Talk:Japanese Bobtail/Archive 1

Using the "Citations Needed" tag
I'm no admin, but I'd like to put this out for anyone using the "citations needed" tag: If there are a lot of unsourced claims in the section, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't put the tag after every bloody sentence. Instead, use the "This article does not cite any references or sources," and stick it at the beginning of the unsourced section (note: do not put it at the top of the article unless none of the information in the article is sourced).

Here's the tag:

Be sure to change the date= as appropriate.

La Bicyclette 17:24, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That advice does not reflect consensus practice. The block tag you recommended is for article that have sources, not those that need additional sources, and it is in fact typical, and sensible, practice to indicate in articles with some but incomplete sourcing which statements, in partiuclar, need to be sourced. 19:34, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Picture
It would be nice to have a picture of the cat that showed the tail, considering that is its most noteable feature.


 * My thoughts exactly. --NEMT 16:33, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * How about this picture from a cat show? The Wifechaser (talk) 10:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I am attaching a photo of my Mik-ke, who came from the Amakusa Islands in Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan. You can see the side view of the rabbit-like tail. --Trizi (talk) 23:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

That is not a squid
I was linked here from Sepiolidae, is there a Japanese Bobtail squid, or is it just a cat. --ZZ 08:11, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * There is a Japanese Bobtail Squid, but I don't think there's an article for it. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 13:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * It does now, and the articles are now disambiguated. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 19:34, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Mi-ke
As a quick note, I updated the note about "Mi-ke" coloring to reflect the fact that not all mi-ke Japanese bobtails are calico-patterned; by way of example, my own cat is a show-quality mi-ke with a van pattern.

Speaking of which, I'll see if I can't find a good picture to put on the page, which might be useful for illustrating the range of appearances this breed may have. jonny-mt 02:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * A van patterned mi-ke is still a calico. Calico is defined as a cat with black, red, and white patches--there is no strict limit on the amount of any one color.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.232.221.52 (talk) 20:59, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, I am a Japanese -- Will somebody edit "three fur" to "tricolor hair" or "three kinds of hair"? "Fur" is "kegawa" in Japanese. "Ke" means "hair." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.0.142.202 (talk) 22:49, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Breed standard
That whole section seems a little... weird. It sounds more like a description of one of these cats, not the whole group. Also... "Tail: The tail must be clearly visible and is made up of one or more curves." This confused me. Don't tails bend anyway? And, why MUST it be clearly visible? I'd say remove the whole section, but y'know, don't wanna do it unless people agree with me. --  Scar  † Contributions  † 21:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I took 'clearly visible' to mean that there must be a tail, period. I'm not sure about in cats, but I know that some dogs can be born with no tail at all - not even a stump.


 * Anyhow, I thought the section was a little out of place - too specific for an encyclopedia article. A cat breed standard is just a bunch of guidelines that are used in cat shows and by breeders to define what they think the 'ideal' cat of that breed is. It doesn't mean all Japanese Bobtails are going to have all of those qualities, it's just what the breeders strive for (and let me tell you, most standards leave a lot of room for interpretation.)


 * I personally think that the section in question should at least be simplified - in general, most kinds of animal breed standards aren't going to be useful to the average person or cat owner, since they usually use language or descriptions that are specific to breeders or cat judges. I think a very general description of the breed (common colors, size, weight, etc.) would be more informative in this article. Purplekittie (talk) 07:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The section's pretty typical of such sections in cat articles, as far as it goes. The only thing at all that distinguishes one cat breed from another is the collective, averaged breed standard guidelines of cat breeding organizations, the cat facier gestalt or consensus on what makes a breed that breed and that the breed even exists distinctly at all.  The material isn't "weird", it's crucial to the entire concept.  The section here is not particularly over-detailed, but is actually more consise that is typical (see, e.g., Turkish Van). Its principal problems are that it is in the form of a list of sentence fragments instead of prose, and it does not discuss at all the differences between different standards.  While the section needs improvement, the idea of removing it as "weird" is arguably nonsense, and would have to be something pursued at WP:WikiProject Cats across all cat breed articles uniformly. Of course "clearly visible tail" means that a notably visible tail exists at all, and of course the tail having a curve means that it is curved even when at rest, not that it can be bent by force; it's generally not helpful on an article talk pages to be arch, silly or pseudo-obtuse just to make a point. Finally, whether any particular standard leaves room for interpretation or not isn't relevant here; we're reporting a summary of what the standards say, not an argument pro or con with regard to any particular interpretation of any particular requirement of any particular standard. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 19:34, 21 June 2011 (UTC)