STATE
MyEagleNews.com
ALL THUMBZ
New Pendleton resident raises an internet sensation
By ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — When Charly Hotchkiss moved to
Pendleton in early January to take the job as the news clerk for
the East Oregonian, she brought along an Instagram celebrity.
Thumbz, her 28-toed cat.
The orange feline has the congenital physical anomaly
polydactyly.
Hotchkiss was 15 and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
when she acquired the cat. Her parents employed a man who
had an extra cat, Hotchkiss said, and the man was planning to
either give the 1-year-old feline to a new owner or release it to
the wild so “the coyotes could have it.”
“He’s not a great guy,” Hotchkiss said.
She heard he killed his ex-girlfriend and himself sometime
after letting go of the cat.
For Hotchkiss, Thumbz fi lled a cat-shaped hole in her
heart. Still grieving over the death of her previous cat a cou-
ple months earlier, she said she was ready for a new critter.
And when her father called her and asked her if she wanted a
cat who might “have something wrong with him,” she rushed
over to claim him.
When she fi rst spotted him, she noticed his extra toes,
hence the name. But there was nothing wrong with him. Poly-
dactyly is not uncommon in cats, Hotchkiss said, but having
28 toes is a world record. The cat has seven digits on each
paw.
The Guinness World Records website confi rms her claim.
It names a 28-toed Canadian cat, Jake, as the world-record
holder with the same situation — seven toes on each of its
four paws.
“I really wish he had one more,” Hotchkiss said.
When she welcomed the cat into her life, she did not imag-
ine the fame Thumbz would achieve.
Today, the cat has more than 23,000 Instagram followers.
More people follow Thumbz than live in either Pendleton or
Hermiston.
Instagram fame
When she entered college, Hotchkiss started an Instagram
account for Thumbz. She said it was just something for her to
share pictures with her friends.
“I really wasn’t taking it very seriously,” she said.
Fame took off thanks to one of her favorite podcasts,
“Morbid: A True Crime Podcast.”
Hotchkiss’s sister, who also is a fan of “Morbid,” wrote
a letter to the hosts of the show and told them of Thumbz.
The letter, “How My Sister Got Her 28-Toed Cat from a Mur-
derer,” was received and read on the podcast last year. Along
with telling the story, the podcast shared Thumbz’s Instagram
handle @thumbzthecat, and people started following it en
masse.
“Overnight, he gained thousands of followers,” Hotchkiss
said. “So then I started being more active with it.”
She said she began posting more, which gained the atten-
tion of even more followers. In addition, a kitty litter company
took notice. PrettyLitter featured Thumbz in an ad last year,
she said. The ad appeared on Instagram.
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Thumbz has 28 toes — seven on each paw. His owner, Charly
Hotchkiss of Pendleton, said that ties the world record for
most toes on a cat.
Hotchkiss said she is not getting rich off of Thumbz,
though he does net her some cash. Instagram paid Hotchkiss
$75 in January because of her cat’s large following.
A single post on Thumbz’s Instagram can receive hun-
dreds or even thousands of likes. Hotchkiss said she has just
more than 2,000 followers on her own account, but she said
she is not at all envious of Thumbz’s popularity; rather, she is
enjoying it.
She even said she has goals for him. She wants Thumbz to
reach 25,000 followers by the end of March.
The life of Thumbz
He often sits on his cat tower and stares out the window,
looking for squirrels in the trees.
“He’s an old man now,” Hotchkiss said.
That’s fi ne with her. The cat has, after all, lived with
Hotchkiss in New Mexico, Eugene, California, Hawaii and
now Pendleton.
Thumbz weighs 15.7 pounds. Hotchkiss said he might be a
Maine coon or an American bobtail; she is not certain which,
if either. And while he is not a lap cat, Hotchkiss said, he will
climb up on a person’s chest to be petted, but only for peo-
ple he likes.
Thumbz is not entirely an indoor cat. Hotchkiss takes
Thumbz out on a leash. She said he likes to roll around in dirt.
“That’s one of his favorite things,” she said. “He gets
really dirty.”
Thumbz also does not meow, Hotchkiss said. Instead, he
makes a trill. And while he is particular about his cat food, he
will eat cream cheese off Hotchkiss’s fi ngers.
She also said she likes to think about the jobs of which he
might be capable. Perhaps, she said, laughing, he could be a
rodeo clown at Round-Up or even fi nd a company ready for
the cat to give it “two thumbs up.”
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
A9
Timber and enviro
groups back accord
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Environmental
advocates presented a united front
with the timber industry while
recently pitching new forestry reg-
ulations to Oregon lawmakers.
The Legislature is considering
whether to enshrine a compromise
deal on logging rules — the Private
Forest Accord — into law, expand-
ing no-harvest buff ers and making
other management changes.
For the timber industry, the
passage of Senate Bill 1501 would
ensure decades of regulatory pre-
dictability for forestland owners
and sawmills, said Diane Meyers,
vice president and assistant gen-
eral counsel at the Weyerhaeuser
timber company.
“The stability makes Oregon an
attractive place for the forest prod-
uct industry’s continued invest-
ment,” Meyers said Feb. 1 before
the Senate Natural Resources and
Wildfi re Recovery Committee.
Aside from expanding logging
buff ers, the Private Forest Accord
would strengthen rules for roads to
ensure they don’t obstruct fi sh pas-
sage and don’t increase sediment
in streams, she said.
“Frankly these conversations
have been diffi cult on both sides,”
Meyers said.
Small streams that currently
lack no-harvest buff ers would
receive protections under the deal,
which is signifi cant because they
aff ect the temperatures of larger
waterways, said Bob Van Dyk,
Oregon and California policy
director for the Wild Salmon Cen-
ter nonprofi t.
The agreement calls for a “habi-
tat conservation plan” for protected
species in private forests within fi ve
years, which could prove challeng-
ing due to Endangered Species Act
processes, he said.
“That’s a federal decision, and
given federal timelines, that may
be ambitious,” Van Dyk said.
The Private Forest Accord
would track the removal of bea-
vers from forestland and prioritize
non-lethal approaches to resolv-
ing confl icts between the species
and timber operators, said Sean
Stevens, executive director of the
Oregon Wild nonprofi t.
The Oregon Department of
Forestry’s enforcement abilities
would be enhanced and civil pen-
alties for repeat violators would be
increased tenfold, from $5,000 to
$50,000, he said.
“We don’t want to see those
people breaking the law with
impunity,” Stevens said.
Small forestland owners typ-
ically harvest a third less timber
from their properties than com-
mercial operators, which is rec-
ognized with more fl exible rules
in the agreement, said Jim James,
executive director of the Oregon
Small Woodlands Association.
However, small landowners
who meet the more rigorous stan-
dards would be rewarded with a
tax credit that compensates them
for the unharvested timber, James
said. Those tax provisions would
be enacted under a companion bill,
SB 1502.
The deal is aimed at prevent-
ing small forestland owners from
being pressured to convert their
properties to other uses, which
would be environmentally detri-
mental, he said.
“I hope it fi nds its way across
the fi nish line,” James said of the
deal.
Apart from the Private Forest
Accord, lawmakers will be consid-
ering other landmark timber legis-
lation this year: A new management
regime from the Elliott State Forest.
The state forest has long been
controversial because the logging
revenues it generates are obligated
to provide funding for schools
and because it was considered for
privatization.
Under Senate Bill 1546, the
forest would remain in state own-
ership and its revenues would be
“decoupled” from the Common
School Fund after generating $121
million for it.
The vast majority of future log-
ging would occur on tree planta-
tions younger than 65 years and
more than a third of the 90,000-
acre property would be set aside in
a reserve for older forests.
The forest would be dedicated
to public use and research, with
Oregon State University taking a
key role in its management.
GOT INVASIVE ANNUAL GRASSES?
Grant SWCD Weed Control Dept.
Working for You in 2022
Thanks to the Grant County Court and Northeast Oregon Forests Resource
Advisory Committee, Grant Weed Control is able to offer a 25% Cost
share program for Invasive Annual Grass Control on Private Grazing
Lands, through a Title II funded Grant Project. This program will provide a
maximum $10,000 of invasive annual grass control services with a $2,500
maximum landowner contribution to qualifying participants. To be eligible
for participation, the treatment property must not be actively irrigated and
must be primarily managed for livestock grazing, minimum of 20 acres in
size, located within Grant County, and must contain invasive annual grass
species. Applications for this limited weed control assistance opportunity
will be ranked and funded on a first come first serve basis.
Contact: Grant Soil and Water Conservation District Office at
(541) 575-1554 or visit 721 S. Canyon Blvd., John Day, OR
97845 for applications and additional information.
The application deadline for this program is March 11th, 2022.
S280965-1