As mentioned in the other parts of this series, this Paw Study is part of the Balaa’s “Artist Conspiracy” series, who’s whole purpose is to provide both good reference pictures for artists as well as inspiration to try them out in new artwork! There are nine pictures in this series, with the “number zero” having been posted a long, long time ago now: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/432365/

As this /is/ a Paw Study, I thought the very best candidate for modeling would best be a kitty with very large and imposing paws, who doesn’t mind showing them off. So, logically, that led me to The DrifterMan, who was more than happy to volunteer.

This pic has a lot of interesting, Feline Trivia items of note, although some of them are a bit hard to see clearly in this pic.

I chose this picture specifically because it’s a display of many of the “structural mechanics” of feline’s paw, as here, you can see clearly the individual digits of the paw, even though most people might not realize they are nearly so individual as they are. Yes, it’s true that a feline paw does not have nearly the flexibility - it has one less joint - than a human’s paw...er...hand, and lacks a “usable” opposable digit (thumb). But, rest assured, the feline paw is still very capable of gripping things. More than one leopard or cougar, who have spent time in the homes of their pets can tell you, door knobs are not such a challenge. Grab, grip, twist, open! Piece of cake! And yes, I’ve see that very thing in the case of both species. Pretty amazing, if you ask me! But, lets get back to the paw!

This display shows off the claws. You can see the claws themselves, and the inner-sheaths of the claws, which is the pink skin. A portion of these parts actually “rolls” over the claws when it’s retracted. You can also clearly see how those dark lines of fur that we’ve already seen in the other pictures has literally parted here - split - allowing the claw itself to protrude from the fur of the paw that normally keeps it clean and hidden. It’s hard to see the actual length of the claws in this picture, mostly because of the angle of the camera versus the curvature of the claws. Also, because there is very little in the picture to provide a frame of reference for size, it’s hard to see exactly how large they are.

Another interesting note that is somewhat contrary to belief can be partially seen in this picture. As was displayed in the previous study pictures, the forepaws contain five claws. In this picture the smallest digit is hidden so can’t be seen. However, at the very bottom of the paw, the sheath of the dewclaw is visible. It is generally thought that cats cannot control clause individually, which is to say that they are either all out are all in. As this picture demonstrates, that is not the case. Again we cannot see the smallest digit’s claw, but we can see the dewclaw sheath, and by the fact that the dark fur is still in a thin line, as opposed to the other digits, which clearly show the dark for being split with the claw in between, then it would seem obvious that the dewclaw is not extended. So, given this picture for display and example, it would appear as though Drifter has only three of five claws fully extended. Quite an amazing feat indeed if it is indeed fact that felines must unsheath all claws simultaneously.

Even though I’ve mentioned this before, I think this picture displays very well the difference in fur densities on the paws versus the rest of the body. Some of Drifter’s underside for as well as the fur on his upper foreleg, can be seen in this photo. By comparison, one can see that for all the paw, especially that covering the digits, is considerably finer and of much greater density.

But, aside from all the biological babble, one of the biggest reasons I chose this picture is because I think cougar claws are cool!

So this is the fourth image of the Drifter Paw Study. I hope it proved informative!

This picture was taken 26-Jul-03. The image was taken with a Canon EOS 10D and the EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM lens. The original was taken at full frame of 3072x2048x24b, ISO eqv 400, 1/125 shutter, f/4.5. This image was shrunken down for space conservation.