Purrfectly imperfect
QUESTION Is congenital deafness almost always found in white cats?
Yes, in particular those with blue eyes. White skin and hair colour is coded by the dominant white gene (called W) in cats. About 5 per cent of cats carry the gene. The gene is also responsible for congenital deafness. While 17 to 22 per cent of white cats with non-blue eyes are born deaf, the percentage rises to about 40 per cent if the cat has one blue eye, while upwards of 65 to 85 per cent of allwhite cats with two blue eyes are deaf.
The W gene suppresses pigment cells known as melanocytes. Melanocytes are found in the vascular system of a cat’s inner ear, where they serve a different function, helping to maintain high potassium levels in the fluid surrounding the sensory hair cells in the ear.
When sound waves bend the inner ear hair cells, melanocytes open channels that allow potassium into the cell. The potassium influx excites the cell, which triggers the nerve cell that enters the brain in the auditory nerve.
When the W gene suppresses melanocytes, the vascular system in the ear degenerates, potassium levels are suppressed and the hair cells die, causing complete deafness.
The pigment genes can also affect melanocytes in the iris, resulting in blue eyes in the absence of the normal pigment. Thus, blue-eyed cats are more likely to be deaf than animals with normal coloured irises.
Matthew Gates, Harpenden, Herts.
QUESTION One of P. G. Wodehouse’s characters says ‘pick up the old Waukeesies’. Was there such a brand?
The Waukeezi was a brand of shoe made by John Marlow and sons, a Northampton shoemaker who operated between 1866 and 1949. Waukeezi was a play on the phrase ‘walk easy’.
Northampton was once the shoemaking centre of Britain. John Marlow and sons’ adverts from the 1920s boasted that they were producing a quarter of a million high- quality shoes at their st James factory each year; not only the Waukeezis but Tru-Phit and Britannic brands.
Wodehouse borrowed the brand name as a metonym for foot (or feet): ‘Put the old Waukeesi down with a bang’ as Wodehouse wrote in the Bertie Wooster story Jeeves And The Chump Cyril, and ‘pick up the old waukeesies’, (meaning ‘let’s go; hurry up’). When he used it, Wodehouse always spelled the brand name with an s, never a Z.
Susan Moore, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon.
QUESTION Why is a Lazy Susan so-called?
This term for a revolving tray on a table for passing round food and condiments has been around since the beginning of the 20th- century. The devices were popular in homes in the mid-20th century but are now primarily the preserve of Chinese restaurants. Just who Lazy susan was remains a domestic mystery.
A plausible suggestion is that susan was a generic term for a servant and that her name was humorously transferred to the tray. The suggestion that it was a disparaging nickname applied to susan B. Anthony, an early campaigner for gender equality, is not backed by any specific evidence.
early references to the Lazy susan lend credence to the generic servant argument. A 1917 issue of Vanity Fair referred to a ‘revolving server or Lazy susan’. The price was $8.50, which, the advertisement said, was ‘an impossibly low wage for a good servant.’ An earlier Christian science Monitor article from 1912 has: ‘Mrs. Curtis has inaugurated . . . the “Lazy
susan” method of serving, which has solved most beautifully the problem of service without an extra maid.’
There seem to have been lots of susans who were employed as servants, and susan may have become a generic equivalent, like calling every butler Jeeves whether that was his name or not. Joanne Dutton, Richmond, Surrey.
QUESTION Why was RAF Fylingdales chosen for the UK’s early warning system?
FURTHER to an earlier answer on the siting of the BMEWS facility at RAF Fylingdales, the RAF and u.s. Air Force
agreed the early Warning station (EWS) site needed to be on the east side of the country, close to the coast.
A whole range of factors were considered including radiation hazard, the need for geological conditions suitable to support the large structures to be built, plus the need for local infrastructure capable of supporting the facility and its personnel during the construction and operational phases of the site.
Although the radars to be used presented a negligible radiation hazard, it was considered necessary that the location was remote from any settlements, to allay any public fears.
in the end, the deciding factor was that the Army had a long lease on a large area of moorland in north-eastern Yorkshire, just inland from the coast, which it termed the Fylingdales Practical Training Area (PTA), and a site at snod hill on the western side of the PTA, seven miles inland.
One of the downsides of the site was that it had been part of an Army firing range since World War i and clearance of unexploded ordnance (UXO) was necessary before works could commence.
After the confirmation of snod hill as the EWS site in 1960, the task of clearing the site of UXO was commenced by Army Bomb Disposal personnel, but after two fatalities the job was passed on to RAF 5131 Bomb Disposal squadron.
A long-distance challenge walk, the 40mile Lyke Wake Walk, crosses the moorland area north of the radar station fence. since the Lyke Wake Walk commenced in 1955, walkers have reported coming across bullets, shells, grenades and other remnants of the Army’s activities. And, although no walkers have ever come to any harm from UXO, caution is urged.
Dr Ian B. Evans, archivist of New Lyke
Wake Club, Willoughby, Lincs.
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