

Oh, and apparantly you’d lose points for this behavior at a cat show, according to the American Association of Cat Enthusiasts.

Are there any veterinarians who can give us the straight dope?