Ran out of room on the origonal project! Here is my research for Barn-owlkit application here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/986285468/ - Clawless - Being born declawed is insanely uncommon in cats (I've found one source referencing a dog who is missing a claw possibly due to trauma(?), and a handful defining the word anonychia, but no examples of actual cats being born that way) The vets I found speaking on it seem to agree that it would be a form of deformity in the paw causing missing/deformed 'fingertips'. I'll be using information about cats that have been medically declawed for the information here! Whether that is what happened before she was adopted or if she was born that way will be unknown to everyone, including her. OKAY! the information! Barney here will be missing the entire last bone on all four of her paws. This changes the way her feet contact the ground, which can lead to pain as a result of her joints not taking her weight like they were supposed to. For Barn-owlkit this will appear mostly when strenuous activity on her feet goes on for too long, which will cause her to fatigue faster than other kits. Due to her learning how to walk while declawed, and the possibility being a genetic deformity, I will say that if it was surgical, it was a skilled vet, so this is a relatively minor problem for her. However, it is one that will worsen as she gets older. Skipping over behavioral issues that often stem from this (unethical) procedure, because it clashes with the aspect of sentient cats and is out of character for her. https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/why-declawing-bad-your-cat I believe she will still be able to learn to climb, although her methods will differ from other cats and she will have more difficulty learning. She may or may not try to learn, as she's missing just about every feature cats use for balance perception and grip! As for hunting and fighting she will strongly favor her teeth, using her limbs only for grappling when necessary. Referencing human arthritis for how joint pain would affect her! https://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/basics/physical-activity/index.html Low impact exercise would be much easier on her joints and is shown to actually improve arthritis pain! For our little Riverclan goose, I think this means she would greatly favor swimming over other forms of exercise, and possibly focus a lot of her attention on fishing when learning to hunt! Generally, any injuries to her legs will set her back pain-wise. Otherwise, it's what I said above, she will feel the effects of exercise faster than her peers and might have soreness in her joints and back after working herself particularly hard. -Blind eye- This blindness being visible means it is likely a cataract causing the blindness in this eye. These can be present from birth, which is a fact I recently learned! Through this eye she gets very severely blurred and unsaturated vision, effectively rendering it blind. She has some perception of light through it, however, and would be able to tell shadows from light if her other eye was blocked. Any residual sight is lost at night as no light can pass through the clouded film. She doesn't have light sensitivity because the cataracts cover the entire eye. https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/cataracts#:~:text=A%20cataract%20is%20a%20cloudy,to%20get%20rid%20of%20cataracts. Barn-owlkit will be missing her depth perception, which will lead her to struggle gauging jumps. In her case this will often have her avoid them, unless there is a particularly large reward for succeeding. The same applies to climbing. Between her clawlessness, tailessness and this, Barney is going to be a largely grounded bird. Again, if the reason for climbing overpowers her fear of falling, she may still try. https://cattime.com/cat-facts/how-to/48481-one-eyed-cat-care -Bobtail- Her bobbed tail is the result of a mutation that shortens the tail and has been present since birth. In all honesty, I cannot find any effect of shortened tails for cats that are born with them. There are (spinal) health issues that are common within the common short-tailed breeds, but sources do not seem to mention that balance is affected. In (less reputable) sources like Quora, the general response seems to be that kitties are adaptable and figure out how to change their method of balancing. https://www.purina.com/cats/cat-breeds/american-bobtail https://www.quora.com/If-a-cat-s-tail-is-shortened-or-lost-not-born-short-how-does-it-affect-the-cat-s-balance-etc Most cat use their tails to balance them when walking along long narrow stretches, so she will have alternate strategies for crossing these kinds of structures https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432897001010 She’s pretty complicated on the research side of things!
