Day 7: Here Kitty, Kitty

Why are calico cats always female?

Motivation: I have a calico cat and while outside with my husband, he called her "Buddy" and he said he keeps thinking she's a boy.  So I informed him about the fact that calico cats are mostly girls and males are rare and worth money.  He had no idea and I thought, "I should really look this up to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about.

Answer: 

I decided this might be a good job for wikipedia if I just search for "calico cat."  

This is my own Calico Kitty (or as we call her, "Cali.")

In case you don't know what a calico cat is, lemme give you an example.  Calico cats are domestic cats with a spotted or parti-colored coat that is predominantly white, with patches of two other colors (often the two other colors are orange tabby and black). Outside of North America the pattern is more usually called tortoiseshell-and-white.

I can't rightly recollect when I first heard this little known fact.  I think my mom told me when we were younger because we may have had a male cat... but I was young and I'm pretty sure my mom didn't know how to accurately determine the gender of kittens and unfortunately the poor kitten got murdered by a wild animal... so it is going to be one of those unsolved mysteries in my life.

Back to the question!  

Because genetic determination of some coat colors in cats is linked to the X chromosome, calicoes are nearly always female. Because of the genetics involved, calico males generally have impaired vitality and are almost always sterile.  I was reading this to my husband and he said, "what is impaired vitality?"  I didn't know, so here's what I found out that means: "vitality" is exuberant physical strength or mental vigor.  And "impaired" means weakened, diminished, or damaged.  Diminished mental vigor?  Yep, sounds like a guy to me!  HA!!

Rumination: My mom was right!  And I remembered something I learned as a youngster and passed it on.  Although calico cats come in crazy different patterns, the most unique thing about them seems to be they are genetic freaks.

Day 4: Knock knock knocking on... wood

Where did the euphemism "knock on wood" come from?

Motivation: My mom sent me an interesting forward the other day about where certain expressions came from and then today someone said "knock on wood"and it made me wanna know where the phrase came from.

Answer: 

I started this with a google search per my norm, using the phrase "origination of knock on wood."

Of the options, one was a source from the UK, so I figured that was a good place to start since the British are so much dang smarter than we are and we got our language from them.  (Well, the language I am willing to claim, not some of the slang from the youngsters today.)

Here is what I found on the origin of "knock on wood."  

The derivation may be the association that wood and trees have with good spirits in mythology, or with the Christian cross. It used to be considered good luck to tap trees to let the wood spirits within know you were there. Traditions of this sort still persist in Ireland.

The British version of the phrase - 'touch wood', predates the American 'knock on wood' and was itself preceded by a Latin version - 'absit omen', meaning 'far be that omen from us'. This dates from at least the early 17th century, when it is quoted by John Heywood in his collections of proverbs. It isn't clear when 'touch wood' began to be used as a token of good fortune but it must have been by 1850, when the academic correspondence magazine Notes and Queries published this:

There probably is some old English expression for averting evil, but it does not come to mind; "I touch wood," "Bar omen," "Bar ill-luck," seem clumsy.

'Knock on wood' is known from the early 20th century; for example, The Syracuse Herald, February 1905:

Neglecting to knock on wood may have been responsible for the weather's unseemly behaviour today.

Well, this didn't really answer my question... so back to the search.  So I went back to good ole wikipedia and came up with this:

• The early pagan tradition of "knocking on wood" was meant to drive out mischievous wood nymphs before they took an unfortunate suggestion and turned it into reality.

• In some countries, such as Spain, it is traditional literally to touch wood after an event occurs that is considered to bring bad luck, such as crossing paths with a black cat or walking under a ladder or noticing it's Friday the 13th. This is usually done when there's no salt at hand to spill over your shoulder, which is considered the "traditional" way of avoiding the bad luck caused by those situations.

• In Italy, "tocca ferro" (touch iron) is used, especially after seeing an undertaker or something related to death.

• In old English folklore, "knocking on wood" also referred to when people spoke of secrets – they went into the isolated woods to talk privately and "knocked" on the trees when they were talking to hide their communication from evil spirits who would be unable to hear when they knocked. Another version holds that the act of knocking was to perk up the spirits to make them work in the requester's favor. Yet another version holds that a sect of Monks who wore large wooden crosses around their necks would tap or "knock" on them to ward away evil.

• In Romania, there is also a superstition that one can avoid bad things aforementioned by literally knocking on wood ("a bate în lemn"). One of the possible reasons could be that there is a monastery practice to call people to pray by playing / knocking the simantron.

Rumination: I don't really like the wishy washy responses about this.  I would much prefer someone to tell me the exact person who started this saying and why they did it.  I guess I will accept the consensus about the wood nymphs/spirits in the tree, but why call it knock wood or touch wood?  Why not knock tree?  Ridiculous, I say.  I suppose history and I shall agree to disagree on this one.  Ridiculous.