Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cats/Archive 3

FIFe-recognized
The Fédération Internationale Féline recognizes some domestic cat breeds about which we may not even have stub articles :
 * Seychellois, an "oriental family" breed thatcomes in long- and short-haired variants
 * European (cat), probably same as European Shorthair/Celtic Shorthair in some other registries, but not necessarily (need to research it)

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  14:20, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

WCF-recognized
The World Cat Federation (which needs an article), recognizes (as existing) and/or accepts (for competition) various domestic cat breeds about which we do not even have stub articles :
 * Ceylon (cat)
 * Chinese Li Hau
 * Classicat, an Ocicat variant; should just redir there after we're sure it's covered
 * Deutsch Langhaar/German Longhair
 * various others (I stopped at "D")

They list both a Birma (cat) and the Sacred Birman as separate breeds.

The WCF standards links are missing from most of the WCF-recognized breeds' infoboxes. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  14:20, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

CCA-recognized
The Canadian Cat Association recognizes two breeds we do not even have stubs: — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  08:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Foldex (could possibly be a redir to and section at Scottish Fold, but only if it's recognized as a variant of this by some other registry
 * Foreign Burmese (should probably be a redir to and section at Burmese (cat))

FFE-recognized
The Feline Federation Europe recognizes some breeds we don't seem to have even stubs on, too: See http://www.bavarian-cfa.de/data/ffe/ and click on "Races Standard" for FFE's complete list. The FFE standards links are missing from most of the FFE-recognized breeds' infoboxes. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  19:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Brazilian Royal (separate standard)
 * Ceylon (cat) (separate standard)
 * Karelian Bobtail ( same as Kurilian Bobtail a.k.a. Kuril Islands Bobtail; they're from opposite sides of Eurasia)
 * Mandarin (cat) (classed in same standard as Balinese & Javanese)
 * European Burmese (should probably be a redir to and section at Burmese (cat))

Recommended article structure
After looking at some cat breed articles, I've developed a prototype recommended article structure to replace the current one we have now.


 * 1) Lead section with breed infobox: Includes country of origin, etymology of name, and basic breed description (includes appearance and personality)
 * 2) Appearance: What the cat should look like according to breed standards; include serious and disqualifying faults
 * 3) Temperament: How the average cat of this breed behaves
 * 4) History: The origin and development of the breed
 * 5) Health: Lifespan, common medical problems
 * 6) Notable (breedname): Any cat of this breed known to the media (e.g. Mr. Jinx would be mentioned on the Himalayan page, DC from That Darn Cat would be mentioned on the Siamese page)
 * 7) See also: Similar breeds
 * 8) References
 * 9) Further Reading
 * 10) External links

That would, of course, be for domestic breeds. Comments? ö  Brambleberry   of   RiverClan  16:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)


 * History should be before Appearance. Behavior (a.k.a. Behaviour, Disposition, Temperament, Personality, etc.), if present at all – the vast majority of temperament/behavior "information" about cat breeds is unverifiable promotional crap from breeders) should go after Health, which is more important. There is no need for a "Further reading" section 99% of the time, especially if both References and External links are already present.  No "See also" section should exist unless necessary; similar breeds should be covered in the prose when feasible and non-distracting.  Temperament information should never be included in the lead except where it can be very well sourced as  and not made-up.  (Cat magazines are  reliable for temperament/behavior stuff, as they simply parrot breeder materials uncritically and don't cite their own sources anyway, making them tertiary. They're interest-conflicted, to boot, since they allow their advertisers to determine, at least in part, their content.)  History is sometimes other things, like "History and acceptance" or something that otherwise obviously includes recognition by organizations.  The "History" section is given as "Origin" in many cases, but this seems too narrow.  Many articles give "Appearance" as something else, but this seems to be the least confusing term ("Traits", "Characteristics", etc., are not limited to visual traits).  We do  need an entire section for "Notable [whatever]", except perhaps in the cases of the most popular breeds like Siamese, in which case it would be "Famous [whatever]" (WP:Notability doesn't apply at the "mention" level only at the whole-article level), and would be a sub-section of "In popular culture". "Behavior" is a more general term than any of the alternatives and can include more than temperament, such as mousing, following, fetching, etc. So, more like this (I've been tweaking this list as I go through various articles, and am trying to write generically enough this can be applied also to dog, horse, whatever, breeds):


 * Moved to WP:WikiProject Animals/Article structure and expanded considerably in a draft proposal. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  19:17, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I generally put articles in the order of what the average reader would be looking for. Appearance would be first, because when you go to the page of a breed that you have no idea what it looks like, you want to see that first. Then, generally, you want to know how it acts. After that, where it came from. ö   Brambleberry   of   RiverClan  21:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Brian Whitlock and Jordan Dale Lucas
The articles Brian Whitlock and Jordan Dale Lucas have been nominated for deletion. You might want to participate in the discussion. IQ125 (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update
As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at ~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man ) 04:57, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Project Leaflet at Wikimania 2014!
Hey all,

I'm doing wikimania this year, and we're designing and printing leaflets to promote various Wikimedia Projects, for free! Would you like to get one for Wikiproject Cats? If so, fill in the template here: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_Leaflets

Cheers! EdSaperia (talk) 19:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Image Identification
Can somebody identify which species of cat is in this image ?



Regards, Hg  andVenus  07:40, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Requested move of "Pussy"
I have proposed that Pussy be renamed and moved to Pussy (word). Discussion is at Talk:Pussy. Cnilep (talk) 00:11, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Of possible interest
Issue at ANI that may be of interest to project members: Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents. Montanabw (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Animal breed disambiguation
Wikipedia talk:Article titles may be of interest to editors here. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for help with edit warring on Balinese breed article
I've recently undertaken to copyedit some of the domestic breed articles, as per my userpage -- improving the writing style, excising extraneous and unsourced info and just generally introducing a more encyclopedic tone. All has been going swimmingly until I hit the Balinese page, with results that can be seen in the article history, my talkpage and the talkpages of the IP (or series of people under the same IP, it's not entirely clear).

Coherent information re: objections has been a little hard to come by in-between all the hostile, melodramatic name-calling, but essentially: they don't like my edits, they like the previous version of the article, because it "has more information" and was "better organized". I am doing unspecified but incredibly damaging things to the breed's reputation, Wikipedia's freedom to edit, freedom of speech generally... etc etc you get the idea.

It's reached the point where I'd very much like to apply for semi-protection on the article (preventing any IPs from editing), but given that I'm a novice on these articles, and fairly new to Wikiconflict resolution generally, thought first to check in with the expert editors here in re: my position. Am I doing damaging things to the article? Do I have any justification in taking punitive measures against the IP? It all seems like an awful lot of hassle over an article that gets maybe ten-twenty views a month... but on the other hand, I don't like the idea of giving in to what amounts to bullying, either. Any third-party perspective would be most welcome here. :) Shoebox 2   talk  20:02, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Editing the Cheshire Cat page: Request for Guidance, Support
Hello, my name is Hannah and I am part of a Cornell University class project where we are hoping to edit and improve the Cheshire Cat page. I see that the WikiProject Cats community is interested in this topic area, and I therefore wanted to reach out to you on behalf of my team to ask for help/advice. We are looking to add on to each of the page's existing sections to expand the cultural impact and cross-disciplinary influence of the icon, to give the page a general design overhaul (including charts, quotes, images, etc.), and to add a comparison of the different cinema representations of the character. Do you have any suggestions for articles or other sources we could use for our project? Or any suggestions at all for engaging in the editing process on Wikipedia?

If you would like to learn more about our class assignment, this is the link: []

The other members in me team are: Isabella Krell, Abby Sonnenfeldt , and Carolyn Sussman

Thank you and look forward to hearing from you, Hkm24 (talk) 01:14, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Joseph Garrett
A user recently tagged Talk:Joseph Garrett as being within the scope of WikiProject Cats. I think it's a bizarre inclusion, but I figured I'd float it past you guys first. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Cougar
The naming of "Cougar" is under discussion, see talk:Cougar, Rlendog (talk) 08:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (breeds)
Please see Notability (breeds) for a draft of a future proposal for a notability guideline on domestic animal breeds. As your wiki-project is involved in this area, I am dropping off an invite to the discussion. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability (breeds). Thanks!  JT dale Talk ~ 16:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Template:Infobox cat breed
Updated with another parameter, for the LOOF (France) breed standard. I also updated the documentation with newly checked (and often replaced) URLs to where all the organizations' breed standards are.

Please check your "pet" cat article and update the breed standards (I'm doing Manx, Cymric, and Persian). Many of these things change in content over time, even when they don't suffer linkrot. And most breed articles are only citing a few of them. Several are also using the template incorrectly to link to "breed profile" junk instead of to the actual breed standards (these are all PDFs, except for those of FFE, AACE, and LOOF.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:04, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Cat meat in Canada
Please weigh in at Talk:Cat meat. Thank you. (A bit urgent.) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:56, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

New high-quality cat images
Hi everyone. If anybody has some extra time, I could use some help identifying some of the cats in commons:Category:Files uploaded by INeverCry (Cats). This first photoset of 57 images are from a cat show in Saratov, Russia, and are very high quality. I've identified some, but the rest are still waiting. I'll be looking for more Flickr photosets of cats to transfer, so the category will likely grow soon. I'll only be transferring the best images/sets I find, so you're likely to see more beautiful pics like the one to the left. Also, I take requests for Flickr2Commons transfers, so if anyone finds a set over on Flickr under a license that allows commercial and derivative use, let me know, and I can get it uploaded. Posts are welcome at my talk here or at Commons. Note: some of these 57 Saratov pics may show a 1px watermark strip on either side of the image or at bottom when you view them; I've cropped them all out with Crop Tool, but at some resolutions the strip is still showing for some reason. It should go away on its own at some point. Most of them are fine: this minor bug only affects a few of the images. INeverCry  23:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I ended up with about 850 high-quality cat images from this Flickr uploader. They can be seen in commons:Category:Files uploaded by INeverCry (Cats - checked) . Still a few that aren't yet identified. More to come.  INeverCry   06:32, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wow! Thanks for taking the time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:32, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The Russian Blue above is one my favorite uploads, though it didn't quite make Featured Picture because of the slightly pissed off look he's got for the judges. These have all been properly categorized now. There were about 900 images in all, taken by a Russian cat show judge. Bengal cats and kittens, Devon Rex cats and even some white kittens, Cornish Rexes, Sphinxes from Russia, Canada, and Ukraine, Kurilian Bob Tail cats and kittens, Scottish Folds, etc. The only thing that wasn't quite to my liking was that the cats were often a little nervous due to the cat show environment. Some were perfect though, like the Featured Bengal "kitten" at right. INeverCry  16:44, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * These images can now be found in commons:Category:Photographs by Nickolas Titkov. INeverCry  16:47, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah! Good; I was just about to report that the category had been deleted, and was trying to dig them out of the editor's contribs.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:18, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Dividing Wikiproject into Domestic Cats and Wild Cats
Hi, May I obtain input from members about creating two Wikiprojects? The first would be for domestic cats and second for wild cats. I think many editors would prefer to specialize in one or the other. Thank you IQ125 (talk) 10:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose: This project is almost moribund as it is. Forking it would lead to two dead projects instead of one limping one. It would also be inconsistent with WP:WikiProject Equine and WP:WikiProject Dogs (which covers all of Category:Canines and should probably be renamed, since foxes, etc., are not called "dogs"; "cats" does cover all felids). Editors can specialize in nothing but the Sand cat, 24/7, and that's not a rationale for fork projects.  Projects are for pooling of resources, experience, expertise, development, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:20, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Developing new content on cat breeds (the concept)
Please see Talk:List of cat breeds, for something like a plan. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:24, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Old, now junior, synonyms are mostly redlinks
In various mid-to-late-19th-century through early-20th-century works, I'm encountering frequent references to old taxa that we are not accounting for properly or at all. Two examples: Felis maniculata the "gloved cat", and Felis caligata (a.k.a. Felis ocreata, "booted lynx"), with the former long alleged to have been the ancestor of the domestic cat. In the intervening material I'm not seeing an assignation of these old taxa to new, modern counterparts, but we should have these titles redirect somewhere, since people will be looking them up here. I would hazard a guess that F. maniculata is a junior syn. of F. silvestris lybica (still considered the ancestor or primary ancestor of the domestic cat), given where F. maniculata was found (North Africa). Not sure about F. caligata, but it seems to be Caracal caracal (both from the description and the name).

There are a number of other old bi- and tri-nomens that should be accounted for here, both with redirects and with notes in the taxoboxes of the articles at which they arrive. Just one source from late in that era (1915, ) mentions the above and provides half a dozen more (F. cafra, F. Rüppelli, F. bubastis, F. dongolanæ, F. pulchella, F. margarita, and F. cristata, plus subspecies including F. ocreata rubida, F. o. Mellandi, F. o. ugandæ, F. o. cafra), which the authors thought at the time should be merged, but they don't seem able, at that point, to even clearly distinguish between C. caracal and F [s.] lybica. (Note: to account for typographic varian, we'd need additional redirects: for F. Rüppelli at Felis rüppelli, Felis Ruppeli, and Felis ruppelli; for F. dongolanæ and F. o. ugandæ non-ligature versions at Felis dongolanae and Felis ocreata ugandae, respectively; for F. o. Mellandi at Felis ocreata mellandi).

Of that short list, most are redlinks. F. o. cafra, F. o. mellandi, F. o. rubida, and F. o. ugandae appear to have become Felis silvestris cafra, F. s. mellandi, F. s. rubida, and F. s. ugandae, respectively. (Almost all of those were redlinks, but I fixed that much.) F. ocreata seems to now be F. s. ocreata, but that doe snot necessarily mean that F. caligata, one thought synonymous with F. ocreata has also been made a syn. of F. s. ocreata. F. margarita is still the name of the sand cat. None of the redlinks are obviously (by movement of species name to another genus) corresponding to the 2006 phylogenetic tree of the Pardofelis/Catopuma/Caracal/Leptailurus/Leopardus/Lynx clade, as outlined at Caracal. (That said, F. cristata would surely be one of the tufted-ear species.) Nor do any of the remaining 1915 names correspond obviously to any modern-recognized subspecies of the wild cat, the caracal, serval, or the Eurasian lynx, nor to any species listed at Felinae. So, some of them are probably totally obsolete names, but it's unclear what they've been merged with.

Is there a comprehensive reliable source that lists out all these old taxonomic names and what they correspond to today? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:23, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Problematic "minority cat breeds" article
The recent-ish article List of minority cat breeds is problematic for a number of reasons. For starters, even the concept is unsourced. Secondly, so is most of the content. Third, almost all of the sources are primary, some are breeders' self-published, promotional websites, and others are non-notable "kitten-mill" pseudo-registries that specialize in the "if you say it's a breed, and send pictures and some money, we'll say it's a breed, too" game. Finally, it's just attracting the addition of WP:NFT "backyard breeder" cruft that literally cannot be verified at all except with primary sources. It's a dumping ground for WP:Notability failures that simply aren't encyclopedic content. Most attempts to established new breeds, of anything, are failures, and virtually everything on that list is in the "attempting" stage. Some of the entries are pretty ludicrous, like the one claiming the "new breed" is just the offspring of a random alley cat and one of the other "new breeds" (read: "designer" breeding experiments) also on the list. I.e., "I have a mongrel that looks funny, so I'm declaring it a breed." I think there's a grand total of three things on this list that have their own articles here, and probably at least two of them are likely WP:AFD candidates (I would keep Aegean cat because it's seen major coverage, on TV shows as well as in cat fancier publications, as perhaps the last major landrace or "natural breed" of cats that hasn't been standardized, though an effort is underway to do so). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:59, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Moved it to List of experimental cat breeds, as a start.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Of interest
Important discussion of interest to participants on this project: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine. Montanabw (talk) 04:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

99 Lives Cat Genome Sequencing Project, at the U. of Missouri
Homepage: http://felinegenetics.missouri.edu/99lives

Definitely notable, given this level of Google News coverage. I'm working on updating the Manx cat article with info about the loosely affiliated Manx Cat Genome Project, so maybe someone else can take on the larger organization. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:26, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

TICA breed standard URLs have changed
These are now at /pdf/publications/standards/[something].pdf – e.g.: is now This will need to change in dozens of articles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:07, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
Greetings Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, — Delivered: 17:56, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Science promotion
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:38, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

New article could use some love
Toybob was recently created. There are no references and I'm having trouble sourcing some of the information. Help from this project would be much appreciated. Primefac (talk) 02:19, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Black cat photo
This is a neutral notice of a discussion at Talk:Black cat in regards to the removal of a photo from the article which has been present on it for nearly seven years.

Mtminchi08 (talk) 23:57, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

New article: Elf Cat
The newly created article Elf Cat could use a review by knowledgeable editors. Many of the current references appear unreliable, and the existence of "elf cat" as a breed, an not just a variant of the Sphynx cat could use some evaluation. Thanks, --Animalparty! (talk) 18:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I worked on this for hours, but concluded it's not notable, so have taken it to AfD. Should be summarized at List of experimental cat breeds, regardless of AfD outcome (and preferably before deletion!), but I'm too tired to do it right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  12:16, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Feline foamy virus
This new draft to mainspace article could do with somebody breathing on it. scope_creep (talk) 07:20, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Domestic animal breed page names
I have started a discussion about page naming conventions for domestic animal breeds at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dogs and invite other contributors to join. Cavalryman V31 (talk) 06:46, 2 December 2017 (UTC).

List of fatal cougar attacks in North America
A discussion has been started regarding the factual accuracy of some of the information in this article. Your input is requested here. Thank you. Primefac (talk) 16:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Improved coverage of domestic cat behavior
Please see Talk:Cat; general discussion of improving our coverage of the topic (though it might ultimately mostly affect the Cat behavior article with Cat just being WP:SUMMARY material). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  02:32, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

content dispute at cougar
There is dispute on content describing cougar behaviour in Argentine. Imho the content is somewhat questionable and not properly sourced, but the other editor disagrees. Ideally the issue could be resolved by using better sources, but short of that it would also be appreciated if other editors could comment on the current content and its sourcing.
 * Talk:Cougar

--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:31, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:28, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Missing article: Cat breeding
This presently redirects to List of cat breeds, but this is almost certainly not what most users are going to expect, and it's not very helpful. The only other potential target I can think of is Cattery, but it's dominated by discussion of temporary housing, not breeding. So, we should create an equivalent of Horse breeding, Dog breeding, etc. about the practice and industry. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Figure caption?
File:White colour progression in Tri-colour calico cat.jpg in the article Tortoiseshell cat has the figure caption: "An extreme case of slow melanocyte migration to the skin and fur of a Tri-color calico cat." But, the commons figure caption reads: "A case of apoptosis in an adult cat resulting in gradual depigmentation of skin and fur, making the cat almost completely white over the period of 6 years. Note the slow pigment change around the nose and eyes." Which is correct? --Marshallsumter (talk) 17:57, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't personally know. It seems to me that using a photo of one thing to illustrate another on the basis that you think the original identification of the photo was faulty is original research, so the image should be removed from the article in question, and a replacement sought.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:37, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Cats in art
Cats in art redirects to Cat, so there was presumably some at least skeletal material about the broader topic at one point (there is not at present). Might be worth digging out of the page history, to see if the material can massaged into a viable article section or stand-alone article. Or create a new one from scratch. The addition of a one-line comment in Kitten about kittens and art is what got me looking into this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:29, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The section Cat was a gallery that contained these 5 images:
 * File:Chimú Jar with Small Looped Handles and Feline Design ca. 1100-1400.jpg Jar with Small Looped Handles and Feline Design, Chimú c. 1100-1400. Brooklyn Museum
 * File:Figure of a Cat made by Meissen Porcelain Factory, Germany ca. 1800.jpg Figure of a Cat made by Meissen Porcelain Factory, Saxony c. 1800. Brooklyn Museum*
 * File:Cats from Unai no tomo by Shimizu Seifu. Japan, 1891-1923.jpg Cats from Unai no tomo by Shimizu Seifu. Japan, 1891-1923. Brooklyn Museum
 * File:Cat Bookend, One of Pair Manufactured by Chase Brass & Copper Co. 1930-1935.jpg Pair of Cat Bookends manufactured by Chase Brass & Copper Co., USA c. 1930-1935. Brooklyn Museum
 * File:Kitten reading a book.jpg Cat illustration by the German artist Fedor Flinzer, called Raphael of Cats.
 * See also Kitten. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * http://www.ba-bamail.com (a long collection of images of kittens) in its 55th entry contains the remark "55. Kittens are the roses of the animal kingdom!". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:14, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Javanese cat
I've recently overhauled this (removed nonsense, removed obsolete material, added sourced material, copyedited, related it to other articles). It's become clear that If anyone knows (or will go find out :-) more, please chime in or just work over the material. I would at least like to figure out what the British "Javanese" is, for certain, and also work in the Colo[u]rpoint Longhair material, including breed standards in the infobox.
 * One of the multiple definitions of Colourpoint Longhair (or Colorpoint Longhair) is essentially the same thing in one or more other registries.
 * Some other definitions of that term are.
 * "Javanese" was also used for a name of a different breed in the UK (so says the ToC in one of the cited sources, that I don't own a copy of).
 * That in turn may or may not be the WCF meaning of Javanese, which is essentially identical to what various other registries call Oriental Longhair.

The short version is this is the breed that is the long-haired version of what is often called the Colourpoint Shorthair; it is a long-haired colorpoint cat with wider coloration ranges than is permitted in the ancestral Balinese. (I.e., it is not the same as the related Oriental Longhair, which is not colorpointed). In WCF terms, it's weirdly been merged with Himalayan into "Colourpoint". In CFA, the Javanese has been merged back into Balinese as the Javanese Division, and there's a suggestion in CFA's own materials that this may be true of several other registries. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:57, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Covering cat body types
Please see Talk:Cat body-type mutation

The gist: should make this Cat body types and cover not just weird mutants, but standard body types like cobby, semi-cobby, Oriental, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Overhaul of List of cat breeds
I did a big overhauling pass on that: Could use a lot more work, but it's a start. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:31, 13 July 2018 (UTC); updated: 13:21, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Added missing info
 * Fixed numerous outright errors
 * Deleted spammy breeder lies
 * Deleted patent nonsense added by vandals or the confused
 * Did a bunch of MoS cleanup
 * Started adding footnotes to explain terminological conflicts
 * Added some cross-references between entries.
 * Used proper × markup for hybrids, and gave the binomials of the wild ancestors
 * Noted which are dwarf breeds
 * Overhauled the table markup
 * Added missing alternative names, countries, etc. (not all, but several)


 * Also needs more active watchlisters. People add nonsense here frequently, and recently an anon, amid some constructive edits, has been adding at least three claims that range from proven false to highly dubious, along with various MoS problems, etc.  Details [ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:86.147.201.240&oldid=850774582#List_of_cat_breeds here].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:15, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Category:Smilodon for deletion
The Category:Smilodon has been nominated for deletion, because it has only one page (Smilodon) and is superfluous.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 15:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The category was not tagged, but emptied out-of-process without providing a link to the discussion. It has now been reinstated. See Categories_for_discussion/Log/2018_August_13. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment - Lion subpages
Please see/contribute to discussion at Talk:Lion Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:34, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

RfC about lions
As you may know, there has been a lot of disagreement over a number of big cat articles. So, I'm pinging:


 * User:Casliber
 * User:BhagyaMani
 * User:LittleJerry
 * User:Mariomassone
 * User:Baffle gab1978
 * User:Jeppiz
 * User:Cygnis insignis
 * User:Leo1pard
 * User:Punetor i Rregullt5
 * User:Jts1882
 * User:Mcelite
 * User:Altaileopard

Some of the related articles seem to be:
 * Central African lion
 * Central African lion clade
 * African lion
 * Asiatic lion
 * Cameroon lion
 * Cape lion
 * Central African lion
 * Congo lion
 * Congolese lion
 * East African lion
 * Northeast Congo lion

What do you (and others) think about some sort of WP:RfC to finally sort this whole thing out? Is there a discussion you could point to with some sort of summary of consensus so far?

Please ping any others you know of who would be interested.

Please, help us all understand what the problem is.

Please, please, please be concise. No walls of text, please. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:17, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The discussion at lion talk page is an RfC, however it needs more structure I think to hammer some of this out. Will post there. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:25, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. I did not know about that. I hope that sorts things out. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:34, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Er, it's mentioned in the section immediately above this one. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:05, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Project members, please visit and help at Talk:Lion Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:34, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Northern lion and Panthera leo leo
Okay, I have gone and proposed a merger of these two articles, discuss at Talk:Northern_lion Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:00, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

African lion nominated for deletion
See Articles for deletion/African lion Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:09, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Cape lion, East African lion and Southern African lion into Panthera leo melanochaita
I have also suggested Cape lion, East African lion and Southern African lion be merged into Panthera leo melanochaita  - see Talk:Panthera_leo_melanochaita Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:00, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Aphrodite['s Giant] and Cyprus cat
I've massively overhauled the Cyprus cat article, which was a mixture of error, fabrications, confusion, and nonsensical gibberish. I think it's accurate now.

However, in the course of doing this, it's become clear that the information in this article – which is about both the old landrace of ferals and the very modern standardized breed developed from it, under a different name – has a backwards focus. While the breed, per se, is rather new, it's clearly the main topic of the article and by far the more notable one. The landrace has early-medieval roots, but no one was writing about it until the breed development began. Kind of the same story as Aegean cat, but with the twist of a new name for the breed (and better acceptance so far as actually being one).

Barring any strenuous objections, I want to re-rewrite it to reflect that, and move it to [one version or another of] the standardized breed's name; then move the landrace category on it to the left-over Cyprus cat redirect. The target name will probably be Aphrodite's Giant since it's unambiguous, and is the primary name (the only registry in which it has full recognition, WCF, uses that name, as does WCC; the one that calls it simply Aphrodite, TICA, has only granted preliminary recognition, and could revoke it). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 16 November 2018‎ (UTC)
 * Any yes/no/maybe input?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:05, 17 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't see anything wrong with it, if the two are sufficiently distinct. Although, would Aphrodite's Giant (cat) be a better article title?
 * Anyway, I've been meaning to go through the cat breed articles (and indeed, the entire Category:Cats) to do some cleaning up and organizing. If you would like to help, or just offer advice and/or suggestions, feel free.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:14, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, see the new topic I created below. :-) As for "Aphrodite's Giant (cat)", that's an article title that indicates an individual cat named Aphrodite's Giant. All the disambiguated individual-animal articles are disambiguated that way. Breeds are disambiguated by tacking on the species name without parentheses (or by adding an alternative, more specific term like "fowl", "swine", "hound", etc.). We did disambiguate Flemish Giant to Flemish Giant rabbit, on the basis that the name is naturally ambiguous, and that might be the case with Aphrodite's Giant; thus we'd get Aphrodite's Giant cat.  But that verges on confusing, anyway (sounds like a creature from mythology or fiction). The best bet might end up being Aphrodite cat, per WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE, even though it's the "minority registry" (TICA) name. Our breed articles do need a lot of work.  Please be aware that fair amounts of WP:DRAMA have erupted in this topic area before; breeds people tend to be a little high-strung, and terminological disputes can turn ugly quickly.  Really good sourcing is needed.   And we need to remove a lot of unsourced and poorly sourced nonsense, especially promotional breeder claims (e.g. that a particular breed is unusually smart, or better with children than other breeds, or more friendly, etc., etc. – non-encyclopedic blather and marketing).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:59, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Notice: Requested some moves
Earlier today I requested some (hopefully uncontroversial) technical moves at WP:RM/TR. All 9 moves I requested were articles about prehistoric felines, and were mostly to bring said articles into line with other prehistoric feline articles. I left a full explanation of my reasons with my request.

Since these are cat-related articles, I felt it needful to notify members of this WikiProject. If I am wrong about something, please tell me.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:45, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It would help more to know what the moves were (just a diff of your RM/TR request would do it), so we know what's changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:53, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I found them: . I see that a couple were contested; those should probably go to full RM discussions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:13, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * There's already an open RM discussion about the entire group of moves: Talk:American cheetah.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Writing about breeds
After two new-ish editors ended up at WP:ANI in the same week for breeds-related disruptive editing (and one topic-ban was issued), I've expanded a bullet-point list of advice for them into an essay: Writing about breeds.

It provides a crash course in how to write about breeds the Wikipedia way. It's mostly for new editors, but might be of use to some more experienced ones who have not written about breeds before or thought much about how our WP:P&G apply to the topic area. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:51, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Nice. However, how should very common claims about a breed's personality be handled? Abyssinian cats are often said to be very active, but I am unaware of any actual research concerning this.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 15:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Capitalization of names of standardized breeds
Please see Village pump (policy).

This is a neutral RfC on a question left unanswered by MOS:LIFE (on purpose in 2012–2014, pending "later discussion"). It is now later, and lack of resolution of the question has held up MOS:ORGANISMS in draft proposal state for 6 years. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Disputable scientific names
There has recently been a mass renaming of articles on felids, particularly prehistoric ones such as Ngandong tiger to Panthera tigris soloensis and European jaguar to Panthera gombaszoegensis. However, the way things have happened haven't always been consistent. Take the case of the lion (Panthera leo) and its prehistoric relatives, the Early Middle Pleistocene Eurasian cave lion (P. leo fossilis or P. fossilis) and the Upper Pleistocene Eurasian cave lion (P. leo spelaea or P. spelaea). As the names suggest, the spelaea cave lion is a descendant of the fossilis cave lion. Recent genetic studies suggest that spelaea is a different species to leo, so the article's name is now Panthera spelaea, however, the article of its ancestral form, fossilis, is titled Panthera leo fossilis, which makes it look as if the primitive cave lion is a subspecies of Panthera leo, but that its descendant is a different species. As pointed out here, if spelaea is not a subspecies of Panthera leo, and fossilis is the same lineage as spelaea, then fossilis shouldn't be treated as a subspecies of Panthera leo either. And that's just one trouble with the mass renaming that has occurred. If for example a new study suggests that the Ngandong tiger (currently treated as Panthera tigris soloensis) is not a subspecies of Panthera tigris, but a closely related species, in the same way that cave lions are arguably not subspecies of Panthera leo, but closely related species, then what are we supposed to do, create new discussions on renaming pages like that en masse, every time there is a change in taxonomy? Leo1pard (talk) 09:57, 22 December 2018 (UTC); edited 13:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, we should always use the name that is most commonly accepted in the literature. If it changes, yes, we change the titles, but only when there is scientific consensus. FunkMonk (talk) 21:48, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Anon(s) changing breed article details
It's come to my attention that one or more IP users have been going around making unsourced changes to breed articles (mostly to alter breed characteristics). While most of these articles are poorly sourced, they do seem to be largely in agreement with the sources we do have, while the new changes are completely unsourced and do not agree with them. I thought at first someone was altering our articles to conform to one particular organization's standards (likely a minor one) and not even bothering to cite it; however, looking over the IPs' edits, many other (often really stupid) changes were also made, like locating cougars (mountain lions) in Asia, etc. It's just vandalism. I've reverted a bunch of these already, but there are probably more by other IPs. Some of the reverted changes were made by User talk:107.215.53.37, and others by User talk:2602:306:bd73:5250:4030:fb01:886a:c775, who are probably the same person. The latter was blocked after a bunch of unconstructive edits to dog breed articles as well, all of which have been reverted (mostly by others). In several cases, this/these user(s) have been inserting altered information for which a cite was already provided, i.e. they've been falsifying data and citations, and the IPv4 address has been doing this since 2016. Other IP edits to cat breed articles since 2016 need to be reviewed, but I'm not in a position to do it, since I'm packing for a move. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:07, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Jean Mill for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Jean Mill is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Jean Mill until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

The wikiproject hasn't really considered treatment of breeder bios (notability matters, etc.), that I know of. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Jean Mill up for WP:AFD
Speaking of breeder bios. Seems like there is plenty notable to me. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 15:20, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Dispute amongst members of the Cat Specialist Group regarding tiger taxonomy
See this. Leo1pard (talk) 05:37, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Subscribe to new Tree of Life Newsletter!
Despite the many Wikipedians who edit content related to organisms/species, there hasn't been a Tree of Life Newsletter...until now! If you would like regular deliveries of said newsletter, please add your name to the subscribers list. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 00:30, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Christopher Kaelin up for deletion
IMO, well sourced article about a geneticist. But you can help improve it. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 15:53, 4 July 2019 (UTC)